FFVI Review Post

[opn184]

Jake Alley says "Of all the many, wonderful RPGs to grace the SNES, the best of all was Square's Final Fantasy VI... It delivered on all levels, and set the bar so high in some regards that it still has not been surpassed to this day." in his rpgamer.com review of FFVI. Do you agree/disagree, and why?

[Jiro]

When was that review written? I love FFVI. I still count it as my favourite game of all time. But I don't think saying it has been unsurpassed to this day is necessarily accurate. There have been some absolutely glowing reviews of games like The Last Story.

[opn184]

Here it is: http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff6/reviews/ff6strev2.html

[sabin101]

I love final fantasy VI it is one of my favorite ff games that ever came out but I would not say that it has not been surpassed. Even though I have not played any of the latest rpg games I read about a few of them and I could say there a lot of games that have stomped on this game and ran for the goal. Like the last story and a few other games that have raised the bar quite high. I always thought final fantasy 7 was a major improvement when it was released after 6 and I could say in terms of graphics 10 looked beautiful. Just my opinion on this topic.

[WildRaubtier]

You can tell a fanboy wrote that review. No scores lower than 5, and an overall of 10? It makes me wonder what the scoring criteria rpgamer has set itself is like.

6's main problem is that it fails as an actual game. I'm not sure how Jake came to the conclusion that the game's difficulty was "Medium," because it fails to provide any challenge at all. Every single character is overpowered for the segments where you're forced to use them, and there are a handful of characters that, given a choice of who to use, outpower by far everyone else. The battle system itself is barely more than a refined version of 4's- There's a couple more slots for equipment (an extra accessory and a magicite) and the characters can use any magic spell at any time. The flow of battles is also smoother. You're not stuck with any set characters. Those are pretty much the only differences. An already-cliched-for-its-time battle system with no difficulty does not warrant a 6, Mr. Alley!

The review also states a replay value of "5" which may be the single most inaccurate part of the entire review. There are 2 reasons to play 6 again: for the story, and to get anything you missed out on your first play (which, needless to say, is moot if you did it the first time). Is the story worth it? I'll say whatever rocks your boat. But story alone doesn't offer anything other than the lowest possible score for replay value.

The soundtrack was fine. Not a 10, it's too hit and miss, just like any other entry in the series. The story isn't a 10, either, even if it is the best in the series. There's no more than 2 or 3 characters who are ever relevant past their introduction or the completely optional quest to get them back at the end of the game. Jake's assertion that the story is "character driven" only applies in the sense that the story will throw another character at you in order to progress.

[Edge7]

I feel like the review is a bit too in favor. I love FF6, I think it has an amazing story, and the World of Ruin is one of my favorite stretches of gameplay in any Final Fantasy ever. Just flying on an airship, and watching the sun setting on the horizon is more visually appealing (to me) than a good chunk of things modern day consoles can do (I think it's because of the colors. Realism's nice, but when I think of the most beautiful image in gaming, I think of the Falcon soaring with the World of Ruin theme playing in the background. Maybe I'm just sentimental.)

Another thing I liked about the WoR that I feel has never really been replicated is the recruitment of characters. I know other RPGs have done it since then, Suikoden, SaGa (which I admittedly haven't played any of), and Chrono Cross being a few examples, but the feeling of having to regain allies you had already grown attached to was what sealed the deal.

I guess what I'm saying is that from an objective, gameplay-oriented standpoint, Final Fantasy VI has been surpassed (although I would argue that it hasn't aged poorly by any means), and it isn't the end-all defining game of the genre, but there are some things that keep this game very special for me.

[Bolivar]

RPGamer is an older site and I wouldn't be surprised if this review was written in the late 90's. The thing about American gamers who contextualize RPGs as in which is the best for its time, the best ever, etc. is that a lot of these games weren't available in America back then. Final Fantasy fans in the US could only have played half of the series up until 1999.

It doesn't matter if any games have surpassed it since: Final Fantasy VI wasn't even the best RPG on the SNES. Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest V, and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling together were far superior in terms of the scope of their stories and their mastery of gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, Final Fantasy VI is a very, very good game. It has some of the most epic moments ever in an RPG, awesome menu-based combat, a deep customization system, and some incredible dungeon design. Its original Japanese script was considerably mature for its time and paved the way for the more "adult" RPGs we would see in the Platinum Age of RPGs on the Sony PlayStation. But there's enough problems with the game to bring it down a few levels, even below some of its contemporaries.

[WildRaubtier]

awesome menu-based combat, a deep customization system,
what

[The Man]

Chrono Trigger, Dragon Quest V, and Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling together were far superior in terms of the scope of their stories and their mastery of gameplay.I've played two out of three of these (I haven't played Tactics Ogre since I suck at strategy games), and nope, not even close.

Don't get me wrong, CT and DQV both have some incredible strengths to their storytelling, and I would go so far as to say that Final Fantasy VI might not even exist in its current form without DQV, because quite a lot of what FFVI did was done by DQV first. But the scope of their stories is completely different. DQV focuses on the travels of one family throughout the course of their lives. FFVI focuses on a gigantic ensemble cast throughout the year. The length of the story told by DQV is massive, and to be honest it takes risks that I'm not aware of any other RPG to this day taking that paid off handsomely. But the world is nowhere near as developed as the world of FFVI. By the time the World of Ruin rolls around, it is entirely possible to imagine quite what the characters feel like, despite the 16-bit graphics. That is a gigantic accomplishment.

FFVI also earns points for its nonlinearity (which, to be sure, does not occur until the second half of the game - but then again, neither does Chrono Trigger's). To my knowledge, no other JRPGs apart from Chrono Trigger afford the player as much freedom as FFVI does in the second half of the game (although to be fair, I haven't been keeping up with recent releases, due to my interest in gaming having fallen off quite substantially and not owning two out of three of the modern consoles).

I will acknowledge that the battle system is where FFVI does come a bit short compared to some of its contemporaries. While FFVI's battle system is certainly serviceable enough, it is generally acknowledged even by fans of the game as the one place where the game falls short of sheer perfection. It certainly has been surpassed both by other entries in the series (FFV, FFT, etc.), and some of its contemporaries (I would even go so far as to name DQV and CT as two games that surpass the depyh of its battle systems). But with so many other places where the game achieves technical mastery, most people are willing to overlook a somewhat less deep, but still perfectly serviceable, battle system.

Anyway I would say that there are plenty of games from the era that come close to rivalling FFVI (DQV would be one, actually, as would Seiken Densetsu 3), and one that even manages to equal it in accomplishment (CT). But I don't think any surpass it.



awesome menu-based combat, a deep customization system,
whatThere is a hell of a lot you can do with FFVI's customisation system. Admittedly, a lot of it doesn't open up until you get espers, and some of it doesn't even really become possible until the World of Ruin, but the idea of giving characters stat bonuses on level up if they had certain espers equipped, for example, was a stroke of genius. Granted, as an obsessive-compulsive gamer it drives me absolutely crazy, since I want my characters' stats to be as perfect as possible (even though by the time you've levelled them up enough it doesn't matter worth a tit).

ETA: One of the points I probably should have elaborated on above is the fact that one of FFVI's strengths that lifts it above most of its competition is in an area very few people talk about when it comes to video games, which is in its world-building. Very few other games manage to feel like a real setting, and this is what it does radically better than any of the other games that have been mentioned in this thread. In part this is because there are so many believable characters in the game - not just the party members and the main NPCs, but minor characters like Duane and Katarin (or Dean and Katarina or possibly other names depending upon which translation you played). Almost every town has plenty of NPCs that play tangible roles throughout the story that add an extra layer of depth to the story you can get if you talk to them all at multiple points throughout the game. Most other RPGs do something similar to a certain extent, but most of them don't really go very far in doing anything other than making most of the characters little more than cardboard cut-outs. In FFVI, you feel you really get to know of them.

World-building is often overlooked, but it is important. It is the main reason Game of Thrones has succeeded where so many other attempts at bringing high fantasy to the small screen failed: It feels like a real setting. FFVI accomplishes this to an extent that almost no other game I have played manages. FFIX comes close, but to be honest, the only other game I can think of that I have played that actually accomplishes it to the same extent is FFVII (and I'm saying this despite considering it to have severe flaws in other aspects of its storytelling).

[WildRaubtier]

So, limited stat bonus equal a deep customisation system?

[The Man]

There's more to it than that, such as specific abilities that only certain characters can perform because of equipment limitations, and certain character abilities (Rage, Lore, Dance, etc.) that give you more back the more work you put into them. I used "for example" for a reason. It's not as deep as those of some other games (FFV for example) but for its day it's far from shallow.

[WildRaubtier]

So, learning pre-defined abilities according to class role equals deep customisation?

[Wolf Kanno]

Its customization was deep because you had the ability to choose a party from a cast of characters with set roles, who could be customized with espers to gain stat bonuses,learn magic spells, and use summons, and you could use relics to alter the characters abilities or give them new abilities (think of FFV's sub-job system) not to mention when you get to equipment that alters stats, causes special effects, and gives you defensive abilities. There is really nothing on the SNES that can really give the player this much customization options, hell VI gives more customization options than a lot of the FF games.

As for replay, the second half of the game is fairly non-linear from a JRPG standard meaning the player can tackle the scenarios in different order and not even bother getting back some of the characters, some of these omissions even alter the games ending, so yeah, there is quite a bit of replay value for it, especially for an FF.

I'll give you that the game's difficulty curve is bad, but the point of doing that was to make the game more accessible to new players, and you'll notice most games Square released after VI follow suit with rare exceptions mostly coming from Matsuno's crew (FFTactics,Vagrant Story) and this did help a new generation get into RPGs when VII followed the formula as well.

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I would agree its one of the best SNES RPGs, if anything cause the game is a bit of a watershed moment for the SNES. This is because most games on the system didn't bother with the type of cinematic and deeper story telling that VI attempted. I feel you can see a distinct difference to how games did certain things before and after VI, so I felt it was definitely a title that became a bit of a "eureka" moment for not only Square but other publisher's as well in that era.

I mean when you compare how Enix used cinematics and storytelling in DQV(pre-VI)
37580
and then DQVI (post VI)
37578
you see a huge difference,

same with the transition of storytelling from Battle Ogre
37579
to Tactics Ogre
http://mrbubblewand.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/toslide.png?w=500

VI introduced a means of using the character sprites as models to express more emotions and get more out of the story. It's visual style finally broke Final Fantasy out of the largely High Fantasy setting, introducing sprites dressed in Victorian era garb and showing off obvious 2nd Industrial Revolution architecture and machines (along with the sprinkle of sci-fi stuff the series usually has) which no one really did before then. It also integrated gameplay with story sequences which had never really been done before with stuff like the opera scene and the fishing mini-game letting the player have more immersion in the plot and characters that is largely absent from JRPGs.

Chrono Trigger and the PS1 generation FFs owe a lot to FFVI for raising the bar in how a JRPG can tell a story and build a likable cast of characters. So damn straight its one of the best SNES games if not one of the most important.

[The Man]

So, learning pre-defined abilities according to class role equals deep customisation?

There's more to it than that, such as

I used "for example" for a reason.
I'm not really sure how much further I could have gone to make it plain that I wasn't offering a comprehensive run-down of what made FFVI's system customisable, unless you're incapable of recognising "such as" and "for example" as synonyms. Wolf did his expectedly superb job providing more examples though.

[WildRaubtier]

Its customization was deep because you had the ability to choose a party from a cast of characters with set roles, who could be customized with espers to gain stat bonuses,learn magic spells, and use summons, and you could use relics to alter the characters abilities or give them new abilities (think of FFV's sub-job system) not to mention when you get to equipment that alters stats, causes special effects, and gives you defensive abilities. There is really nothing on the SNES that can really give the player this much customization options, hell VI gives more customization options than a lot of the FF games.
So, being able to equip 7 slots of equipment instead of just 5 is deep customisation? I'd like to know of another JRPG game where equipment doesn't alter a character's stats and/or abilities.

"Learning magic" is not customisation. Each character will learn the same spells, and every character can learn every spell. Learning magic in a different order is not "customisation." Deliberately not learning some spells in order to differentiate your characters is neglect, not customisation.

I think the only legitimate point here is the sheer amount of characters you can form a party with, which is weak because its still barely customising anything, as well as there being several characters so much more overpowered than the rest that you'd have to be playing some sort of specific challenge in order to not use them.


As for replay, the second half of the game is fairly non-linear from a JRPG standard meaning the player can tackle the scenarios in different order and not even bother getting back some of the characters, some of these omissions even alter the games ending, so yeah, there is quite a bit of replay value for it, especially for an FF.

Some scenes are altered depending on which characters you've reunited with. The final outcome, more or less, remains exactly the same. That isn't replay value. Additionally, reuniting with characters is optional - I doubt there's any game other game anyone would claim that optional content equals non-linearity.
(work time bbl)

[Edge7]

Damn Raubtier, tell us how you REALLY feel :p.

Anyway, customization or not, it was kinda cool for me to toy around with relics to see what effects I could get(which, admittedly was a gameplay gimmick I think FFVII improved). The best example of which was when I gave Locke a Thief's Glove, and a Genji Glove, which not only allows him to mug, he can now mug twice in a row. Even if the game's customization isn't too deep, it's tiny discoveries like that which brings FFVI so close to my heart.

[Bolivar]

What an awesome debate! :D

First, I'm going to support The Man in that Final Fantasy VI does have deep customization, both in the short term and in the long term. Short-term: each character has access to multiple weapon and armor classes not to mention two accessories. When you compile FFVI's long inventory of equipment with meaningful stat and ability modifiers, that is quite a monster of customization you have there.Long-term: we have Espers, who not only teach you permanent spells, but grant a permanent stat boost upon levelling. That also allows your characters to look radically different at the end of the game depending on what you've done each playthrough.

But now I gotta step up to The Man... First of all, I'm confused, is DQ "not even close" as you said in the beginning or does it "come close to rivalling FFVI" as you said in the end? And while you acknowledge that DQV had a wider scope in its story, the only way you really dismiss it is by saying FFVI had better world building because each town had someone tangibly important to the plot. Really? A LOT OF RPGs have meaningful characters in each town much in the same way. The founder of the Final Fantasy series had the Elf Prince, Dr. Unne, the Council of Maegi, the Mermaid side stories. The Shining Force games did this. Final Fantasy XII had ensemble casts within each town that were totally distinct with their own history and were already in the midst of a compelling and longstanding struggle before the main game even begins, much less by the time the party shows up. So really, this is a very subjective aspect very small compared to the size of this debate, when just because FFVI's world-building attempts worked well for you doesn't stop any of us from naming half a dozen titles off the top of our heads that had far, far better world building than Final Fantasy VI.

Wolf - are you smurfing kidding me? Picking two vastly different kinds of scenes which serve fundamentally different purposes in the story and putting them together as if they're representative of either game's storytelling? Or taking pictures from Matsuno's SNES games and absolutely ignoring the fact that they are completely different games and instead saying that it must be because of Final Fantasy VI? Can you in any remote way even begin to elaborate on how these examples have any substance at all in explaining the impact of Final Fantasy VI?

That's a rhetorical question, because we both know you can't.

[Wolf Kanno]

So, being able to equip 7 slots of equipment instead of just 5 is deep customisation? I'd like to know of another JRPG game where equipment doesn't alter a character's stats and/or abilities.

"Learning magic" is not customisation. Each character will learn the same spells, and every character can learn every spell. Learning magic in a different order is not "customisation." Deliberately not learning some spells in order to differentiate your characters is neglect, not customisation.

I think the only legitimate point here is the sheer amount of characters you can form a party with, which is weak because its still barely customising anything, as well as there being several characters so much more overpowered than the rest that you'd have to be playing some sort of specific challenge in order to not use them.

That right there is actually the definition of customization, I am picking and choosing the skills I want for a party member and there are several characters in VI who really don't need magic so teaching them is a waste of the player's time. By the way you are arguing this, there is no customization in JRPGs because you are obligated to always use everything for every character, which I don't agree with. I can use your argument on every FF except FFI for crying out loud. So unless you're saying that customization only exists if you "roll the character" like a Western RPG or MMO, then I feel your argument is flawed.

Equipment is hardly new and I'm not implying VI somehow how did it magically different besides the Relics but it is an important part of VI as your equipment is often more important end game than what magic your taught your characters. The statistical bonuses for Magic and strength are also far more noticeable, most of the games best gear is not even the ones with the highest attack power. Doesn't mean its not equally as important in other games of course but there are also a lot of games where the you end up just equipping the next weapon or armor whose main stat is higher than what they have already equipped. VI at least mixed that up a bit, though it was nothing new.



Some scenes are altered depending on which characters you've reunited with. The final outcome, more or less, remains exactly the same. That isn't replay value. Additionally, reuniting with characters is optional - I doubt there's any game other game anyone would claim that optional content equals non-linearity.
(work time bbl)

Smurf man, Fallout 3's ending is largely the same no matter what you do and yet it's considered a non-linear game. I'm not even suggesting VI is in Elder Scroll territory, I am only stating the obvious which is that the player is handed control of how the sequence of events unfold and how certain choices by the player will actually modify the ending or your ability to even partake of some of the optional content. Choose to ignore getting Relm back, well looks like Strago is in that cult until Kefka is gone. Chose to jump ship ASAP at the Floating Continent, well Shadow is now dead and you lose the ability to see the final dream revealing his backstory, but you gain the ability to see Relm's dream. Simply recruit everyone and head straight to Kekfa, you lose out on learning about Strago's past, watching Cyan gain closure to his story, Terra learning that her parents were not the only ones to bridge the barrier over Esper/Human relations, Closure to Gau's story, and a few more things. Choosing to save Cid even nets you two very different outcomes so the fact the player's decisions can impact the story would by definition mean that not only is the story not completely on rails linear, but also means the player has reason to play the game to change their decisions and see different outcomes, meaning there is some replay value here. :p




Wolf - are you smurfing kidding me? Picking two vastly different kinds of scenes which serve fundamentally different purposes in the story and putting them together as if they're representative of either game's storytelling? Or taking pictures from Matsuno's SNES games and absolutely ignoring the fact that they are completely different games and instead saying that it must be because of Final Fantasy VI? Can you in any remote way even begin to elaborate on how these examples have any substance at all in explaining the impact of Final Fantasy VI?

That's a rhetorical question, because we both know you can't.

Why yes, I'll ignore your coy plea to prove you wrong. ;)

The point of the images used in DQ shows the inherent difference in how sprites are used to create a connection with the player. The problem with DQ1-5 is that their sprites are utterly flat, they are the video game equivalent of a playmobil person with no real arms or ability to express themselves without the aid of some other devices. The main hero from DQV, if he was asleep looks like he is simply topped over on his back on top of the bed sprite. As opposed to DQVI where the MC's sprite is animated with arms and legs sprawled out on the floor, the player instantly can tell the mood of the scene from just looking at the image and that scene isn't even all that important. Whereas the bulk of DQV's sprites and scenes is just their plastic toy sprites with some text. It's not a bad style mind you as I like how it lures the player into using their own imagination to see the scene but in terms of immersion and understanding context, the use of expressive sprites is better. VI was the SNES game that really used sprites like this to tell a story, I mean only Chrono Trigger and Mana have sprites on par with the level of detail and repertoire of expressions.

One step back from the bigger picture of gaming in the era, and you can pretty much notice that these types of sprites are being used to immerse the player in stories by being more fluid actors for the player. In FFV, Bartz could shuffle back and forth to dance, laugh, and shut his eyes. Terra can be surprised, laughed, determined, sing, crumple over in defeat, dance, fly, and look forlorn. If you look closely, though you'll notice there is a difference before and after VI came out. DQ has kept the same kind of sprites for five games with much success I might add, but even they dabbled with trying to create a more immersive experience for the player with their follow up game which came out after VI came out. As I said, most games that use these more detailed sprites in the SNES era came post-VI, so I feel is some logic to my madness.:p

As for Matsuno, well that was mostly to screw with you. :joker:

[WildRaubtier]

That right there is actually the definition of customization, I am picking and choosing the skills I want for a party member and there are several characters in VI who really don't need magic so teaching them is a waste of the player's time. By the way you are arguing this, there is no customization in JRPGs because you are obligated to always use everything for every character, which I don't agree with.
It's still not customisation if you're refusing to learn an ability that can be learnt without penalty (time/order not withstanding), it's more like you've simply neglected to maximise that character's abilities. For example, take Cloud's limit breaks in 7. It's quite possible to learn Meteorain before Climhazard, and the former is so much better. Am I customising Cloud by switching to limit 3 before learning Climhazard? (I feel at this point it's necessary to point out the answer is 'no'). Meanwhile, I've also equipped Cloud with a fire materia. As long as that materia is equipped, I can't use that same slot for anything else. Additionally, once I remove that materia, Cloud cannot use Fire. Compare to 6, where you have the same system with magicite, sure, until you earn a maximum of 100 ABP, at which point you can remove your magicite and continue to use whichever spell(s) you just learnt at any time without penalty. That's the difference between a system that is customisable and one that is not.



I can use your argument on every FF except FFI for crying out loud.
Actually, you can't! :p Even 1 forces you to pick only 3 out of 4 spells available for each magic level. You'd only be successful trying to apply it to 4.


Equipment is hardly new and I'm not implying VI somehow how did it magically different besides the Relics but it is an important part of VI as your equipment is often more important end game than what magic your taught your characters.
Again, this is entirely industry standard. I can't think of any game where ignoring appropriate stat bonuses in favour of simple attack power results in better results. Further, your point is entirely invalidated due to the lack of difficulty in 6, where a lack of any difficulty to speak of kind of renders any thought about equipment moot.

As for relics, well, maybe if there were more than half a dozen that did anything unique. The vast majority just do typical accessory stuff.


Smurf man, Fallout 3's ending is largely the same no matter what you do and yet it's considered a non-linear game. I'm not even suggesting VI is in Elder Scroll territory, I am only stating the obvious which is that the player is handed control of how the sequence of events unfold and how certain choices by the player will actually modify the ending or your ability to even partake of some of the optional content.
You seem to have confused the concepts of optional content and linearity of content here! To be fair, my paragraph wasn't as well articulated as it could have been since I needed to head to work. If any content is optional, then of course it's going to be non-linear. And while 6 certainly gains points for the sheer volume of optional content (yet only at the late game stage), trying to claim that optional content is non-linear is pretty bogus.


Choose to ignore getting Relm back, well looks like Strago is in that cult until Kefka is gone.
Linear content? In YOUR non-linear endgame?????

Chose to jump ship ASAP at the Floating Continent, well Shadow is now dead and you lose the ability to see the final dream revealing his backstory, but you gain the ability to see Relm's dream.

Choosing to save Cid even nets you two very different outcomes
I think there's a lot of misconception over Shadow. I don't even know which of "missable" or "optional" is more appropriate, considering to even use him you have to do something entirely unintuitive and unconventional. I'd imagine that his being killed off is the normal option. Regardless, sure, well call these minor details you'd have to slog through 30 hours of gameplay to see a couple of small changes "replay value."

We'll be fair, here, and throw in the three or so scenes that change depending on what characters you've reunited with at the end of the game. This is barely even worth replaying the entire game for, as you can simply reload a save form before recruiting the relevant character to make the difference. For most characters, though, the endings simply show a portrait of the character you missed and pans some scenery during their unique scenes. That's not replay, that's missed content.


Simply recruit everyone and head straight to Kekfa, you lose out on learning about Strago's past, watching Cyan gain closure to his story, Terra learning that her parents were not the only ones to bridge the barrier over Esper/Human relations, Closure to Gau's story, and a few more things.
All optional content, and not even stuff you have to play through the entire game again just to see.


I'm not really sure how much further I could have gone to make it plain that I wasn't offering a comprehensive run-down of what made FFVI's system customisable, unless you're incapable of recognising "such as" and "for example" as synonyms. Wolf did his expectedly superb job providing more examples though.
You offered two points. The first was, to your own admission, mostly irrelevant, and the second was bogus entirely.

[Flying Arrow]

It's still not customisation if you're refusing to learn an ability that can be learnt without penalty (time/order not withstanding), it's more like you've simply neglected to maximise that character's abilities.

This right here is my main problem with VI. The game's lack of difficulty is one thing, but the customization system is based entirely on how much time the player has to dedicate to teaching every character every spell. I find that at some point of every playthrough of VI I've done, I've gotten to the point where I just start teaching characters spells they don't have yet, because they have everything else they already need. "Sabin is missing stuff from his spellbook and the game gives way more EXP and AP than I need to win... alright, might as well hook him up with Osmose or Imp."


...I've also equipped Cloud with a fire materia. As long as that materia is equipped, I can't use that same slot for anything else. Additionally, once I remove that materia, Cloud cannot use Fire. Compare to 6, where you have the same system with magicite, sure, until you earn a maximum of 100 ABP, at which point you can remove your magicite and continue to use whichever spell(s) you just learnt at any time without penalty.

This is what makes VII that much more enjoyable for me. Quick, easy customization. The party is just a group of glorified materia combo slots - the real party begins when you start distributing gems and ending up in various types of party builds (of course, VII also suffers from the lack-of-difficulty problem, so.) In VI, you have a dozen characters and two dozen skill-teaching gems which can be equipped on each of the characters in order to make the skills "stick" over time. It's not long after you get your first handful of Magicite that VI's "customization" starts to feel more like admin work with regards to spells and level-up bonuses.



I think there's a lot of misconception over Shadow. I don't even know which of "missable" or "optional" is more appropriate, considering to even use him you have to do something entirely unintuitive and unconventional. I'd imagine that his being killed off is the normal option. Regardless, sure, well call these minor details you'd have to slog through 30 hours of gameplay to see a couple of small changes "replay value."

We'll be fair, here, and throw in the three or so scenes that change depending on what characters you've reunited with at the end of the game. This is barely even worth replaying the entire game for, as you can simply reload a save form before recruiting the relevant character to make the difference. For most characters, though, the endings simply show a portrait of the character you missed and pans some scenery during their unique scenes. That's not replay, that's missed content.

Yes. The Shadow/Floating Continent issue is just pointlessly obtuse. In a situation with such stakes, why should the player be expected to stand around in a hostile zone (where any step can result in a timer-draining encounter) and wait for an NPC to arrive while the airship is plainly in sight. Especially given the fact that in no other area in the 15-hour game up to this point does the game clue the player into this sort of field-gameplay reactivity.

Not only that, but once the player realizes the secret behind the gimmick, there's never a reason to not wait around. Unless of course the player is making an active effort to throw away a potential party member for good - which is not a meaningful choice but a gameplay 'failure' that the player is subjecting himself to for the chance at some miniscule optional story content buried a mile deep into the game's lore and code.

[Bolivar]

As for Matsuno, well that was mostly to screw with you.

I would hope so, but it worked considering my whole "rhetorical question, you can't" stance :mad2:


The problem with DQ1-5 is that their sprites are utterly flat, they are the video game equivalent of a playmobil person with no real arms or ability to express themselves without the aid of some other devices.

You're wrong.

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1855/dq5hero.png

Hero can bulge his eyes to look surprised, wipe his brow to look relieved, or assume a fighting stance in precarious situations. Character sprite animations have been important since Final Fantasy II, specifically the scene where Paul breaks the party out of the Palamecia prison. Final Fantasy VI has excellent sprite animations, but its additions weren't sufficiently larger than Final Fantasy V to be surprising.

Even if it was, FFVI's importance is irrelevant to the question of whether FFVI has been surpassed, especially in light of the assertion that FFVI was surpassed by a lot of its contemporaries on the SNES, before and after its own release date.

I'm also going to throw in with WildRaubtier that FFVI's nonlinearity is not such an exciting thing. It really does mostly amount to optional content, and in reality there is a logical way to follow a geographical path to re-recruit every character. They really did just take a linear story path and make it all optional. Saying Final Fantasy VI is nonlinear is like saying Mega Man X is nonlinear. Just because you can pick an order to do things doesn't change the character of an overall linear experience.

I do have to disagree with WildRaubtier for this:



As for relics, well, maybe if there were more than half a dozen that did anything unique. The vast majority just do typical accessory stuff.\

Gauntlet: allows characters to equip one weapon with two hands for extra damage
Master's Scroll/Offering: allows character to attack four times in a row
Dragoon Boots: changes Fight command to Jump
Genji Glove: allows character to Dual Wield
Brigand's/Thief Glove: Allows Locke to Mug instead of Steal
Coin Toss: Changes Setzer's Slots into Gil Toss
Economizer: Makes all spells cost 1 MP

That's more than half-a-dozen. The full list is here (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Relic_(Final_Fantasy_VI)). As I said in my post, allowing most characters to equip multiple armor and weapon classes, in tandemn with the relic system and magicite makes for a ton of customization. I would definitely say it's on the same level as FFVII, just broken up in different ways.

[WildRaubtier]

As for relics, well, maybe if there were more than half a dozen that did anything unique. The vast majority just do typical accessory stuff.

Gauntlet: allows characters to equip one weapon with two hands for extra damage
Master's Scroll/Offering: allows character to attack four times in a row
Dragoon Boots: changes Fight command to Jump
Genji Glove: allows character to Dual Wield
Brigand's/Thief Glove: Allows Locke to Mug instead of Steal
Coin Toss: Changes Setzer's Slots into Gil Toss
Economizer: Makes all spells cost 1 MP

That's more than half-a-dozen. The full list is here (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Relic_(Final_Fantasy_VI)).
I was referring to that page when writing up my post! Also, the Gauntlet is nothing more than a conditional attack boost, which makes it irrelevant to your list, which makes your list exactly half a dozen! :p I'd argue that the economiser is in the same class, being a stat changing accessory.

Pittances aside, here's a rough breakdown of Relics:
Resistance/Attribute/Status changing + Non-battle system effects (AKA Typical Accessory Fare):
(For brevity's sake, I'm going to exclude anything listed on that wikia page under the preventing statuses, adding statuses, improving physical attributes, improving magic attributes, improving both physical and magical attributes, affecting battles, effective outside battle headings unless otherwise listed as they mostly come here anyway)
Protect Ring
Thief's Bracer
Memento Ring
Moogle's Charm
Berserker Ring (You could argue this one, but I'm going to say a chance at a higher damage attack is just a critical hit)
Bone Wrist


(...and now for the ones that actually count towards a customisation argument)
Add/Change Character Abilities
Knight's Code
Black Belt
Dragoon Boots
Fake Moustache (I'm skeptical here, as control and sketch are essentially the same)
Coin Toss
Blizzard Orb
Genji Glove *
Merit Award *
(* denotes a "change equippable equipment" subset and are debatable inclusions)

Perform Multiple Actions per Round
Dragon Horn
Offering
Gem Box
Thief Gloves

So roughly twelve, or one fifth, of all relics have any unique "customisation" worth. It's double what I said, but still less than what would be reasonable to support the sort of claims everyone is making.


As I said in my post, allowing most characters to equip multiple armor and weapon classes, in tandemn with the relic system and magicite makes for a ton of customization. I would definitely say it's on the same level as FFVII, just broken up in different ways.
Equipping different gear does not equal customisation. I feel like I've been trusting this argument too much to intuition, so I'm going to provide the following assertion for others to challenge: "Equipment boils down to, optional or otherwise, story driven (read: accessibility) attribute bonuses akin to leveling. This is limited by static character class and therefore not uniquely customisable."

Relics, by which I mean the dozen or so I outlined above, as well as magicite, offer about 30 customisation options, most of which are exclusive to each other. That is nowhere near as deep as 7. To reiterate:

I would definitely say it's on the same level as FFVII, just broken up in different ways.
You are so very wrong!

[Bolivar]

Well, I'm a huge FFVII fan, so I'm very tempted to concede on this issue :choc2:

As far as your assertion, what "equipment boils down to," I guess I can't really dispute that the FFVI characters are somewhat limited by their thinly-hidden classes. Dragoon Boots notwithstanding, it is hard to truly change your characters outside of what magic they learn. I do appreciate how FFVII divided materia up into five categories, specifically how Command (yellow) materia can be used to teach any character any of the abilities. And while I might be willing to admit that FFVII's armlet system streamlined the perhaps unnecessarily encumbering (no pun intended) armor set system, I do still think weapon classes were important in FFVI, as you had a choice of different routes to go with your characters outside of just more damage or a unique ability. You have to at least admit that whereas FFVII had things like Fire materia teaching a spell and boosting MP/Magic and Cover granting the cover passive while boosting Vitality, we can easily point to similar options in FFVI, just broken up in a different way. Of course, one difference is that FFVII also bestowed banes as well as boons, thus making choices more meaningful.

Anyway, gameplay systems in RPGs is one of my favorite topics to talk about and this has been a pretty good debate. I'm just going to say I look at FFVI much how I look at FFIX: despite clear defining lines of what each character is and isn't, the game still allows for a lot of customization within each character's job.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wow three VII fanboys jump in, guess IGN got you steamed. ;) Also, some of you need spell check... :argh:



It's still not customisation if you're refusing to learn an ability that can be learnt without penalty (time/order not withstanding), it's more like you've simply neglected to maximize that character's abilities.

Dude, seriously, that is customization either way. I mean why should I teach Cyan, who has an abysmal magic stat to begin with something I never intend for him to use? There is no reason to teach every character every magic spell unless you are compelled
by some OCD reasoning to fill up some arbitrary list and likewise, Master Materia baby. I can still do the same thing in VII if I wanted to. :p



For example, take Cloud's limit breaks in 7. It's quite possible to learn Meteorain before Climhazard, and the former is so much better. Am I customizing Cloud by switching to limit 3 before learning Climhazard? (I feel at this point it's necessary to point out the answer is 'no').

Depends on what you are trying to do, if all you want is a more powerful move, then yes switch to Meteorain, cause it is better. If your goal was to learn Omnislash, then you must stay Put and learn Climhazzard so you can meet the requirement to unlock it. Yet if I wanted to stay using his Level 2 because they fill his limit gauge faster and thus potentially can cause more damage overtime depending on when I learned the Meteorain, I can do that as well because I'm sacrificing power for a more reliable source of gaining extra damage for tough battles, especially if my real goal is to use the 2x charge of the ATB gauge as a means to heal/buff my party in an emergency. So yes, I can customize a character using limit breaks to make a more efficient healer and I get results.

Likewise in VI, I can simply teach Cyan spells that may be useful and disregard the rest cause all he needs from Espers is the stat bonuses they give him.



Meanwhile, I've also equipped Cloud with a fire materia. As long as that materia is equipped, I can't use that same slot for anything else. Additionally, once I remove that materia, Cloud cannot use Fire. Compare to 6, where you have the same system with magicite, sure, until you earn a maximum of 100 ABP, at which point you can remove your magicite and continue to use whichever spell(s) you just learned at any time without penalty. That's the difference between a system that is customizable and one that is not.

Well no, cause I can choose to teach a character or not, of anything customization in the classic sense(D&D) is suppose to be permanent rather than transient, meaning that teaching fire magic to a character carries consequences since it is permanent, whereas VII allows you to fix mistakes you may make. On the other hand, I can build permanent classes I have to live with. I can teach Setzer to be a Time Mage with the right espers and I must live with that choice, I could also make everyone into time mages but I'm also not stupid and realize that is not a fun way to play a game. Likewise in VII I can make all my character Time mages or I can make one them do it. The difference here is pretty arbitrary sense often in customization it's what you don't teach a character that is more important. The fact VII allows you to go back to zero is a plus but it doesn't make VI's system not a customization system, just something you don't care for.



Actually, you can't! :p Even 1 forces you to pick only 3 out of 4 spells available for each magic level. You'd only be successful trying to apply it to 4.

Not if it's the original NES version where half the spells don't work. ;)



Further, your point is entirely invalidated due to the lack of difficulty in 6, where a lack of any difficulty to speak of kind of renders any thought about equipment moot.

While I agree VI is pretty easy, I'd make the same argument in VII and most of the later games barring IX. The series is pretty easy and equipment is often pretty moot. VI did start the turn towards easy street in the series but it also brought back heavy tinkering since you can play with a characters stats and abilities. Yes, it doesn't make much of difference in the long run but those are the RPGs most of us ended up buying since the rest of the series continued the trend of high customization with low challenge.


As for relics, well, maybe if there were more than half a dozen that did anything unique. The vast majority just do typical accessory stuff.

Peel away V's abundance of stat raising skills, and equip skills and you are not far from having similar results. V still has more but that's largely due to VI making some characters represent V's classes so the skills remain unique (Relm = Tamer Job Class) but I will argue the Gauntlet is not simply a stat booster because it modifies your equipment and options. You are basically disregarding a shield (stat increases, magical defense abilities, evasion, etc...) for increase in damage. It is basically the Knight classes Doublehand ability from FFV.



You seem to have confused the concepts of optional content and linearity of content here! To be fair, my paragraph wasn't as well articulated as it could have been since I needed to head to work. If any content is optional, then of course it's going to be non-linear. And while 6 certainly gains points for the sheer volume of optional content (yet only at the late game stage), trying to claim that optional content is non-linear is pretty bogus.

Your inability to understand is exasperating. Linear means you have no choice, actions proceed in a certain order, non-linear means you have a choice and it affects the outcome. It's not a difficult concept to figure out. The issue with your argument about it being just optional content is that the options in VI continues the story of the characters whereas most other optional content is simply a non-story related quest like raising chocobos. The player is given the ability to do things in the order they want. Are the events largely linear? Yes, but this is a JRPG, story comes first and if we went with "choose your own adventure to affect the whole plot" the narrative of the first half of the game is made pointless.

To break this down to you, when you get the airship in the WoR, you see the cutscene of the carrier pigeon leading you to the town where you'll get the even that shows you where Cyan is. You now have three options: Choose to follow where the story tells you to go, choose to go somewhere else but come back later, or choose not to do it at all.

Recruiting your party is told to the player in a linear sequence of events, but the player has the ability to go out of sequence to do them, giving them choice on the order of the stories progression choosing to ignore these options completely affects the ending meaning your action has a tangible repercussion when the game ends, you affect the ending, whether you feel it's weak or not really doesn't change the fact you can affect the ending but whether you choose to change the ending or not doesn't mean that recruiting a character is the same as a optional side-quest because all optional sidequests in RPGs don't affect the story or ending.

Not choosing to recruit Locke will change Celes's ending in the game's ending. Whereas beating the WEAPONS in VII doesn't affect anything, whether your party fells them or not the game already makes it clear that they will be killed off-screen by Holy or in-game by you, but either way you'll see the exact same ending so your actions have no effect on the story. A more poignant example is the Zell/Library Girl side-quest in VIII. It's a side-quest cause doing it or not doesn't change anything, he still winds up with her in the game's ending the only purpose for doing it is to learn how Zell got with her and you are rewarded a Combat King's issue earlier than you would normally get. Whereas, recruiting Cyan is something the game tells you to do (whereas neither VII or VIII tell the player to do the quests I mentioned above, hence "optional") but going to Doma and doing the Dream world quest is an optional quest cause it doesn't affect the game's story, whereas not recruiting Cyan will alter the ending by omitting his stories closure.

Optional content is usually for gameplay benefits or for clarity to the player if it decides to be a bit story focused, but doing it doesn't affect the game which is why we call it optional. Regardless of whether you do it, you still get the same sequence of events and see the same ending. Which in VI's case means recruiting the characters isn't something that can be brushed off as "optional sidequests" since it affects the game's story. Could it have been better implemented? Well yes, I'm not going to disagree there but the game was toying with something Square had never done before while also doing a number of other new innovations while pushing the game's technology to what they felt was it's limits. Yet if you look at Chrono Trigger, you'll see VI's design set-up done better.



Choose to ignore getting Relm back, well looks like Strago is in that cult until Kefka is gone.
Linear content? In YOUR non-linear endgame?????

Chose to jump ship ASAP at the Floating Continent, well Shadow is now dead and you lose the ability to see the final dream revealing his backstory, but you gain the ability to see Relm's dream.

Choosing to save Cid even nets you two very different outcomes
I think there's a lot of misconception over Shadow. I don't even know which of "missable" or "optional" is more appropriate, considering to even use him you have to do something entirely unintuitive and unconventional. I'd imagine that his being killed off is the normal option. Regardless, sure, well call these minor details you'd have to slog through 30 hours of gameplay to see a couple of small changes "replay value."

Your choices affect the characters story, is it optional, yes but that also means it's non-linear which means you're conceding my point. The thing about the WoR as I said is that I can choose to finish the character's stories or I can choose to finish the plot or I can do both. It's not Elder Scrolls but its a step up for a genre that makes you dance to the author's strings for 40 hours and give you little say in the matter. The point is, you conceded that the WoR is optional content which means it's non-linear which means I am right and I can always hold that over you VII fans. :p


We'll be fair, here, and throw in the three or so scenes that change depending on what characters you've reunited with at the end of the game. This is barely even worth replaying the entire game for, as you can simply reload a save form before recruiting the relevant character to make the difference. For most characters, though, the endings simply show a portrait of the character you missed and pans some scenery during their unique scenes. That's not replay, that's missed content.

If you like the game then it's enough of a reason to go back and do things differently, I mean VII has the date scene and VIII has the Missile base quest. It's not much but it's still something to give players another go despite knowing the outcome and I'm not the type to simply brush that off as inconsequential.


This is what makes VII that much more enjoyable for me. Quick, easy customization. The party is just a group of glorified materia combo slots - the real party begins when you start distributing gems and ending up in various types of party builds (of course, VII also suffers from the lack-of-difficulty problem, so.) In VI, you have a dozen characters and two dozen skill-teaching gems which can be equipped on each of the characters in order to make the skills "stick" over time. It's not long after you get your first handful of Magicite that VI's "customization" starts to feel more like admin work with regards to spells and level-up bonuses.

Honestly it's the fact the characters are mostly materia combo slots that I don't like VII's system, I just feel it diminishes their value as actual characters if I can make any of them anything. I'm no longer compelled to use everyone, I just pick the three I like and build them however I want. At least in V their was some restraint with options so I could build personalities into the characters. It made using them feel impersonal cause there was very little to distinguish them besides how they looked.

VII ultimately will lead you to building a clone army. Outside Cloud and Aerith the rest of the class is pretty much statistically the same with the few differences largely being negligible especially since materia doesn't really modify stats greatly unless you seriously buckle someone down magic/summon materia, and even then I don't feel the stat difference makes up much of difference cause the game is pretty easy. The only Limit Breaks that matter are the ones that hit multiple times as the others don't really do much that materia can't do anyway and the game even gives your whole party ultimate weapons that allow all of them to hit the damage cap regardless of levels and with no customization required. So there is really little to differentiate characters except Tifa and Cait Sith use a slot machine interface, and Aerith is largely defensive/mage based but she dies anyway so there is no point in using her anyway.




Yes. The Shadow/Floating Continent issue is just pointlessly obtuse. In a situation with such stakes, why should the player be expected to stand around in a hostile zone (where any step can result in a timer-draining encounter) and wait for an NPC to arrive while the airship is plainly in sight. Especially given the fact that in no other area in the 15-hour game up to this point does the game clue the player into this sort of field-gameplay reactivity.

Not only that, but once the player realizes the secret behind the gimmick, there's never a reason to not wait around. Unless of course the player is making an active effort to throw away a potential party member for good - which is not a meaningful choice but a gameplay 'failure' that the player is subjecting himself to for the chance at some miniscule optional story content buried a mile deep into the game's lore and code.

Well no, you seem to have missed the point, first off, I feel the developers intended for you to lose Shadow on a first playthrough, of which you would unlock the Relm dream and learn of their connection to each other. Then you started to notice that he has weapons available to him in the WoR but can't find him anywhere. At this point the player starts realizing that, holy trout, maybe I did something wrong at the Floating Continent, as so you play the replay value and start doing different things at that point to see if something else happens. The secret was keeping him alive and that was a reward a player got for trying new things,[using old man voice] cause you see back in the "good old days", developers designed their RPGs to reward players for trying different things to see different outcomes. Cause back then it was hard to give replay value to to this style of genre, so developers did this type of stuff. Breath of Fire, Lufia, Dragon Quest, all of them have little secrets buried away for the player to explore. This is why people were adamant about their being a way to revive Aerith, cause it was quite common to have these types of secrets in these games back in the 90s. Stuff like this was fun cause players would learn different things about the game and share secrets back and forth. This was before the internet came and made having mystery in a RPG non-existent. I mean it's DQ policy since DQVIII to make guides that tell you absolutely nothing about the story or some of the side content, not even the order of events, just so they can delay GameFaqs from killing all the little mysteries.

The idea of keeping Shadow alive was a cool secret back in the day, much in the same vein as how you get the Best ending in Breath of Fire which involves making several choices the game blatantly tells you you can't make. See this was back when games were games. :cool:




I would hope so, but it worked considering my whole "rhetorical question, you can't" stance :mad2:





The problem with DQ1-5 is that their sprites are utterly flat, they are the video game equivalent of a playmobil person with no real arms or ability to express themselves without the aid of some other devices.

You're wrong.

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1855/dq5hero.png

Hero can bulge his eyes to look surprised, wipe his brow to look relieved, or assume a fighting stance in precarious situations. Character sprite animations have been important since Final Fantasy II, specifically the scene where Paul breaks the party out of the Palamecia prison. Final Fantasy VI has excellent sprite animations, but its additions weren't sufficiently larger than Final Fantasy V to be surprising.

Okay Bolivar, you place me in a hard position because you failed to do something very trivial and I now must resist rubbing this in your face. Those are not the sprites from DQV, that is from an FFVI Hacking forum (http://www.ff6hacking.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=840) and that is a set a fan created sprites so he can be placed into the game without looking out of place. Notice how the tent at the end is from FFVI and try to remember back to if Hiro ever used a He didn't.

This is the actual sprite 37613, notice how it doesn't look anything like this :ffvisad:. Notice how Hiro has black dots for eyes, and how Terra actually has animated and expressive eyes. So yes, VI had the most animated sprites for its time.

Now here's Bartz full story mode sprite list with 39 total animations
37614

Here's Terra's
37615

Even ignoring the actual sprite change ones (Chocobo, Magitech, esper, tent form) she still has 52 total of just her normal sprite. They have roughly the same amount of movement sprite animations but look at the range of emotions Terra can express due to her better sprite animations. Bartz sprite is expressive, but it doesn't tell you much about him, whereas I feel you can get a pretty decent picture of what kind of person Terra is.

This is my point, if you played FFV or DQV in Silent Movie mode, with no text to give you anything to go by. You would have a hard time grasping the plot and who the characters were, if you did it to VI, well you'd probably still have problems following it (it's still limited) but I feel the depth of emotions the sprites show as well as how the game implemented them into the story scenes, I feel you would have a general idea of the mood of the game as well as who the characters are. Krile squatting over Galuf's blinking body, is just not as expressive or as engaging as watching Celes climb up a cliff and then leaping to her "death" with a tear coming out of her eyes as she falls. You really can't argue that the way VI utilized the sprites was more powerful than most games before it utilized it. As well as that it was something that became more prominent after VI due to VI showing how the technology could be used.


Even if it was, FFVI's importance is irrelevant to the question of whether FFVI has been surpassed, especially in light of the assertion that FFVI was surpassed by a lot of its contemporaries on the SNES, before and after its own release date.


I don't quite know what you are talking about here, there are not any games that meet up with VI's sprite quality brfore 1994 except Secret of Mana and Mana is mostly battle animations. Afterwards, yes, it was surpassed but that's just progress the idea a game can be the "best" at something indefinitely is something only fanboys talk about and they are wrong cause games have gotten better, Crono's animations dwarf anything Terra could do. Technology just allows designers to surpass the old. VI redesigned how sprites were done through technology which allowed people like Kitase to create more expressive story scenes, just as the advent of 3D allowed those games to do a wealth of more expressive animations than the 2D ones of yesteryear. Progress marches on but as you've pointed out in our VII debates, it's how the story utilizes that technology to better itself that sets the games apart from it's predecessors. ;)


I'm also going to throw in with WildRaubtier that FFVI's nonlinearity is not such an exciting thing. It really does mostly amount to optional content, and in reality there is a logical way to follow a geographical path to re-recruit every character. They really did just take a linear story path and make it all optional. Saying Final Fantasy VI is nonlinear is like saying Mega Man X is nonlinear. Just because you can pick an order to do things doesn't change the character of an overall linear experience.

Well I would consider Mega Man X to be somewhat non-linear because the player chooses how the events unfold and also in some games, the order you go in can affect the stags as well. If the player can change the order of events then its not really a linear game now is it? It's really not too difficult to grasp this simple definition. Whether it's meaningful is more of the issue you two seem to have and that largely depends on the individual but it doesn't change that it is a non-linear game since the player can change the order of events. Yes the narrative is linearbut there is no rule that both have to be in compliance. The game does present the option of following a linear narrative (because this is a story based game after all) but that is largely to help players give them an idea of where to go as opposed to just wandering around until they bump into something important, so it's more for the sake of preventing player frustration. It's also for the players who just want a linear experience and that's an option as well. The irony of all this is that I don't disagree that it could have been done better and I have said before that Chrono Trigger did it better, your denial is the only reason I argue. :D

[Jinx]

Jesus fucking Christ, WK.

[Jowy]

Please actually play Final Fantasy VI so you can be a valuable contributor to this forum, Sam. Not many people still have things about this game that aren't discussed and documented somewhere.

VI is a game I thoroughly enjoy to this day. There are games that have more advancements be it from a graphical or gameplay standpoint, but I think the best part is how the simplicity makes it shine.

[Bolivar]

Heyyo, this is like that epic swordfighting scene in Die Another Day, where Pierce Brosnan wins a swordfight against a dude, except Wolf just did it against 3 dudes each wielding buster swords with two connected materia slots... :Oo:

But yo, I'm sitting here with such a big smile on my face because I got caught! And I really didn't mean it! I thought for once, I UNDISPUTABLY AND IRREVOCABLY HAD WOLF! THE BIG BAD WOLF! BUT THIS TIME I WAS THE ONE WHO BLEW THE HOUSE DOWN!!! I'm so utterly ashamed as a hardcore Dragon Quest fan and DQ promoter that I actually inserted a sprite sheet where one of them had a tent and I didn't find anything suspicious.... I'M SO ASHAMED!!! :crying2:

BUT YO!!! I still haven't found any full sprite sheets of the characters from DQV. And as such, I refuse to concede that DQV's characters had no expressions as you suggested!!!! I will not capitulate!!!! THERE WILL BE NO QUARTER!!!! :hot:

But wow, you're telling me that Final Fantasy VI had a whole 12 more sprite variations than Final Fantasy V??? Wow, Mr. WK, what an substantial leap and noteworthy landmark that is!!!! Hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha

No. :barf:


Progress marches on but as you've pointed out in our VII debates, it's how the story utilizes that technology to better itself that sets the games apart from it's predecessors. ;)

Do you mean the argument that you violently and vehemently deny to the bitter end everytime I raise it!?!?!?

But enough of sprites. Sprites is not the point of this thread. The question is has FFVI been surpassed. I hold that yes, it had already been surpassed on its own console, by at least one game that predates it. Let us move to what you had to say to Flying Arrow about the infamously poorly-executed Shadow moment on the Floating Continent:


[using old man voice] cause you see back in the "good old days", developers designed their RPGs to reward players for trying different things to see different outcomes. Cause back then it was hard to give replay value to to this style of genre, so developers did this type of stuff.

Wolf, I had to ask: are you yourself aware of how much horses#!t that is? I had to make sure. I needed to be certain that there's no possibility that you honestly believe this load of crap. Because if you did, I would be seriously worried for you, like, scared to death for your mental well-being. I know there's no way you can seriously believe that JRPG designers did this sort of thing.... We've had a lot of debates, but this would be the point where I start to fear for your safety, that you might hurt yourself in your mental state. I might have to drive myself out to West Dakota or wherever it is you live and check you into a mental care facility because I KNOW YOU'RE NOT TELLING ME THE SHADOW SCENE WAS MEANT TO BE BAD ON PURPOSE!!!

Anyway, Tactics Ogre is still better, that is all.

[Wolf Kanno]

Seriously, that was the best you can do? trout man, I feel Chrono Trigger is a better game than VI, I just feel VI is an important step for JRPGs, you're the one going all blargh about it for no real reason other than to troll, you should just chillax. :meditate:

This topic is largely over since it doesn't look like anyone has anything else worth saying. Watch a fun video instead:

Z9d4vVTCJyc

[WildRaubtier]

Oh, don't worry, I'll reply. I'm just going to need some time to actually read all of that :p

[Bolivar]

Take your time, hopefully you can get through that by the weekend :D

Excuse me Wolf, but I'm not going on "all blargh" (good one) about the game for no reason. We're in a Final Fantasy forum. We're in the FFVI subforum. We're in a VI thread about how good the game is, if it's been surpassed. I said yeah. Then you went on this nonsensical string of diatribes about how Final Fantasy VI was an unprecedented thunderclap of inspiration because it had a couple more sprites than the last game and Yatsumi Matsuno made a SRPG for his second game...

At least you gave up on that whole "The Shadow-waiting is counter-intuitive because back then JRPG devs wanted to give you something to talk about with your friends." I started to fear for your life after that one...

[Wolf Kanno]

Take your time, hopefully you can get through that by the weekend :D

Excuse me Wolf, but I'm not going on "all blargh" (good one) about the game for no reason. We're in a Final Fantasy forum. We're in the FFVI subforum. We're in a VI thread about how good the game is, if it's been surpassed. I said yeah. Then you went on this nonsensical string of diatribes about how Final Fantasy VI was an unprecedented thunderclap of inspiration because it had a couple more sprites than the last game and Yatsumi Matsuno made a SRPG for his second game...

Well no, I pretty much assert that VI was unprecedented for its time for using sprites to tell it's story, you couldn't come up with a good argument to show how a game before VI did it better in telling a cinematic scene through mood and action. Instead you basically said it was surpassed by a game that came after VI came out and I said well yeah, I felt VI was surpassed by Chrono Trigger personally but guess what, I feel games surpass each other all the time, I can make lists of better games that surpass VII from it's own generation. :p You did mention V was better but gave no real explanation.

As for Terra's animations, you're missing part of my point because 1) Her sprite is superior cause it represents a better representation of a anatomical human being meaning we can get a little more personality out of her simple animations, 2) My argument is how it's used, going back to the comparison of Galuf's Death with Celes' Suicide attempt, VI used far more frames of animation to create a more stirring scene than V could with it's less developed sprites. VI's emotional sprites were used to represent a wider range of emotion based on context of the dialogue. Locke's thumbs up can be represented as cocky, encouraging, and humor just based on the context of the scene. While Bartz can as well, the developers didn't do as much as they could, in fact V's story really never needed much from the characters. This goes back to my silent movie anaology of how you wouldn't really get a good grasp of V's cast cause even with dialogue they are pretty flat in comparison to VI or even FFIV. Whereas scenes like Cyan watching his family board the Phantom Train, Terra convulsing in pain as she struggles to comprehend her esper form in Zozo, Celes' suicide attempt, and even watching the end of the world don't need words (most didn't even have dialogue) to not only express the mood of the scene but give you an idea of the who the characters are and what their state of mind was at the time.

To give another example between FFV and VI, when ExDeath and Kefka cause mass genocide in both games, the scenes are very different in scale in terms of how spites are used. In FFV, you see a Black hole appear above a city, switch to the interior of city, you see the screen shake, everyone makes surprised looks and then they get pulled up and we switch to a new scene. When the Warring Triad go wild in VI, you watch flashes of light, the screen shake, people running around screaming, the earth opens up and people fall in the earth repeatable slams open and shuts, one NPC tries to hold onto a person falling into the chasm and eventually you watch the shaking knock them both into the earth. You cannot tell me, that those scenes are equal in terms of using the games technology to tell a cinematic story. If you did, then I would tell you to check yourself for fever cause you've let your fanboy rage against VI cloud your judgement.

You didn't have an argument, so I consider our discussion over.


At least you gave up on that whole "The Shadow-waiting is counter-intuitive because back then JRPG devs wanted to give you something to talk about with your friends." I started to fear for your life after that one...

You missed my point if you felt I said devs did it so you could make friends, on the contrary my point was that devs placed in elements into a game that was usually difficult if nearly impossible to figure out in a first playthrough and would usually only be discovered by experimenting with actions in subsequent playthroughs. I actually have a guide for the SNES version of FFVI and it doesn't tell you how to save Shadow it simply states that its possible to do so. This isn't new for the genre either, the Spoon dagger in FFIV, getting the different endings in BoF, and most JRPGs of the 16-bit era have several weapons and items that can only be obtained by doing things that no player would know how to do in a first playthrough. My example of talking to friends to learn things is largely an anecdote of my own experiences in regard to this. Guides were awful back then, usually made by fans of the games who also happened to work for one of the gaming magazines of the day and made the guide for the magazine. It wasn't until the late 90s that guides started to get more sponsoring from the actual developers and thus get better accuracy. It's because of these elements that I know my 16-bit games backwards and forwards whereas later games don't have many of these types of things anymore. Even VII just has what? Great Gospel, HP Shout, Missing Score, and the Zack Flashback, everything else is mostly made obvious to the player.

As for Shadow, he says he'll catch up to you, and if you don't leave the first time the game offers and you try again, you get the message that says you need to wait for Shadow, and you actually have to do that if you want him to show up. So its not as out of the blue as you people keep making it out to be. If it was more obvious then there would have been no reason to do it all you people are doing is basically whining around because the developer psyched you out. :p

[Flying Arrow]

I love the amount of love and care that's gone into VI. I think it's great that a character is permanently lose-able like Shadow. When it comes to obtuse secrets that allow for different playthroughs, I totally get it - I really do (my favourite game from the last half-decade is Dark Souls).

I just watched a clip of how the Floating Continent scene plays out, and it's not as bad as I remember it (I remember it being really obtuse, for some reason). On the one hand, if they drew too much attention to the choice, it would never be a conscious choice at all but a 'do it because it's there'. It also works as a secret because there aren't a bunch of other secrets like it prior to that moment to school the player on 'hey, here's how you're supposed to approach this moment'. The scene is cool, I am going to give it that.

However, say the player does save Shadow the first time through. Then that player will forever miss the content (small though it may be) that comes from not saving him (why would you? Conversely, why would one kill Magus?). To get that content, you have to willingly ignore a secret you know is there. There is no gameplay benefit to losing Shadow - you're giving up a playable character, plain and simple, for obscure game lore later in the game. I guess that might not be an issue for some, but that does kind of gall me in a way that I feel like I'm losing all the change out of my pocket just so I can bend over and pick up a nickel.

Okay so I'm giving some ground on that Shadow argument.

One argument I won't give up on is the customization issue. I get that choosing which spells to give to which character is technically customizing each one. My issue, however, is that none of the customization feels meaningful. Sure you can elect to not give character certain abilities, but with abundant EXP and ABP, you're really just neglecting to fill out the checklist. I said before, I feel like the customization system is entirely dependent on how much time the player has to dedicate to learning spells. My favourite way to play FF is Blue Magic, Blue Magic, Blue Magic - and, with Gau and Strago, grinding is the main vehicle for making them fun to play (or watch).

In VII, customization is a matter of taking, giving, and switching (as opposed to just neglecting to make things stick on certain characters). There are secrets and some grinding involved, but more or less a lot of what you need is made available to you over the critical path of the game. Customization in VII is a matter of giving some things to everyone but not all things. Sure, you can also give all your characters the same things by buying duplicates of the same materia, but, hey - that's the player's choice. If you want to change it up, you still can. On the other hand, once Sabin knows Fire, he knows it for good. There's no reason to not just teach it to Edgar, Setzer, Shadow, etc, because the only downside to it is time spent.

[Bolivar]

Wolf, you've made these points before. You don't need paragraphs to reiterate them. I have no idea why you're saying that I "couldn't come up with a good argument to show how a game before VI did it better in telling a cinematic scene through mood and action." No one ever made any such assertion in this thread. We're only challenging your statements on VI's importance because you have yet to explain or show how VI's improvements in animation and cinematic storytelling are bigger than the improvements FFV made over FFIV, or that Chrono Trigger made over FFVI.

You came in this thread talking about how FFVI was a "before and after" moment in gaming but all you've done is tell us over and over how it's better than older games, not how it's improvements were more important than past improvements. This database (http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy4/Party/Cecil/) says FFIV's Dark Knight Cecil had only 9 sprites... So how is FFVI's addition of 12 more sprites per character more impressive than FFV's addition of 30 more sprites per character when this is something the series has been doing since its second game?

I still don't think you're discussion of older RPGs obfuscating content explains why Shadow's rescue was so poorly done. I like finding secret passages in walls. But this is worse than the Zodiac Spear!

[Flying Arrow]

I like finding secret passages in walls. But this is worse than the Zodiac Spear!

To be fair (and this is only from what I know of the issue), there's nothing worse than the Zodiac Spear.

[Bolivar]

Ok, I might have over-exaggerated that a bit...

[Wolf Kanno]

I love the amount of love and care that's gone into VI. I think it's great that a character is permanently lose-able like Shadow. When it comes to obtuse secrets that allow for different playthroughs, I totally get it - I really do (my favourite game from the last half-decade is Dark Souls).

I just watched a clip of how the Floating Continent scene plays out, and it's not as bad as I remember it (I remember it being really obtuse, for some reason). On the one hand, if they drew too much attention to the choice, it would never be a conscious choice at all but a 'do it because it's there'. It also works as a secret because there aren't a bunch of other secrets like it prior to that moment to school the player on 'hey, here's how you're supposed to approach this moment'. The scene is cool, I am going to give it that.

However, say the player does save Shadow the first time through. Then that player will forever miss the content (small though it may be) that comes from not saving him (why would you? Conversely, why would one kill Magus?). To get that content, you have to willingly ignore a secret you know is there. There is no gameplay benefit to losing Shadow - you're giving up a playable character, plain and simple, for obscure game lore later in the game. I guess that might not be an issue for some, but that does kind of gall me in a way that I feel like I'm losing all the change out of my pocket just so I can bend over and pick up a nickel.

Okay so I'm giving some ground on that Shadow argument.

Actually you do get a gameplay benefit. Relm gains Interceptor in battle and he works just like he does with Shadow (blocks melee attacks, high damage counter) considering Relm's equipment options make her weak in this regard it's actually sizable boost for her, so there is a benefit if you plan on using her a lot or if she just happens to be your favorite, then that's all the incentive you need to make that choice again.

I have a friend who loves Frog in Chrono Trigger, and while she like Magus, she loves Frog more and will usually kill Magus just so she can see the ending where Frog turns human. She even keeps Crono dead cause the ending this causes the longest ending where you can see Frog in his human form, so I would say that despite the choices leading only to what many may perceive as minor change, it still may mean the world to some people.


One argument I won't give up on is the customization issue. I get that choosing which spells to give to which character is technically customizing each one. My issue, however, is that none of the customization feels meaningful. Sure you can elect to not give character certain abilities, but with abundant EXP and ABP, you're really just neglecting to fill out the checklist. I said before, I feel like the customization system is entirely dependent on how much time the player has to dedicate to learning spells. My favorite way to play FF is Blue Magic, Blue Magic, Blue Magic - and, with Gau and Strago, grinding is the main vehicle for making them fun to play (or watch).

In VII, customization is a matter of taking, giving, and switching (as opposed to just neglecting to make things stick on certain characters). There are secrets and some grinding involved, but more or less a lot of what you need is made available to you over the critical path of the game. Customization in VII is a matter of giving some things to everyone but not all things. Sure, you can also give all your characters the same things by buying duplicates of the same materia, but, hey - that's the player's choice. If you want to change it up, you still can. On the other hand, once Sabin knows Fire, he knows it for good. There's no reason to not just teach it to Edgar, Setzer, Shadow, etc, because the only downside to it is time spent.

I will simply say we just disagree on this principle, to me, leveling stuff because it's there is for post games or perfect files. To put your opinion into VII terms, you're basically saying you would equip useless materia on your party for the sake of leveling rather than actually customizing and to me that's two different things. I can honestly say it makes a world of difference to play through sections of VI with one character who can actually use healing magic as opposed to having a full party that can do so. Even if you try to play roles and still teach magic to everyone to kill the time, I feel the lack of the temptation to cheat makes for a stronger game.

VI's system was Squenix's second attempt of having both a comprehensive leveling system but also one that wasn't a job class system, which was incredibly rare in the 16-bit era. I don't necessarily disagree that VII's system was more comprehensive than VI's system but I also feel what it traded to do so (character roles) was a bit of a deal breaker for me.


Wolf, you've made these points before. You don't need paragraphs to reiterate them. I have no idea why you're saying that I "couldn't come up with a good argument to show how a game before VI did it better in telling a cinematic scene through mood and action." No one ever made any such assertion in this thread. We're only challenging your statements on VI's importance because you have yet to explain or show how VI's improvements in animation and cinematic storytelling are bigger than the improvements FFV made over FFIV, or that Chrono Trigger made over FFVI.

You came in this thread talking about how FFVI was a "before and after" moment in gaming but all you've done is tell us over and over how it's better than older games, not how it's improvements were more important than past improvements. This database (http://www.videogamesprites.net/FinalFantasy4/Party/Cecil/) says FFIV's Dark Knight Cecil had only 9 sprites... So how is FFVI's addition of 12 more sprites per character more impressive than FFV's addition of 30 more sprites per character when this is something the series has been doing since its second game?

But I have, you're just ignoring my argument. It wasn't just that VI added more sprites, its also that the sprite are larger, in more human shape and can thus maximize more emotion from it due to this. Yet's its not just this technical leap that's important it's how it was utilized to create a more cinematic experience. I already gave you the example about sprite use in the villains large "let's end the world":


To give another example between FFV and VI, when ExDeath and Kefka cause mass genocide in both games, the scenes are very different in scale in terms of how spites are used. In FFV, you see a Black hole appear above a city, switch to the interior of city, you see the screen shake, everyone makes surprised looks and then they get pulled up and we switch to a new scene. When the Warring Triad go wild in VI, you watch flashes of light, the screen shake, people running around screaming, the earth opens up and people fall in the earth repeatable slams open and shuts, one NPC tries to hold onto a person falling into the chasm and eventually you watch the shaking knock them both into the earth. You cannot tell me, that those scenes are equal in terms of using the games technology to tell a cinematic story. If you did, then I would tell you to check yourself for fever cause you've let your fanboy rage against VI cloud your judgement.

If you need another example take the differences between Tellah fighting Golbez in FFIV, Galuf Fighting ExDeath, and Leo fighting Kefka.

In all three scenes the story takes place in the battle screen, thus all the sprites are equal of height but not in expression. Tella and Guluf's fights are largely told through dialogue boxes in battle, then switch out to the overhead view to witness Tellah falling over and Golbez being acting lamenting his surprise. The character move to each other to show concern but that's largely all.

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In Galuf, he gets pumped up, absorbs the power hurting Krile, charges ExDeath, has a regular battle falls over. The extent of ExDeath's animation is him on his face, standing with his head kneeled, and fully erect (oh my :blush:). The party doesn't even react when Krile shouts out that Galuf is dying, they just stay in a portrait view despite the game having a surprise animation. Hell, the best use of the sprites in the whole scene are the Wind Drakes (still impressive) and Krile being slammed around the room, but the rest of the scene is largely dead with the sprites largely using their basic four cardinal directions. V uses very few animation to tell it's story and while the scene is an improvement over IV, it still retains a lot of what IV did.


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So you want to know what VI did better? They actually utilized the sprites to their full effect. Just watch this sequence and notice how more lively everything is. Leo beats Kefka, moves through the battle screen, Gestahl appears in a puff of smoke and immediately Leo utilizes his low health sprite to create the sense of bowing to the Emperor, he stands up in protest when the Gestahl's words trouble him and Kefka appears which shocks Leo, Kefka strikes Leo knocking him to the ground, laughs as he monologues, then leaps at Leo and kills him. The scene goes on to watch Kefka react to the Espers re-awakening, the POV shifts to the Espers using Mode 7 to watch them seek out and invade Thamasa. Kefka crushes them while laughing and sprinting about the screen. Scenbe fades, open up to Leo's grave, Terra bows her head in sadness while she places flowers on his grave, intercepter appears and the whole party reacts, Locke kneels down to Interceptor's level shoing he's concerned and then stand up with line of vision fixated on Interceptor before he decides to talk to the rest of the party. Relm now has also moved to kneel down and comfort Interceptor.

So what did VI do despite only adding 13 extra sprites, actually used them for full dramatic effect. This goes back to my Silent Movie argument, without dialogue, you would not really have any sense of who anyone in FFV is, hell even with the dialogue they are mostly caricatures, whereas in VI you would actually have a sense of who everyone is and what their story was. VI doesn't like to stand still and the characters are constantly moving about whereas in FFV you still see whole sequences where the party faces one direction and the whole story is told through the text like all the games before it. V may have used sprites for cinematic impact but the difference between V and VI is that V does it in baby steps whereas VI acts like a seasoned veteran of using the sprites. What VI did was basically used a series of the sprites to create the illusion of animation and movement, looking at the Locke sequence I mentioned it's incredibly clear what's he''s doing and his three simple animations showcase several feelings and intentions. V doesn't do this very much. FFV could have added 60 extra sprites, it wouldn't have changed that the team didn't really utilize them to enhance the story as much as they could. This is really a great example of Kitase's talents as a director.

To bring this back to VI being an an important event, I simply show you DQV, a game that came out before FFVI, hell even FFV.


FK3nYoEBPP0*Forgive the annoying commentary*

Despite being one of the games more emotional moments, the sprites are flat, their only animation is an arm movement used to simulate walking. Even the kiss is just the sprite sliding forward with it's walking animation. The sprites are also squashed (though this may partly be because of the screen resolution) and look like toddler toys for all their features. Now look at DQVI, a game that came out over a year later from FFVI.


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Notice the sprites look anatomically correct and have subtle animations. The MC starts out sprawled on the floor and then sits up. The game increased the amount of sprites so it can utilize a more cinematic feel which is pretty unnatural for a DQ game as they often try to limit the personality of the characters to keep the player feeling like they are the MC. DQ VII's sprites are not even as good as DQVI's sprites, so obviously this wasn't just Enix playing catch up, this was Enix trying to challenge Square in the 16-bit era.

Now here's Chrono Trigger which had probably the most detailed sprites in the 16-bit era for RPGs. and once again, like VI, the game utilizes several sprites to create a sense of movement and animation. Not counting the cape waving, Magus only uses a handful of his animations sprites but he showcases a whole range of movement because of the clever use of it which was pioneered in VI.

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VI pretty much wrote the book on how to use sprites to convey action, emotions and create a cinematic experience. While it did not create the idea of it, it took it farther than any game before it and lo and behold several games that came out a year or two after VI are utilizing it like it was the standard. That's because VI raised the bar, and that's what FF does. I mean isn't this mostly your argument about VII's impact by moving to 3D despite the animation of the models being largely crude and by today's standards amateurish?



I still don't think you're discussion of older RPGs obfuscating content explains why Shadow's rescue was so poorly done. I like finding secret passages in walls. But this is worse than the Zodiac Spear!

Now who is being a drama queen? :p

[Flying Arrow]

I love the amount of love and care that's gone into VI. I think it's great that a character is permanently lose-able like Shadow. When it comes to obtuse secrets that allow for different playthroughs, I totally get it - I really do (my favourite game from the last half-decade is Dark Souls).

I just watched a clip of how the Floating Continent scene plays out, and it's not as bad as I remember it (I remember it being really obtuse, for some reason). On the one hand, if they drew too much attention to the choice, it would never be a conscious choice at all but a 'do it because it's there'. It also works as a secret because there aren't a bunch of other secrets like it prior to that moment to school the player on 'hey, here's how you're supposed to approach this moment'. The scene is cool, I am going to give it that.

However, say the player does save Shadow the first time through. Then that player will forever miss the content (small though it may be) that comes from not saving him (why would you? Conversely, why would one kill Magus?). To get that content, you have to willingly ignore a secret you know is there. There is no gameplay benefit to losing Shadow - you're giving up a playable character, plain and simple, for obscure game lore later in the game. I guess that might not be an issue for some, but that does kind of gall me in a way that I feel like I'm losing all the change out of my pocket just so I can bend over and pick up a nickel.

Okay so I'm giving some ground on that Shadow argument.

Actually you do get a gameplay benefit. Relm gains Interceptor in battle and he works just like he does with Shadow (blocks melee attacks, high damage counter) considering Relm's equipment options make her weak in this regard it's actually sizable boost for her, so there is a benefit if you plan on using her a lot or if she just happens to be your favorite, then that's all the incentive you need to make that choice again.

Fair enough. We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I just don't think this is at all worth giving up an entire character for. What I'm seeing is a trade of a whole character - someone who can really beef up the party for the harder parts of the game - for a buff for another.

The thing is, the Floating Continent/Shadow section is a secret, and the benefit for figuring out the scenario is being able to use this unique character with his unique abilities. The more efficient option is saving him, and I just don't see why it's a fair trade-off (yes, I understand the Relm thing, but again it's just a buff for the one of the remaining 13 characters).


I have a friend who loves Frog in Chrono Trigger, and while she like Magus, she loves Frog more and will usually kill Magus just so she can see the ending where Frog turns human. She even keeps Crono dead cause the ending this causes the longest ending where you can see Frog in his human form, so I would say that despite the choices leading only to what many may perceive as minor change, it still may mean the world to some people.

Fair enough. Wolf, have you ever played Alpha Protocol? Of every game I've ever played, AP is probably the best at rewarding choices with gameplay benefits. No matter what choice you make, your in-game character is built-up in some way for it. Give it a spin if you can.



I will simply say we just disagree on this principle, to me, leveling stuff because it's there is for post games or perfect files. To put your opinion into VII terms, you're basically saying you would equip useless materia on your party for the sake of leveling rather than actually customizing and to me that's two different things.

That's not what I'm saying, though. In VII, it's easier and beneficial to ignore Materia you don't want to use because your characters have a limited space for abilities. To get them everything you want, you need to either make trade-offs or get creative. Placing useless Materia on a party member is pointless because it comes at the cost of removing something potentially valuable. So if you want your guys to be the killing machines you want them to be, you have to make a conscious trade-off of not removing the magic orbs that allow them to do the things they do. If you want Tifa to cast Barrier, great. But you need to remove Fire for her to do that, or HP Plus, or Deathblow. Or don't remove anything at all, but find another combination within your three-person party to allow you to work that ability in creatively. Maybe Tifa won't get it, but if you tweak it just so then maybe Red XIII will be able to get exactly the Barrier value you were looking for.

The difference between this and VI is that in VI, the party is composed of 10-14 characters defined by their unique skills and the capacity to learn new abilities for good. Since they can learn everything, there's no reason to not have them learn everything aside from pouring hours of your life into the effort. Even if you play the game for about 35 hours (an average playtime at least as far as I'm concerned, not an insane post-game file) you'll find yourself filled up on abilities you want. Yes, you can neglect to give people certain abilities, but that's neglect and not meaningful customization. There is zero downside to teaching everybody everything, and worst of all, there's nothing to get in your way of from doing so.


I can honestly say it makes a world of difference to play through sections of VI with one character who can actually use healing magic as opposed to having a full party that can do so. Even if you try to play roles and still teach magic to everyone to kill the time, I feel the lack of the temptation to cheat makes for a stronger game.

I'm sure it does make a world of difference, but I don't think this makes a strong game at all, actually. It's still be a fun one, but I don't think it's strong design. What's your gameplay in not having everyone know Cure? Simply not equipping them with the stone that teaches them that ability? Not using your abilities to the fullest isn't avoiding "cheating" it's just a low-level run, or a gimp run, which you can do with any game. The problem with VI's customization system is that it's so damned open that actual customization for experienced players boils down to neglect rather than creative or meaningful tinkering. A regular, non-gimped playthrough will result in most characters being able to cast damn near everything.


VI's system was Squenix's second attempt of having both a comprehensive leveling system but also one that wasn't a job class system, which was incredibly rare in the 16-bit era. I don't necessarily disagree that VII's system was more comprehensive than VI's system but I also feel what it traded to do so (character roles) was a bit of a deal breaker for me.

I don't think VII's is more "comprehensive". What it is, though, is more strict with the amount of breathing room it lets the player have. It also offers a lot of options and possible builds within the battle system it's designed for - on the one hand, you can't just throw everything at a character and have it stick but with enough creativity those characters also aren't limited to only doing certain things.

[Wolf Kanno]

Fair enough. We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I just don't think this is at all worth giving up an entire character for. What I'm seeing is a trade of a whole character - someone who can really beef up the party for the harder parts of the game - for a buff for another.

The thing is, the Floating Continent/Shadow section is a secret, and the benefit for figuring out the scenario is being able to use this unique character with his unique abilities. The more efficient option is saving him, and I just don't see why it's a fair trade-off (yes, I understand the Relm thing, but again it's just a buff for the one of the remaining 13 characters).

I don't know, losing out on one heavy melee character in a game filled with heavy melee characters in exchange for buffing up a squishy mage doesn't sound like a bad trade to me, though I agree your second statement is most likely the original intent of the designers.



Fair enough. Wolf, have you ever played Alpha Protocol? Of every game I've ever played, AP is probably the best at rewarding choices with gameplay benefits. No matter what choice you make, your in-game character is built-up in some way for it. Give it a spin if you can.

I haven't played AP I'm afraid, of anything I have a huge backlog of games to get to (I just finished my first playthrough of Silent Hill 2 which I've owned for over four years now) but I may check it out since I hear a lot of good things about it.


That's not what I'm saying, though. In VII, it's easier and beneficial to ignore Materia you don't want to use because your characters have a limited space for abilities. To get them everything you want, you need to either make trade-offs or get creative. Placing useless Materia on a party member is pointless because it comes at the cost of removing something potentially valuable. So if you want your guys to be the killing machines you want them to be, you have to make a conscious trade-off of not removing the magic orbs that allow them to do the things they do. If you want Tifa to cast Barrier, great. But you need to remove Fire for her to do that, or HP Plus, or Deathblow. Or don't remove anything at all, but find another combination within your three-person party to allow you to work that ability in creatively. Maybe Tifa won't get it, but if you tweak it just so then maybe Red XIII will be able to get exactly the Barrier value you were looking for.

Well not quite, leveling useless materia can lead to getting the infinitely more useful and overpowered Master Materia so this really comes down to whether you are planning for the long game or just the short game. Obviously for a first timer it's short term which is where I'll concede your point but for a long term goal it's still useful to level everything, not to mention if your spending time leveling useful powerful materia, it wouldn't hurt to level up that garbage bin materia you haven't used for 60 hours, so effectively this is what I was getting at about leveling for the sake of leveling.

The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you. If you're debating about the merits of using Barrier over Deathblow materia, I would argue you don't really need either cause neither holds any real benefit for what the game throws at you. The most precise character customization will get you about the same results as a party that has the four elemental magics, a cure materia and maybe a summon or two. It's really more for the tinkering which many people (myself included) enjoy and in that regards, I understand where you are coming from.


The difference between this and VI is that in VI, the party is composed of 10-14 characters defined by their unique skills and the capacity to learn new abilities for good. Since they can learn everything, there's no reason to not have them learn everything aside from pouring hours of your life into the effort. Even if you play the game for about 35 hours (an average playtime at least as far as I'm concerned, not an insane post-game file) you'll find yourself filled up on abilities you want. Yes, you can neglect to give people certain abilities, but that's neglect and not meaningful customization. There is zero downside to teaching everybody everything, and worst of all, there's nothing to get in your way of from doing so.

To me, teaching characters skills you don't intend to use is not really beneficial, it's just busy work you give yourself, something to do while you're leveling other characters, and I do feel that teaching characters like Cyan and Sabin is actually harmful to them because it makes the player not use them to their full potential. The Magic system in VI is a crutch for newbie players, because the characters personal skills will only take you so far if you don't know what you are doing. Magic has just high enough damage potential to make the game a cakewalk but it's the abuse of the Esper's level up, gear twinking and relics that will bring out the most stupidly overpowered character builds. While I agree it's far less flexible than VII, I still don't feel it's detrimental, but that is probably just me.



I'm sure it does make a world of difference, but I don't think this makes a strong game at all, actually. It's still be a fun one, but I don't think it's strong design. What's your gameplay in not having everyone know Cure? Simply not equipping them with the stone that teaches them that ability? Not using your abilities to the fullest isn't avoiding "cheating" it's just a low-level run, or a gimp run, which you can do with any game. The problem with VI's customization system is that it's so damned open that actual customization for experienced players boils down to neglect rather than creative or meaningful tinkering. A regular, non-gimped playthrough will result in most characters being able to cast damn near everything.

Not really cause if you really understand the merits of the full system, you'll realize that magic is a bit of a red herring. Incredibly useful in the mid to later game but by end game it's not really as efficient as utilizing the party's inherent class skills or better utilizing the relics with equipment options. Terra is one of the most overpowered characters in the game and it's not because of Ultima. Even with the best spellcaster build you are still under-utilizing her and this is where the customization system of VI is beautiful because it's not about building the best team for any situation, it's about taking a characters talents and making the most out of it. You're literally trying to make the characters into better versions of themselves and when you start playing the game that way, you realize how much teaching magic to a character is a waste of your time, especially if you are going to be playing in the Coliseum (and you will be in this type of game cause gear/relics chump magic) teaching Cyan magic will make him more flexible but it won' make him better as a fighter. You need to build his stats with the espers, and you need to tinker with his relics and equipment to make him a stronger fighter and once you've done that, using a Cure spell is the last thing you will be caring about him doing in a battle. VI's system is about bringing out the full potential of your party, or it can be about making the most flexible party.



I don't think VII's is more "comprehensive". What it is, though, is more strict with the amount of breathing room it lets the player have. It also offers a lot of options and possible builds within the battle system it's designed for - on the one hand, you can't just throw everything at a character and have it stick but with enough creativity those characters also aren't limited to only doing certain things.

I say it's more comprehensive because it's VI's system taking apart a step further. Materia is basically the relic system where you equip skills it's just that VII broke magic down and made it work the same way though like VI the kept a lot of the spell families together. Also like the Esper system, the materia effects your stats though it's largely a transient handicap much like how the Esper's level up elements is a slow moving upgrade. It's not difficult to notice that Materia is ultimately a refined and evolved version of VI's various systems. Though I would argue BoFIII/IV are the true inheritor's of VI's customization system.

[WildRaubtier]

You're both losing sight of the original point - that is, Wolf Kanno is wrong about what customisation means. I'll just interject here with some proofs against his assertions.

Assume that once the option to learn a spell is available, all characters will be able to learn it instantly by grinding or so (this is unrealistic, yes, and incredibly so in 7's case). In 6, that means every character has every spell learnt and available at all times, no penalty, whenever you receive an esper that can teach that spell. In 7, however, this means you're actually FORCED to make ability decisions as early as you get Tifa (whose max ~2 materia slots at that point mean you're dropping half of Ice/Bolt/Fire/Cure).

Additionally, Master Materias simply grant access to all the stated abilities - they have limited/poor connectivity to support materias. The grind to get master materias is a lot more punishing, too.

There's definitely a point to be made about not teaching your dudes magic so that the RNG in the Colosseum has less actions to choose from, but really, that's just compensating for poor game design.

The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you.
This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.

For example:
6vlwdLoZO6M

[Wolf Kanno]

You're both losing sight of the original point - that is, Wolf Kanno is wrong about what customisation means. I'll just interject here with some proofs against his assertions.

Assume that once the option to learn a spell is available, all characters will be able to learn it instantly by grinding or so (this is unrealistic, yes, and incredibly so in 7's case). In 6, that means every character has every spell learnt and available at all times, no penalty, whenever you receive an esper that can teach that spell. In 7, however, this means you're actually FORCED to make ability decisions as early as you get Tifa (whose max ~2 materia slots at that point mean you're dropping half of Ice/Bolt/Fire/Cure).

Except you'll get plenty of gear to increase how much slots you have and since the main spells are all that matter(and are easy to obtain even in the beginning of the game), by the time you get to Junon your party is pretty set, only command materia will really set characters apart and between Steal, Enemy Skill, Sense, and Deathblow, you don't really have good options there either. Not to mention that Enemy Skill materia will largely diminish customization options if you pursue it because it easily replaces magic materia. In VI, the espers are given to you piece meal and several of your starting espers are not terribly useful so teaching everyone magic is kind of a mute point since Cait Sith is largely useless at this part of the game as well as your party largely being limited for the first half of the game due to story restrictions, so teaching every character every spell doesn't even become practical until you get the airship which is a good 15 hours into the game.

The issue with the argument is both of you are using the start of VII (limited options and gear) as the basis against the end game of VI (all espers available, all characters available, practical leveling points), when the truth is VI's esper system is pretty limited for awhile. Let's not forget the stat bonuses espers give and how the WoR espers give the better ones so you're kind of discouraged to seriously level until late in the game after you get everyone back and acquired all of the Espers if you're going for some serious applications of the system.


Additionally, Master Materias simply grant access to all the stated abilities - they have limited/poor connectivity to support materias. The grind to get master materias is a lot more punishing, too.

That's a load of bull, All Materia still works on magic materia, Quad still works on everything that was applicable to begin with, Elemental will literally make your character invincible. Sure Sneak attack and final attack don't work but they are pretty unnecessary for most things in the game anyway. The Master Command bug (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Master_Command_and_Support_Materia_Glitch) is pretty lethal. It's far from limited or poor, of anything it's improved since you don't have to deal with the "tough decisions". I'll give you leveling it is more time consuming but it's Acquisition is far more game breaking.




The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you.
This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.

For example:
6vlwdLoZO6M
Levels still matter for those fight if you want to make it easier, and technically neither WEAPON is actually all that hard; you don't need terribly complex materia configurations to beat them, hell I've beaten Ruby with four materia and it wasn't even a real challenge. If we're going to use superbosses as justification for overdeveloped and largely unnecessary customization systems then the GBA version of VI gives you the Dragon's Den with 18 bosses that actually require you to utilize the customization system fully. Any boss battle let alone a series of them that makes spamming Quick not feel like total cheese are some pretty nasty bosses in my book. It is the only part of the game that I feel fully warrants the need for every character to know every spell.

[WildRaubtier]

You're both losing sight of the original point - that is, Wolf Kanno is wrong about what customisation means. I'll just interject here with some proofs against his assertions.

Assume that once the option to learn a spell is available, all characters will be able to learn it instantly by grinding or so (this is unrealistic, yes, and incredibly so in 7's case). In 6, that means every character has every spell learnt and available at all times, no penalty, whenever you receive an esper that can teach that spell. In 7, however, this means you're actually FORCED to make ability decisions as early as you get Tifa (whose max ~2 materia slots at that point mean you're dropping half of Ice/Bolt/Fire/Cure).

Except you'll get plenty of gear to increase how much slots you have and since the main spells are all that matter(and are easy to obtain even in the beginning of the game), by the time you get to Junon your party is pretty set, only command materia will really set characters apart and between Steal, Enemy Skill, Sense, and Deathblow, you don't really have good options there either. Not to mention that Enemy Skill materia will largely diminish customization options if you pursue it because it easily replaces magic materia. In VI, the espers are given to you piece meal and several of your starting espers are not terribly useful so teaching everyone magic is kind of a mute point since Cait Sith is largely useless at this part of the game as well as your party largely being limited for the first half of the game due to story restrictions, so teaching every character every spell doesn't even become practical until you get the airship which is a good 15 hours into the game.
Completely irrelevant.

The issue with the argument is both of you are using the start of VII (limited options and gear) as the basis against the end game of VI (all espers available, all characters available, practical leveling points), when the truth is VI's esper system is pretty limited for awhile. Let's not forget the stat bonuses espers give and how the WoR espers give the better ones so you're kind of discouraged to seriously level until late in the game after you get everyone back and acquired all of the Espers if you're going for some serious applications of the system.
The issue you've described is non-existent after you follow the example through to its logical conclusion. By Junon, you're only going to have 6 or 7 materia slots per character for a lot more materia - something in the range of 15-20. Even at the end-game, you're limited to 16 slots for an entire collection of materia.

To be clear, the amount of abilities you have to choose from will grow much faster than your ability to use them.

Contrast with 6, where once you gain your first espers you already have 15 spells unconditionally.



Additionally, Master Materias simply grant access to all the stated abilities - they have limited/poor connectivity to support materias. The grind to get master materias is a lot more punishing, too.

That's a load of bull, All Materia still works on magic materia, Quad still works on everything that was applicable to begin with, Elemental will literally make your character invincible.
Yes, the bog standard support materia like added cut and steal as well will still work normally - however, the advanced support materias like Counter will perform randomly (ie poor connectivity), or Elemental materia which, contrary to your assertion, does the exact same thing as any other materia without an elemental affiliation listed as well as providing no benefit whatsoever to added effect (ie limited connectivity).

Finally, there's no "Master Support" materia which means it's impossible to have every support effect with every ability, unlike 6 (which is a bogus assertion anyway because there's no equivalent).


Sure Sneak attack and final attack don't work but they are pretty unnecessary for most things in the game anyway. The Master Command bug (http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Master_Command_and_Support_Materia_Glitch) is pretty lethal. It's far from limited or poor, of anything it's improved since you don't have to deal with the "tough decisions". I'll give you leveling it is more time consuming but it's Acquisition is far more game breaking.
Again, completely irrelevant. You're just attacking 7's system here, instead of trying to make any supporting arguments for what makes 6's system "customisation" and not just the same weak opinion everyone else keeps refuting.




The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you.
This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.

For example:
6vlwdLoZO6M
Levels still matter for those fight if you want to make it easier, and technically neither WEAPON is actually all that hard; you don't need terribly complex materia configurations to beat them, hell I've beaten Ruby with four materia and it wasn't even a real challenge. If we're going to use superbosses as justification for overdeveloped and largely unnecessary customization systems then the GBA version of VI gives you the Dragon's Den with 18 bosses that actually require you to utilize the customization system fully. Any boss battle let alone a series of them that makes spamming Quick not feel like total cheese are some pretty nasty bosses in my book. It is the only part of the game that I feel fully warrants the need for every character to know every spell.
Compare to 6, where the hardest enemies can still be beat by simply holding down X on fight at level 99. You need more than that for Ruby/Emerald.

We'll have to wait for the inevitable remake of 7 to settle that second point, though, since it's not really fair to be comparing original content to re-release content :p

[Flying Arrow]

I don't know, losing out on one heavy melee character in a game filled with heavy melee characters in exchange for buffing up a squishy mage doesn't sound like a bad trade to me, though I agree your second statement is most likely the original intent of the designers.

This is a terrible trade, especially since the second half of the game throws multi-party dungeons at you. Kefka's Tower asks you to build a team of 12 to take it down - losing Shadow means losing one of the 14 possible characters for that section. This means you're forced to use one more of the four gimmick characters (Gau, Mog, Gogo, Umaro) rather than a fully-decked-out heavy.

And I just want to also say that this fully-decked-out heavy with a unique Throw ability is way less grind-intensive than a lot of the other characters in the game. Without this heavy in your party have fun jumping through all the hoops to make Gau, Strago, or Mog interesting or at all fun to use. Also, have fun teaching Esper spells to Relm that everyone else already knows because, well, you tossed Shadow in the garbage to give her a more central role in the party.


The other issue with VII's customization is that the game suffers from the same Achilles heel of VI and well most of the FFs have, which is that the game isn't difficult enough to warrant a complex strategy for the customization system it gives you. If you're debating about the merits of using Barrier over Deathblow materia, I would argue you don't really need either cause neither holds any real benefit for what the game throws at you. The most precise character customization will get you about the same results as a party that has the four elemental magics, a cure materia and maybe a summon or two. It's really more for the tinkering which many people (myself included) enjoy and in that regards, I understand where you are coming from.

This isn't a problem with the customization system, though. This is a problem with the game balance. As games, both VI and VII give you 10,000 guns when all you need are 5 or 6. This is true, mega-bosses or not (which make up < 1% of the playtime).

As individual customization systems it's the difference between giving the player a hand full of stuff to grind and permanently unlock and giving the player hand full of stuff that is already usable but can only be used selectively under certain stipulations. Both allow for "customization" in that the player can tailor his party just so, but only one isn't a grindy checklist open to every character and doesn't result in the player not beefing up his characters because the system itself holds the weight of a feather.

Think of FFVIII and the Draw mechanic. Why not just draw one spell and then have that character know it permanently, instead of making it a scaling inventory that incentivizes drawing 100 of every spell. This is just time-wasting, plain and simple, and most players have been saying this for years as the major flaw of VIII. Either get rid of the draw mechanic, create an alternative way to value spell totals re: Junctioning, or force some kind of limit on who can use what (rather than that limit being you don't want to waste your whole life drawing 3 sets of 100 Fire).

VI's system begs a similar question of, if there's no distinction or limit on usage, why not just GIVE everyone everything the second it becomes available and cut out the bulltrout grinding and swapping. But if they did this, there'd be no point to whole system. Their solution was to hide a checklist of skills behind miles of grinding, obscuring the issue.


Well not quite, leveling useless materia can lead to getting the infinitely more useful and overpowered Master Materia so this really comes down to whether you are planning for the long game or just the short game. Obviously for a first timer it's short term which is where I'll concede your point but for a long term goal it's still useful to level everything, not to mention if your spending time leveling useful powerful materia, it wouldn't hurt to level up that garbage bin materia you haven't used for 60 hours, so effectively this is what I was getting at about leveling for the sake of leveling.

Any garbage bin Materia you're leveling (and this is the argument) takes the place of something else in your team's Materia build. You can't level everything at once. So if you want to waste a slot beefing up Mystify, say goodbye to Steal, or Sense, or Deathblow, etc.

Not to mention, the ultimate payoff (Master Materia) is much more demanding than about anything in VI. To get the Master Magic, for instance, you need to level up every green orb, including the one you only find in the game's final stage. Not only that, but say you don't stop the train in North Corel...

Whether the Master Magic requirements are good design or not, getting Master Magic is akin to a late-game bonus. Yes, it kind of dumps some of the customization intrigue of the Materia system, but it's buried way at the end of a game in which you've already been forced to play it straight for 95% of it.

In VI, you're bogged down with worthless spells (as you'll yourself argue) and Espers before the halfway point. Since the game hands out ABP so liberally, you're expected to have started swapping and filling out the Esper checklist before you escape Zozo.

No other RPG makes me dread actually learning abilities for my dudes. Once you take down a 20ABP boss and your whole team clears 2 or 3 skills each, it's time to either play the swapping game or start making the cut on what you want people to learn because it adds nothing of value to their build. If the former, you're homogenizing and not customizing. If the latter, you're literally not playing part of the game.


To me, teaching characters skills you don't intend to use is not really beneficial, it's just busy work you give yourself, something to do while you're leveling other characters, and I do feel that teaching characters like Cyan and Sabin is actually harmful to them because it makes the player not use them to their full potential.

I don't see how this is the case. Most players can see that Blitzes (for instance) are generally much more effective than most spells that Sabin can cast. But even if this is the case, you're now saying that VI's magic system is such an ill-conceived monstrosity that it actually hampers gameplay (it sucks, yeah, but it doesn't hamper character builds).


The Magic system in VI is a crutch for newbie players, because the characters personal skills will only take you so far if you don't know what you are doing. Magic has just high enough damage potential to make the game a cakewalk but it's the abuse of the Esper's level up, gear twinking and relics that will bring out the most stupidly overpowered character builds. While I agree it's far less flexible than VII, I still don't feel it's detrimental, but that is probably just me.

Using Blitz or Tools is much more intuitive than all the tedious swapping and spreadsheet-checking the Esper system encourages. Maybe by the end everyone is belting out Ultima and Cure3 to beat Kefka because the game has allowed the player to at absolutely no cost and very little time spent - but, well, therein lies the problem with this crutch of a system.

It being less flexible to VII isn't even the issue, though. We've (at least I have) been bringing VII into the conversation to shine a clearer light on what VI brings to the table with its systems.

EDIT:

I wanted to respond to this before the next volley of posts:



Equipping different gear does not equal customisation. I feel like I've been trusting this argument too much to intuition, so I'm going to provide the following assertion for others to challenge: "Equipment boils down to, optional or otherwise, story driven (read: accessibility) attribute bonuses akin to leveling. This is limited by static character class and therefore not uniquely customisable."


In FFVI (and most FF games) gear generally does not equal customization. It's a linear progression from Iron to Steel to Bronze to Gold to whathaveyou. Bigger numbers as a result of getting to the next section of the game where enemies have strong numbers (so the player must, too).

Occasionally these pieces of equipment have a property that make them beneficial in some way for certain sections, but that's about it and is not unlike equipping the relevant ring. Not equipping, for instance, the Ice-absorbing Armor for the Ice Cave generally provides no benefit. The characters generally lose nothing for having a piece of equipment that either negates or absorbs damage. Not using the Ice Armor in this situation is a gimp-run and nothing more (much like not teaching your characters every Esper spell you can is a low-level run rather than customization).

So in the case of FF games, I think your statement is true. The only time it's not true is if a game is designed to focus not on bigger numbers, but unique properties, options and the dynamic between character and equipment.

[Greatermaximus]

It looks like you're trying to figure out the availability of the power. Here's an idea.

"The author's creativity, and the reader's ability to suspend disbelief."

FFVI did well with a diversified cast and their own special power. It's understandable any character can learn any spell because of the immense chemical composition of the universe.

Why should we forbid something like Edgar can't learn Ice 3 and Gau can't learn Cure 3?

It wouldn't make sense? I'm glad they made magic universal at the time. If a character can't use magic then they'd gain some other perk. Umaro for example can't learn magic and is out of control but he is suppose to do more physical damage.

Though anyone can think of other/better characters to create/play. :)

[Wolf Kanno]

The issue you've described is non-existent after you follow the example through to its logical conclusion. By Junon, you're only going to have 6 or 7 materia slots per character for a lot more materia - something in the range of 15-20. Even at the end-game, you're limited to 16 slots for an entire collection of materia.

To be clear, the amount of abilities you have to choose from will grow much faster than your ability to use them.

Contrast with 6, where once you gain your first espers you already have 15 spells unconditionally.

Except Espers are not the sum total of the customization system, you still have relics which are more useful in-game not to mention that of said 15 spells, only four of them are useful at this point of the game and I seriously doubt you'll be using any of them by end game either.

This is also the issue with materia in VII. The game isn't difficult, you won' be needing all the materia you get, which means that your options are largely cosmetic and not practical. You'll eventually stop using a lot of the materia cause not only can you get most of the benefits of the materia from just Enemy Skill but you can eventually get just better alternatives like replacing elemental materia with Summons. Ultimately you'll still most likely end up with a clone army by games end.




Yes, the bog standard support materia like added cut and steal as well will still work normally - however, the advanced support materias like Counter will perform randomly (ie poor connectivity), or Elemental materia which, contrary to your assertion, does the exact same thing as any other materia without an elemental affiliation listed as well as providing no benefit whatsoever to added effect (ie limited connectivity).

Finally, there's no "Master Support" materia which means it's impossible to have every support effect with every ability, unlike 6 (which is a bogus assertion anyway because there's no equivalent).

This is mostly true, except for the fact that 7 gives you 2 enemies where your materia setup will actually matter, no matter how much grinding you've done.

Except you don't need the advanced support materia to beat this game. It's not terribly hard and god knows the ultimate weapons and level 3 and 4 limit breaks will do most of the work of anything the story or arena will throw at you. You need the Counter Magic materia for exactly two fights and a game that has to build it's battle system around an optional boss fight is just silly if you ask me since it should be designed around the use of the whole game. Barring the special materia needed for the WEAPONs let's face it, VII is as hard as a wet piece of paper. You don't need most of the deep customization for 99% of the game since hitting X will do fine as well. The rest of the game isn't really a matter of tough choices either, like equipment you simply replace weak materia with stronger materia. Just how in VI while you can teach everyone every spell, you are most likely going to use five of them by the end cause the rest of your spells are either weak or impractical. Teaching everyone to use Muddle doesn't really weaken the overall game since you'll use it once on one playthrough and ignore it forever afterwards.


Compare to 6, where the hardest enemies can still be beat by simply holding down X on fight at level 99. You need more than that for Ruby/Emerald.

We'll have to wait for the inevitable remake of 7 to settle that second point, though, since it's not really fair to be comparing original content to re-release content :p

Shit GBA VI wasn't even a remake just a port, nothing stopping SE from letting the Steam version of VII get some extra love outside of perhaps the studio not having the capability to make cruddy 3D graphics like that anymore. Yet seriously the GBA rematched with the Dragons are actually really clever and challenging, from Fire Dragon that has a move that makes him immune to damage, to Zombie Dragon only being able to be killed by having his MP depleted to the fact their stats are high enough to actually decimate my Lv. 75+ party with any of their skills.



This is a terrible trade, especially since the second half of the game throws multi-party dungeons at you. Kefka's Tower asks you to build a team of 12 to take it down - losing Shadow means losing one of the 14 possible characters for that section. This means you're forced to use one more of the four gimmick characters (Gau, Mog, Gogo, Umaro) rather than a fully-decked-out heavy.

And I just want to also say that this fully-decked-out heavy with a unique Throw ability is way less grind-intensive than a lot of the other characters in the game. Without this heavy in your party have fun jumping through all the hoops to make Gau, Strago, or Mog interesting or at all fun to use. Also, have fun teaching Esper spells to Relm that everyone else already knows because, well, you tossed Shadow in the garbage to give her a more central role in the party.

It's a choice dude and perhaps the player likes the more grind heavy gimmick party members though Umaro and Mog hardly count, Mog can actually be built into a better Heavy melee fighter than Shadow actually (Holy Lance, Dragoon Boots, Dragon Horn). Not to mention if you know what you're doing Gau and Strago are not too difficult either since you can simply just teach them their useful abilities. You're also forgetting that Relm is actually the game's best Mage barring Terra in her Trance form. Even with low level magic she can do as much damage as most of the character using Tier 2 spells. Making the best mage more powerful and freeing up Terra or Celes to go melee with their access to the best weapons in the game is not a bad deal.



This isn't a problem with the customization system, though. This is a problem with the game balance. As games, both VI and VII give you 10,000 guns when all you need are 5 or 6. This is true, mega-bosses or not (which make up < 1% of the playtime).

As individual customization systems it's the difference between giving the player a hand full of stuff to grind and permanently unlock and giving the player hand full of stuff that is already usable but can only be used selectively under certain stipulations. Both allow for "customization" in that the player can tailor his party just so, but only one isn't a grindy checklist open to every character and doesn't result in the player not beefing up his characters because the system itself holds the weight of a feather.

Except the lack of game balance largely makes VII's customization cosmetic, I don't even use Materia much anymore in playthroughs cause it's silly to reconfigure the party when I know I'm not really going to use them. Not to mention as I said before, Materia largely works like equipment in that you simply replace weak materia for stronger materia. If you are still using Fire and Ice materia for their tier 3 spells by Disc 3 for more than just laughs, then you really don't know what you're doing with the system. In VI you do permanently teach spells but most of them you'll probably never use and other will be useless. Yes I can teach everyone Fire Blizzard, and Thunder but I seriously doubt I'll still be using them by end game. Most of the end game spells have low learning rates, are restricted to usually one Esper, and there are better alternatives through relic and equipment combinations for several of the characters that teaching them is useless. Honestly the magic system's failing is kind of a moot criticism if you ask me.


Think of FFVIII and the Draw mechanic. Why not just draw one spell and then have that character know it permanently, instead of making it a scaling inventory that incentivizes drawing 100 of every spell. This is just time-wasting, plain and simple, and most players have been saying this for years as the major flaw of VIII. Either get rid of the draw mechanic, create an alternative way to value spell totals re: Junctioning, or force some kind of limit on who can use what (rather than that limit being you don't want to waste your whole life drawing 3 sets of 100 Fire).

Well no, you do have better alternatives for gaining magic in VIII, it's the refinement system and it's what really breaks the games balance. Draw is grindy but I actually happen to like the novelty of it, though I do use it sparingly and it still has the draw/cast ability as well which is useful if situational. Likewise the limited usefulness of several magics makes it pointless to always try for 100 of every spell. In fact while it's useful to have 100 of every spell, it's not actually useful or practical for you to have 100 of every spell for every character.


VI's system begs a similar question of, if there's no distinction or limit on usage, why not just GIVE everyone everything the second it becomes available and cut out the bulltrout grinding and swapping. But if they did this, there'd be no point to whole system. Their solution was to hide a checklist of skills behind miles of grinding, obscuring the issue.

Well you don't have to and you don't need to. I feel your issue here is one more about obsessive compulsiveness than one about practibility. As I said, there is no reason to teach several of the characters magic because they have better customization options that are more practical and powerful than magic. Your argument is simply that because VI doesn't physically limit the player that the system is weak because you feel compelled to teach every character every spell because the game gives you the option to do so. So to me, this logic is akin to me saying that I can make all my characters in VII into clones with the materia system and the system sucks because of it and my reason is because that since the game gives me the option to do it, that I have to. The reality is that to me this is really more of the player's problem than the games design, it's like the people who hate on the License Board because you can teach every character every skill and use of every equipment.

Of anything XII is probably worse than what you are saying cause it's actually possible to get multiples of most equipment meaning you can build a virtual clone party that's only differentiated by minor stats and graphics. Whereas in VI, some characters are not cut out to be using magic (Cyan, Gogo, Locke) have skills that are more useful than magic(Shadow, Sabin, Edgar), or equipment builds that are more powerful than magic(Terra, Celes, Locke, Mog, Edgar). If you think being able to teach every character Ultima permanently breaks the game, then you really don't know how to customize in this game and bring out the best in the party.


Any garbage bin Materia you're leveling (and this is the argument) takes the place of something else in your team's Materia build. You can't level everything at once. So if you want to waste a slot beefing up Mystify, say goodbye to Steal, or Sense, or Deathblow, etc.

I don't think Sense or Deathblow are really a serious loss for the player. I mean we are talking abut a game where straight melee is often the most practical option in battles. This just comes back to the issue that the customization is fluff cause very few of the materia is worth using and that you're most likely to have one or two materia equipped for the sake of it. The Sense materia is a great example because it's utterly useless but chances are you do have someone equipped with one or both that are available before you leave Midgard largely cause you got free open slots that need to be plugged up unless you spent money on getting more of the Cure and basic elemental magic at which point I would point out you're not making the tough choices you keep talking about.

I mean there is no reason to not have the basic elemental materia on your party until they get useless around Disc 2. By then you've upgraded to Comet, Ultima and the plethroa of summons. The customization only really kicks in when you are dealing with rare one of a kind materia and you have to choose who gets it but this is a transient hang-up since mastering materia means you get a new one so potentially every character can be a clone of each other. The "customization" only happens for short periods of time but overall I am more likely to be looking at a party of Red Mages with a few command skills that differentiate them.


Not to mention, the ultimate payoff (Master Materia) is much more demanding than about anything in VI. To get the Master Magic, for instance, you need to level up every green orb, including the one you only find in the game's final stage. Not only that, but say you don't stop the train in North Corel...

Yes it's true you can fail to get all the big Materia to get all the Master Materia but even then, it's not like you really need to be using every spell or ability master materia gives you. Also, despite what you may think, it's actually possible to permanently lose some of the espers in VI so it's not like they are a given either. Also since it's difficult to get consistently high ABP from Cauctaurs and Slagworms tend to use Sneeze before death to screw you out of their ABP, you are still looking at having to go through anywhere from 250-500 battles to teach everyone one end game spell like Re-Raise or Ultima, just like grinding to get copies of the unique endgame materia or Master Materia in VII is also impractical because of the huge grind. This grinding is suppose to detour you from teaching everyone every spell. Teaching every character magic in VI is like trying to get to level 99 in any RPG, just cause you can, doesn't mean the developers meant for you to do so.



Whether the Master Magic requirements are good design or not, getting Master Magic is akin to a late-game bonus. Yes, it kind of dumps some of the customization intrigue of the Materia system, but it's buried way at the end of a game in which you've already been forced to play it straight for 95% of it.

Yes and Crusader itself is most likely going to be gained at the final dungeon as well which makes it impractical to teach Meltdown to every character since it arrives so late. Meaning unless you take the time to grind, you are not going to be able to teach every spell to every character.


In VI, you're bogged down with worthless spells (as you'll yourself argue) and Espers before the halfway point. Since the game hands out ABP so liberally, you're expected to have started swapping and filling out the Esper checklist before you escape Zozo.

No other RPG makes me dread actually learning abilities for my dudes. Once you take down a 20ABP boss and your whole team clears 2 or 3 skills each, it's time to either play the swapping game or start making the cut on what you want people to learn because it adds nothing of value to their build. If the former, you're homogenizing and not customizing. If the latter, you're literally not playing part of the game.

Now you're just being dramatic, first off, you are pretty much at Zozo's entrance and past your time there by the time the game gives you access to your four espers. The average ABP you get in the WoB is 3 and that's when you reach the Sealed Cave about a good eight hours later, until then it's just 1 or 2 ABP per battle meaning that trying to teach all four of your party members every spell you have access to will take about 200 to 400 battles, considering stats only increase through espers and you're extremely limited at this point, you've just shot yourself in the foot cause you wasted about 20 levels to teach characters spells that will be easier to acquire later on. The average you get in the WoR is 4-5 so I wouldn't call that "liberally giving ABP" also bosses don't give that much ABP either until near the game's end. Yes there are APB grind points in both sections but depending on which version you are playing you are not likely to be bothering with this until WoR.

The last part of your quote pretty much goes back to the heart of the argument here which is that I don't believe teaching magic to every character has to be done. If you are not going to use it then why bother? It's like making Bartz in V master classes like Tamer or Black Mage despite the fact you have no intention of ever using them, but you do it cause your wasting all that valuable ABP by sticking to practical classes that fit your party and you've already mastered the classes you want. The Esper teaching magic is not the whole of the game's customization, it's a combination of teaching magic, raising stats, and the relics.



I don't see how this is the case. Most players can see that Blitzes (for instance) are generally much more effective than most spells that Sabin can cast. But even if this is the case, you're now saying that VI's magic system is such an ill-conceived monstrosity that it actually hampers gameplay (it sucks, yeah, but it doesn't hamper character builds).

Not really, because all I'm saying is that it only really benefits certain characters, Relm for instance can't learn magic but she has the highest MA stat so teaching her magic is of great benefit. On the other hand, she has a crappy physical stat so obviously I wouldn't equip her with the Genji Gloves/offering combo so choosing not to give her that set despite the fact it would undoubtedly improve her attack power is not saying I'm choosing to weaken her by not giving her something that would improve her versatility instead I am choosing not to give it to her cause it's more practical with characters with better builds. Likewise, I don't need to teach Sabin fire magic but I'll still use espers to raise his strength and Magic to improve the power of his Blitzes, and I'll equip him with an Atlas Armlet or Hero Ring to raise their power more. He's not weaken or strengthened by not knowing fire magic and I still customized him with the games other features.


Using Blitz or Tools is much more intuitive than all the tedious swapping and spreadsheet-checking the Esper system encourages. Maybe by the end everyone is belting out Ultima and Cure3 to beat Kefka because the game has allowed the player to at absolutely no cost and very little time spent - but, well, therein lies the problem with this crutch of a system.

It being less flexible to VII isn't even the issue, though. We've (at least I have) been bringing VII into the conversation to shine a clearer light on what VI brings to the table with its systems.

I don't agree that the game encourages the teaching of magic to every character, it encourages using the espers but they have another function besides teaching magic and that actually is beneficial to every character it applies to. The relic system is also more useful for certain character over others The customization of the game is not about teaching every character every possible skill, it's about maximizing their strengths and the system does this beautifully even if the game isn't difficult enough to warrant the level of brokenness you can build. You can't treat it like it's VII where you are handed some blank canvesses and the game has to force you to limit your options just so you could add some personality to their play-style. Instead VI gives you a cast of characters that are unique from each other both in skills, stats, and equipment options, while the game gives you the freedom to let everyone use almost everything. These three limitations are suppose to guide you in how to utilize them with the games three systems of customization. It's not about building a party it's about tweaking them cause the game already gives you a party and you could just as well complete the game without ever using relics or espers because the party is already diverse and has roles. The system just allow the player flexibility.

I'm sorry you feel compelled to grind and teach everyone every spell but I then would ask if you do this in the rest of the series as well, do you complete the Sphere Grid in every playthrough of X and make sure to maximize the board as well?, get 100 of every spell in VIII for every character? master every job in FFV for every character? max every spell, stat, and weapon in II? or get a set of master materia for every character in VII? No? Why? because it's impractical? well guess what so is teaching magic to every character in VI and I would say that VI compels you do to so as much as every one of those other games compels you to do what I stated. The games you mentioned doing so only shows they are low hanging fruit compared to the ones you don't, and my argument is that you shouldn't be eating the fruit in the first place cause completionist games are for people who have way too much free time on their hand.



In FFVI (and most FF games) gear generally does not equal customization. It's a linear progression from Iron to Steel to Bronze to Gold to whathaveyou. Bigger numbers as a result of getting to the next section of the game where enemies have strong numbers (so the player must, too).

Occasionally these pieces of equipment have a property that make them beneficial in some way for certain sections, but that's about it and is not unlike equipping the relevant ring. Not equipping, for instance, the Ice-absorbing Armor for the Ice Cave generally provides no benefit. The characters generally lose nothing for having a piece of equipment that either negates or absorbs damage. Not using the Ice Armor in this situation is a gimp-run and nothing more (much like not teaching your characters every Esper spell you can is a low-level run rather than customization).

So in the case of FF games, I think your statement is true. The only time it's not true is if a game is designed to focus not on bigger numbers, but unique properties, options and the dynamic between character and equipment.

I disagree about VI being purely a linear progression, weapons like the the Flametongue appear midway through the WoB and have properties that can keep them practical until the WoR. Locke himself can choose to use Dagger weapons that often give him stat boosts or a special elemental attribute or ability, but he can also use his Thief weapons that allow him to attack from the back row and have a chance of doing extremely high damage with it's special critical hits. Taking advantage of the special property of spear damage combined with dragoon boots means Edgar can bypass statistically better weapons as early as the Magitek Factory. VI is also one of the few games where the best weapon is debatable between the Ultima Weapon, Ragnarok, or Lightbringer and it really comes down to how you build your party which is more practical. I would argue that VI is one of the few FFs that bucks the trend of linear progression of equipment. The others being FFII, FFV, and then the PS2-PS3 entries.



********************************************************************************
Ultimately guys, I feel it's time to just say we agree to disagree cause I feel we've reached a point where we're repeating ourselves cause we all just have a different angle on this subject and we're all pretty stubborn about our positions. It has been insightful and I enjoyed discussing this with everyone, but I'm bowing out cause I don't feel we're going to make any headway in this discussion.

[Flying Arrow]

Except the lack of game balance largely makes VII's customization cosmetic, I don't even use Materia much anymore in playthroughs cause it's silly to reconfigure the party when I know I'm not really going to use them. Not to mention as I said before, Materia largely works like equipment in that you simply replace weak materia for stronger materia. If you are still using Fire and Ice materia for their tier 3 spells by Disc 3 for more than just laughs, then you really don't know what you're doing with the system. In VI you do permanently teach spells but most of them you'll probably never use and other will be useless. Yes I can teach everyone Fire Blizzard, and Thunder but I seriously doubt I'll still be using them by end game. Most of the end game spells have low learning rates, are restricted to usually one Esper, and there are better alternatives through relic and equipment combinations for several of the characters that teaching them is useless. Honestly the magic system's failing is kind of a moot criticism if you ask me.


Any garbage bin Materia you're leveling (and this is the argument) takes the place of something else in your team's Materia build. You can't level everything at once. So if you want to waste a slot beefing up Mystify, say goodbye to Steal, or Sense, or Deathblow, etc.

I don't think Sense or Deathblow are really a serious loss for the player. I mean we are talking abut a game where straight melee is often the most practical option in battles. This just comes back to the issue that the customization is fluff cause very few of the materia is worth using and that you're most likely to have one or two materia equipped for the sake of it. The Sense materia is a great example because it's utterly useless but chances are you do have someone equipped with one or both that are available before you leave Midgard largely cause you got free open slots that need to be plugged up unless you spent money on getting more of the Cure and basic elemental magic at which point I would point out you're not making the tough choices you keep talking about.

I mean there is no reason to not have the basic elemental materia on your party until they get useless around Disc 2. By then you've upgraded to Comet, Ultima and the plethroa of summons. The customization only really kicks in when you are dealing with rare one of a kind materia and you have to choose who gets it but this is a transient hang-up since mastering materia means you get a new one so potentially every character can be a clone of each other. The "customization" only happens for short periods of time but overall I am more likely to be looking at a party of Red Mages with a few command skills that differentiate them.

I get you have high-level knowledge of literally everything in every game, but none of this is the point (except I like where you admit the abilities in VI are useless, because they're so liberally distributed and basically do nothing of value. Yes, I agree the Esper system is dumb and sucks.).


Your argument is simply that because VI doesn't physically limit the player that the system is weak because you feel compelled to teach every character every spell because the game gives you the option to do so. So to me, this logic is akin to me saying that I can make all my characters in VII into clones with the materia system and the system sucks because of it and my reason is because that since the game gives me the option to do it, that I have to. The reality is that to me this is really more of the player's problem than the games design, it's like the people who hate on the License Board because you can teach every character every skill and use of every equipment.

It's not weak because of my compulsion (I don't have a compulsion to grind abilities for everyone anyway) it's weak because it gives everything and demands nearly nothing (besides grinding, which only takes up player time and leaves no mark on the actual game itself besides making characters better in small increments as a side-effect).

Giving all your characters the same abilities in VII is the player's choice, but they can't give everyone everything, which is what you can do in VI and which begins to happen naturally over the course of the game.


Yes and Crusader itself is most likely going to be gained at the final dungeon as well which makes it impractical to teach Meltdown to every character since it arrives so late. Meaning unless you take the time to grind, you are not going to be able to teach every spell to every character.

No, only most of the spells, and you can still add this one to the checklists at no cost (but player time and character strengthening).


Now you're just being dramatic, first off, you are pretty much at Zozo's entrance and past your time there by the time the game gives you access to your four espers. The average ABP you get in the WoB is 3 and that's when you reach the Sealed Cave about a good eight hours later, until then it's just 1 or 2 ABP per battle meaning that trying to teach all four of your party members every spell you have access to will take about 200 to 400 battles, considering stats only increase through espers and you're extremely limited at this point, you've just shot yourself in the foot cause you wasted about 20 levels to teach characters spells that will be easier to acquire later on. The average you get in the WoR is 4-5 so I wouldn't call that "liberally giving ABP" also bosses don't give that much ABP either until near the game's end. Yes there are APB grind points in both sections but depending on which version you are playing you are not likely to be bothering with this until WoR.

Fine, as you leave Zozo and head to Jidoor.

Anyway - the first Esper you get is Ramuh. The easiest spell to learn from Ramuh is learned at a clip of 10x. Say you learn 2 ABP per fight walking on the World Map. In 5 fights Locke will learn Thunder. In 5 more, Celes can learn it. 5 more, Cyan, etc. Yes, different things are learned at different rates, but the natural progression of the game let the members of your team learn the lion's share of what the Espers have to offer. I'd call this liberal. Not having at least two characters learn Thunder by around the time you set foot back in Jidoor I'd call neglect. What I wouldn't call it is customization.



Not to mention, the ultimate payoff (Master Materia) is much more demanding than about anything in VI. To get the Master Magic, for instance, you need to level up every green orb, including the one you only find in the game's final stage. Not only that, but say you don't stop the train in North Corel...

Yes it's true you can fail to get all the big Materia to get all the Master Materia but even then, it's not like you really need to be using every spell or ability master materia gives you. Also, despite what you may think, it's actually possible to permanently lose some of the espers in VI so it's not like they are a given either. Also since it's difficult to get consistently high ABP from Cauctaurs and Slagworms tend to use Sneeze before death to screw you out of their ABP, you are still looking at having to go through anywhere from 250-500 battles to teach everyone one end game spell like Re-Raise or Ultima, just like grinding to get copies of the unique endgame materia or Master Materia in VII is also impractical because of the huge grind. This grinding is suppose to detour you from teaching everyone every spell. Teaching every character magic in VI is like trying to get to level 99 in any RPG, just cause you can, doesn't mean the developers meant for you to do so.



In VI (I'm going to make one last comparison to VII, and not a value judgment of VII), every character's gateway to knowing everything is barred by grinding. Do the grinding (which isn't even that demanding), and you know everything. In VII, the gateway to knowing everything is... the game itself. As in, you literally cannot give someone every ability at once (barring the endgame secret Materias). It doesn't matter that Deathblow sucks or whatever is garbage, this argument is about what the game does and does not allow the player to do with/to his party over the course of the game.

[Wolf Kanno]

Here I thought I was going to end this...





I get you have high-level knowledge of literally everything in every game, but none of this is the point (except I like where you admit the abilities in VI are useless, because they're so liberally distributed and basically do nothing of value. Yes, I agree the Esper system is dumb and sucks.).

I don't agree it's dumb and sucks, I simply agree it could be better. I'd take it over Junction, Sphere Grid, Crystarium, or FFII's system. I actually prefer it over Materia as well.



It's not weak because of my compulsion (I don't have a compulsion to grind abilities for everyone anyway) it's weak because it gives everything and demands nearly nothing (besides grinding, which only takes up player time and leaves no mark on the actual game itself besides making characters better in small increments as a side-effect).

Giving all your characters the same abilities in VII is the player's choice, but they can't give everyone everything, which is what you can do in VI and which begins to happen naturally over the course of the game.

Except you can by end game and you keep forgetting that teaching magic is not the only system in VI. You still have stat boost and relics to contend with and in the regard VII is even more liberal since you can just keep making stuff like Double Cut and W-Magic materia for your party whereas in VI, there is only one Offering/Master's Scroll and one Gem Box/Soul of Thamasa so overall you're more restricted in abilities in VI than VII is especially since Master Materia will get you more than just teaching every spell and free up most of your slots for other things. Likewise farming stat boosts allow the user to max out most of your parties stats wheres as in VI you only have as many chances as you have from your current level until Lv. 99, making it far more limited especially since the best stat boosts don't appear until the second half of the game.

So by end game in VI, I'm still differentiating my party through the use of limited relics and limited high end equipment that alter skills, defenses and strengths of my party. Whereas in VII, I can have a party that has all the same skills, magics, summons, stats, can all do max damage with ultimate weapons, and the only thing to distinguish them is armor, and use of support and independent materia but considering there is little value in giving characters different attributes with these cause if a combo is good and VII allows me to get all the materia I need for it at no cost except my time, then I don't see why I should bother. Did I mention Master Materia is at no cost except my time?



Fine, as you leave Zozo and head to Jidoor.

Anyway - the first Esper you get is Ramuh. The easiest spell to learn from Ramuh is learned at a clip of 10x. Say you learn 2 ABP per fight walking on the World Map. In 5 fights Locke will learn Thunder. In 5 more, Celes can learn it. 5 more, Cyan, etc. Yes, different things are learned at different rates, but the natural progression of the game let the members of your team learn the lion's share of what the Espers have to offer. I'd call this liberal. Not having at least two characters learn Thunder by around the time you set foot back in Jidoor I'd call neglect. What I wouldn't call it is customization.

You know what's really funny about this? I've never done that, I always make my characters learn every spell on a Esper before switching out but largely cause I wanted them to bring something to the team, so again I would argue that you the player is making this worse for yourself cause I never really dealt with going to the Opera with everyone at least knowing Bolt. I chose to instead let the espers develop who my characters were in the party so I had two status units, one heavy offense, and one dedicated healer. This isn't about bad design, it's about choice. In VII I could make one character a healer, another a mage, and the last a fighter or I could make them all into Red Mages, it's not bad design, it's player choice. Also not teaching characters magic in VI is akin to not giving Green materia to characters in VII, it limits the characters role but it's not weakening them. The issue here is that in VI the choice has long term consequences because you choices are often permanent whereas in VII it's far more forgiving and mostly transient.



In VI (I'm going to make one last comparison to VII, and not a value judgment of VII), every character's gateway to knowing everything is barred by grinding. Do the grinding (which isn't even that demanding), and you know everything. In VII, the gateway to knowing everything is... the game itself. As in, you literally cannot give someone every ability at once (barring the endgame secret Materias). It doesn't matter that Deathblow sucks or whatever is garbage, this argument is about what the game does and does not allow the player to do with/to his party over the course of the game.

Except you're wrong, because you're forgetting how linear progression works here so it's not like VI hands you all the best espers from the get go, and relics are also handed to you in a progressive manner that prevents you from customizing your characters exactly, besides teaching magic is not the whole system. Relics and stat boost play just as much of a part and so does equipment, likewise, I could still be going into the North Crater with my party being able to use all the summons and use every command ability(I could even have a Master Magic as well since all I need are command materai and KoToR to beat Ruby) but W-Magic which in my mind is not different from every character knowing every spell in VI at Kefka's tower and in both scenarios at no cost but my time.

Here's the thing about VI's system and why it's not weak and why it's a multiple of systems. In VII, I can't make a real mage, I can make my character mage centric but I can't make an honest to goodness FFV style mage except with Aerith and even then I can't get her access to the best command skills and support materia to make this work. I have to overload my character with end game magic materia just to get their stats fixed, I'd need a Master Magic materia, but all the end game gear is shared except for a few pieces and it's all powerful armor so I'm much beefier than a real mage, likewise, an ultimate weapon will allow said mage character to stay as a high powered Red Mage that can do high physical damage which no red mage could really do, let's also not forget Limit Breaks can't be changed or removed so eventually Cloud's going to pull off Omnislash and with his Ultimate weapon it will be better than anything he can do as a mage. I could give them a weaker weapon but as you've clearly stated that's weakening the character not to mention the lack of slots would prevent my Mage from doing as much. In essence unless you limit your characters in VII all you have at any given time is a party of jack-of-all-trades.

In VI, I can take Cyan, I can teach him every mage spell, level him with Valigarmande (+2 magic) for several levels to make his magic as strong as Terra or Relm, equip him with a Merit Award relic which would allow me to fully equip Cyan into mage-centric robes and Rods to boost his magic potential and negate his ability to use Bushido and I have now transformed him into a bonafide mage and likewise I could boost Relm's strength with Gilgamesh (+2 Strength), slap a Merit Award on her and transform her into a sword wielding knight decked out in full Genji Gear.

The difference between these two scenarios is that in VI, my choices do in fact have consequences, I have limited stats raising capabilities, and I have actual one of kind skills like Dual Cast and Quad Slash that have to be mediated to the best candidate. If I don't teach Cyan magic, he isn't gimped, cause teaching magic isn't the only form of customization so it's not the same as saying you're not using materia in VII, or not using Junctions in VIII instead it's choosing not to use Magic Materia or not using the Magic command because I have other customization options. Not teaching Cyan magic but focusing on using Relics and stats boosts to build him into a speedier and hard hitting fighter while also gaining his Bushido skills is the same as restricting Cloud from using Magic Materia so I can use the slots to give him command materia and independent materia to raise his stats and abilities.

VI's customization is built on four pillars of options: Character Class, Magic, Stats, and Relics. With Character class, I have a multitude of characters with unique skills and playstyles so party dynamics is one element of how you build a party, I can teach characters magic and only one character is actually restricted. I can raise the characters stats and choose to either strengthen their talents or raise opposing stats to make them more diverse. Finally I have relics which give my characters unique abilities and defenses that are not covered by the other three. Unlike other systems except FFII, FFX, and post-FFX entries, I actually have multiple customization systems that work together so choosing not to let one character (who doesn't need it) to by pass one system in favor of the other three is not the same as neglecting the whole system, it's the same as ignoring the options in other systems like neglecting to use magic materia or the Magic command in VII and VIII respectively. If you feel that not using one system is weakening them, then as I said before, it's in your head if you thinks its making them better to have it. Teaching Cyan magic and then turning around and making him use his Bushido command or simply never using him again after is simply you wasting your time. If you do let him use magic then you made him more diverse by allowing him to weakly use magic and this in turn opens up more customization decisions because now you have to decide to improve his strengths and make him more specialized, or choose to make his new found diversity into his strength by raising the areas where's he's weak. See, I've just shown you how the choices you make lead to other choices and how the systems all work in harmony with each other. Each one leads into the other cause a decision in one can change what you do in another. If you teach everyone magic, the only strength you get is that you open the plausibility of using the limited magic enhancing Relics for most of your party but you'll eventually choose to go with one group, at worst, you simply wasted hours of your life to fill up a stat sheet, and it's not like I can't have similar experiences like this in almost every other FF game, so it's not like this is somehow a unique fault to VI.

I agree that the unrestricted magic learning system could have been better implemented, but trying to prove this by comparing it to a system made years later on a more powerful system really doesn't prove anything cause you're arguing in hindsight and not historical context, I can argue that VI's customization is better than FFII and IV's but that's just not a fair comparison cause VI was made years later and learned from its predecessors. My main point is that when you take in account every aspect of VI's customization options, it was pretty amazing at the time, and it still holds up better than some systems. Is it flawed? Hell yeah but what system Answer = FFV Job Class System ;)

[Flying Arrow]

Except you can by end game and you keep forgetting that teaching magic is not the only system in VI. You still have stat boost and relics to contend with and in the regard VII is even more liberal since you can just keep making stuff like Double Cut and W-Magic materia for your party whereas in VI, there is only one Offering/Master's Scroll and one Gem Box/Soul of Thamasa so overall you're more restricted in abilities in VI than VII is especially since Master Materia will get you more than just teaching every spell and free up most of your slots for other things.

You’re comparing abilities to accessories now, though. But to be fair, many of VII’s Materia orbs have the same function as accessories.

That said, if we’re comparing actual equipped accessories to each other then there’s no deep customization here. Accessories and unique equipment are in tons of games. Having one of something like the Gem Box is par for the course in RPGing.

And no, the player is not more restricted in abilities than in VII – at least not in the short term. Again, in VI you can have every character learn every spell on the spot.

Let me illustrate my point: Whether or not you’re playing the game with foreknowledge of every piece of equipment and every enemy formation, there’s no reason to not just equip Ramuh and have at least your active party learning Thunder 1. Especially since one of the upcoming major dungeons involves enemies weak to Thunder. Even if you walk into the MagiTek Research Facility with 1 character knowing Thunder, you can just swap out Espers and have them all start knowing it. At that point, you will never again have to make a decision about what to have and what to give up regarding that spell.


Likewise farming stat boosts allow the user to max out most of your parties stats wheres as in VI you only have as many chances as you have from your current level until Lv. 99, making it far more limited especially since the best stat boosts don't appear until the second half of the game.

This isn’t an argument about VII, but I want to point something out as it relates to VI: Stats are not important in VII as in other games, for the reason that everyone is more or less homogenized in their specialties. I posted this way earlier in the thread, but VII is not about stats so much as it is about playing with different Materia combos. If the stats for Cloud and Barret differed so significantly, the crux of the Materia system becomes moot – and that is being able to toy around with your party however you like. The Magic Materia themselves have stat changing side-effects, so that’s that. (They probably don’t have enough of an effect, however, but VII’s what it is).

So VI is thus a lot more reliant on character stats. Fine. The thing is, again, that this isn’t unique to most other RPGs. You have about 80-90 choices about how to boost each character’s stats through the game. You can max out certain numbers, or have them be jacks of all trades, or whatever you like. This is no different than selecting HP, Strength, or Magic boosts when you level up in Mario RPG.


So by end game in VI, I'm still differentiating my party through the use of limited relics and limited high end equipment that alter skills, defenses and strengths of my party. Whereas in VII, I can have a party that has all the same skills, magics, summons, stats, can all do max damage with ultimate weapons, and the only thing to distinguish them is armor

Stop attacking VII. This is about VI.

Equipment is equipment. Every game has equipment that does different things. VI does it as successfully as any of them. No more and no less.

Regardless of what VII does to break itself, in VI you will have a party that has largely the same skills outside of equipment and accessories. There’s no reason, no reason whatsoever, to not swap Espers among the characters once they’ve polished one off.

And no, managing stat boosts doesn’t count because swapping Espers doesn’t cost anything. If you watch your EXP gain, you can just give every character the proper boost for your determined builds as they level up. I'll give you that this is a form of long-term customization for specializations, but in the short-term your characters can still do everything currently available (barring equipment, which is par for the course in games) -- and there's still nothing they can't do once they've become more specialized.


but considering there is little value in giving characters different attributes with these cause if a combo is good and VII allows me to get all the materia I need for it at no cost except my time, then I don't see why I should bother. Did I mention Master Materia is at no cost except my time?

You’ve missed the point.

Master Materia is an endgame ability, which you need substantial foreknowledge to achieve.

But back to VI: The issue I made of no-cost-but-time is towards FFVI’s gateway to having characters learn spells. In VII, for instance, you can grind in the Junon forests until the clock hits 99:99, but you’ll never have a team that can have all of the currently-available abilities at once (until you start wasting your life farming Master Materia duplication, at which point the game is largely over). In VI, the first four Espers you get can give each of your team everything currently-available if you put just a little bit time into it. Grinding is the gateway in VI, and the grinding isn’t even that intensive. So really it’s not that locked of a gateway. This has been my point since my first post in this thread.


You know what's really funny about this? I've never done that, I always make my characters learn every spell on a Esper before switching out but largely cause I wanted them to bring something to the team, so again I would argue that you the player is making this worse for yourself cause I never really dealt with going to the Opera with everyone at least knowing Bolt. I chose to instead let the espers develop who my characters were in the party so I had two status units, one heavy offense, and one dedicated healer. This isn't about bad design, it's about choice.
Irrelevant. Everything is open to you. You’re just choosing not to take it. Wild named it earlier: you’re neglecting options, not making decisive choices (either short-term or long-term).


In VII I could make one character a healer, another a mage, and the last a fighter or I could make them all into Red Mages, it's not bad design, it's player choice. Also not teaching characters magic in VI is akin to not giving Green materia to characters in VII, it limits the characters role but it's not weakening them. The issue here is that in VI the choice has long term consequences because you choices are often permanent whereas in VII it's far more forgiving and mostly transient.

Please, no. How can you argue this after four pages of back and forth?

There’s no choice with regards to Magic learning. None. Not teaching characters magic in VI is simply not filling out the checklist and not wasting your time. There is no weakening in VI, only staying the course or biting the bullet and grinding to give each character the rest of the free spells.

Not attaching Green Materia to your slots leaves the slots open for Yellow, Red, Purple, or Blue Materia. Not using Green Materia also lets you keep some extra Max HP and Str points. There is a small decision to be made every time a Materia is placed. If mushy Aeris isn't going to be casting Ice, remove the Ice Materia and let her keep the HP.


Except you're wrong, because you're forgetting how linear progression works here so it's not like VI hands you all the best espers from the get go, and relics are also handed to you in a progressive manner that prevents you from customizing your characters exactly, besides teaching magic is not the whole system. Relics and stat boost play just as much of a part and so does equipment,

What are you even getting at? Linear progression…?

When you earn an Esper, every character can learn that Esper’s spells at no cost. Period. This is the truth.

Relics and stat boosts are not special. I was doing it in Wild ARMs a few months ago, which is about as numbers-getting-higher as a game gets.


likewise, I could still be going into the North Crater with my party being able to use all the summons and use every command ability(I could even have a Master Magic as well since all I need are command materai and KoToR to beat Ruby) but W-Magic which in my mind is not different from every character knowing every spell in VI at Kefka's tower and in both scenarios at no cost but my time.

VII is basically over by the time the player reaches this level of broken, not to mention the hidden-ness of what you’ve mentioned.

This is not the same as every member of the party in VI being able to know Thunder, Thunder2, Poison, Cure, Regen, Cure2, Antdot, Scan, Sleep, Mute, Slow, Fire, Muddle, Imp, and Float by the time the player gets to the Magitek Facility.

When the player finishes the MagiTek facility, the player has the following abilities that every character can start learning:

Fire (from 3 Espers), Fire2 (from 2), Drain, Ice (2), Ice2 (2), Rasp, Osmose, Cure (2), Cure 2 (2), Remedy, Dispel, Safe (2), Shell (2), Thunder (2), Thunder2 (2), Bio, Break, Doom, Berserk, Vanish, Demi, Reflect, Haste, Warp, and Life.

Some of these are even learned at a clip of 20x. What is that, 2 fights? 3? There’s no downside to just stacking your team with everything at this point. Whether the player wants to is one thing. But there’s nothing in-game stopping him from doing so, like, for instance, a system that limits how much a character can know at a given point.



In VI, I can take Cyan, I can teach him every mage spell, level him with Valigarmande (+2 magic) for several levels to make his magic as strong as Terra or Relm, equip him with a Merit Award relic which would allow me to fully equip Cyan into mage-centric robes and Rods to boost his magic potential and negate his ability to use Bushido and I have now transformed him into a bonafide mage and likewise I could boost Relm's strength with Gilgamesh (+2 Strength), slap a Merit Award on her and transform her into a sword wielding knight decked out in full Genji Gear.

Completely absurd. Totally hidden. You don’t just “slap” a Merit Award on a character because that accessory is absolutely and totally buried in a mini-game that only shows up in the game’s second half. No player is building his party for this kind of make-up without already having a guide handy.

I’ll concede the Merit Award in and of itself as a tool available for interesting customization options, but to use this as an argument for why the game itself is deeply customizable as a rule rather than as an exception is too much of a stretch.


The difference between these two scenarios is that in VI, my choices do in fact have consequences, I have limited stats raising capabilities, and I have actual one of kind skills like Dual Cast and Quad Slash that have to be mediated to the best candidate. If I don't teach Cyan magic, he isn't gimped, cause teaching magic isn't the only form of customization so it's not the same as saying you're not using materia in VII, or not using Junctions in VIII instead it's choosing not to use Magic Materia or not using the Magic command because I have other customization options. Not teaching Cyan magic but focusing on using Relics and stats boosts to build him into a speedier and hard hitting fighter while also gaining his Bushido skills is the same as restricting Cloud from using Magic Materia so I can use the slots to give him command materia and independent materia to raise his stats and abilities.

Not teaching Cyan magic is gimping him, though. There’s no cost to teaching him magic, and not teaching it to him leaves less room for contingency. Yes, the game is easy enough that you’re not going to find Cyan needing Thunder2 to get out of a jam, but there’s nothing stopping you from giving him that extra safety net either.

I’d argue that boosting Cyan’s fighter skills over his magic skills is not the same as giving Cloud Command over Magic Materia. Yes, it’s more of a long-term decision, but making Cyan a fighter is a natural inclination of the player given his equipment and unique skill set.

Turning Cyan into a dedicated mage would be undermining his natural abilities, too. Decking him out in Mage gear is, I guess, customization of this character, but really you’ve been forcing the issue much like turning Hope into a Commando in XIII. Technically customization, I’ll give you that, but the kind that’s only viable to someone who knows every nook and cranny beforehand. A new player would never make Cyan a mage in this way, and if he does it’s taken tons of time the majority of which Cyan can still learn every spell, utilize his sword techs, etc, until finally achieving the gimmick build the player’s been unintuitively inching towards for 30 hours.

Since every character has obvious strengths and weaknesses (which can be changed with the effort you’ve indicated), VI is less a game with an approachable, intuitive customization system and more one that has some customization options for players who are really, really determined to not follow the clear path the game has laid out.


I agree that the unrestricted magic learning system could have been better implemented, but trying to prove this by comparing it to a system made years later on a more powerful system really doesn't prove anything cause you're arguing in hindsight and not historical context, I can argue that VI's customization is better than <acronym>FFII</acronym> and IV's but that's just not a fair comparison cause VI was made years later and learned from its predecessors. My main point is that when you take in account every aspect of VI's customization options, it was pretty amazing at the time, and it still holds up better than some systems. Is it flawed? Hell yeah but what system isn't?

You can argue that VI’s customization is better than II or IV, but IV has no customization whatsoever and II is just an idiotic game to begin with. Compare it with its closest sibling, V. V’s Job System ensures that you can only carry certain abilities depending on your jobs, with the addition of 1 and only 1 carry-over ability.

The hardware power of the Playstation vs. the SNES has no effect on the systems being discussed. There’s no reason VI couldn’t have implemented a limit on number of spells characters can carry at a given time (think something like the SMT: Digital Devil Saga games).

And yes, if you take into account the scope of what VI was trying to accomplish it is impressive. But that doesn’t make its systems successful just because. It’s flawed, yeah, everything is flawed, yeah yeah yeah, but we’re here discussing why VI isn’t a deeply customizable RPG masterstroke like that review stated.

[Greatermaximus]

At some point when you've considered all your options you run into Ad Nausea or Fiction's Upper Limit Lore. The game is well thought out in its time period. We can agree agree agree all day and the conversation would go on and on. But there are plenty of games and ways to discover them.

FFVI is something I will remember for the rest of my life as long as I stay healthy. Sometimes we all feel half-Esper, half-Human imo.

[Spooniest]

Total # of Possible Parties Creatable in VI

VS.

Total # of Possible Parties Creatable in (ANY OTHER GAME IN THE SERIES BAR NONE, INCLUDING CHRONO TRIGGER JUST FOR KICKS).

Customization...VI has it.

Suikoden and Chrono Cross just go overboard with the characters. I think 14 is pretty good. You don't get that many in any other Final Fantasy game, nor Chrono Trigger.

Worth noting is that you can swap out characters in the GBA version of Final Fantasy IV, so it's comparable to VI in that regard, but not the SNES version.