I think I like it better when summons don't have HP. There is a big difference between just coming in the battle and doing your thing or coming into battle and hope you last. Its sad when these mystical creatures show up and just die in 1-2 turns.
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I think I like it better when summons don't have HP. There is a big difference between just coming in the battle and doing your thing or coming into battle and hope you last. Its sad when these mystical creatures show up and just die in 1-2 turns.
If I have to pick, then I'll go with freedom. However I can completely understand the restriction of that freedom should characters have fixed classes in the game or alternatively if jobs are affected by storyline.
I generally prefer the games where there are no fixed jobs as I would like to be able to have my favourite characters in my battle team and adjust them to fit. However, one way around this would be to have fixed jobs, but at the same time have them not be able to change once they are assigned a job. This would dramatically increase replayability, too - although I imagine balancing would be insanely difficult for Square Enix if they ever opted to do this.
No limit dog
Forgot about this thread...
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Originally Posted by Depression Moon
Rosa can heal the whole party and lots of her spells actually doaffect the whole party oddly enough. Also, Asura is random, its great when she does heal you or cast protect but its not so useful when you need her to do something specific. Not to mention when she casts protect on your whole party and then keeps doing it when you need her to heal or revive or when she tries to revive when everyone is alive and well. She's not a stable summon so she's very impractical compared to Rosa who can heal the whole party at once and careful strategy will prevent you from having to deal with reviving more than one character at a time. She is just not practical.
Except the damage isn't so great and once again its a bit wasteful to use something that costs 3x the usual mp cost of normal spells. Not to mention towards the end of the game, you tend to run into more things immune or healed by fire. Also, there is no real point in VII since you can let anyone use Revive materia or the infinitely more useful Blue Skill materia with Angel Snack (though I will give you that's impractical on the basis the spell becomes available at the end of the game. As for Eiko, I rarely found myself in a bind where two men were down and called for Phoenix's useful ability to revive multiple targets. Its usually one and its not like Eiko is not a useful Damage dealer til she gets holy since its her most powerful move. Her offensive summon are mostly lacking unless you are careful to exploit elemental weaknesses but seriously, the rest of the party are far more practical. She's better off just sticking to being a whit mage by end game cause her summons are mostly obsolete due to the games skill system.Quote:
Phoenix is good for saving behinds too. In IX and VII I used it in place of Life to revive party members since it could revive more than one member and deal damage at the same time.
I found them more fun to play cause they were glass cannons and some like Chaos, Ultima, and Zodiark are not as easily killed as people think they are. Really most of the tier 2 and 3 summons are fairly competent but I feel most people gave up thanks to Belias and Mateus sucking or just prefer the gambling with Quickenings. I will agree they are impractical in XII which is their biggest fault but really I liked actually teaming up with summons and having a tag team match, I just wish the means of summoning wasn't counter productive (using MP).Quote:
In XII they were so bad that it wasn't even funny. Back when we got the demo for XII I was expecting them to be something that would be useful and powerful, but when the actual game came out you found out that summons could get killed by average level mobs.
I felt they were too powerful in X and could use them to wipe out most of the games bosses. Even ones that have anti-summon skills can be mowed down if you have all of them charged up for their Overdrives. They seriously suck the challenge out of a game that doesn't have much to begin with.Quote:
In X they seemed to be the most useful to me. They could take great punishment if used right and were powerhouses. I think summons could be more useful in the series if the games were more difficult and the summons were actually powerful.
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The way I would love to see summons used (and this would work better in a turn base combat scenario, not a more action based system like XI-XIV; would be to have them replace the summoner, yes the summoner not the party and leave the summoner especially if this is going to cost mp or some other arbitrary point system. I feel they should grant buffs to the party just by being there and they should change how the battle is fought.
An example of what I have in mind is... say the party summons Alexander, we get the lengthy summon animation and now the screen scals back to see the monstrous death machine towering above the enemies with the two remaining party members standing on the summons shoulders. Th party now gains a defense bonus as well as a dodge to physical bonus. Summoning Alexander also imbues their weapons with holy and they have resistance or absorb holy damage as long as Alexander is on the field. For the sake of balance, since Alexander is a bit defensive heavy, he reduces the parties attack power by 20 or so percent which is a small sacrifice for great defense. For the fans who need a bit of movie style flair to battles, the party literally slides down Alexanders arms to attack the enemies.
Alexander will fight in the summoners place, since he's powerful, he's slower than the rest of the party so his powerful holy attacks don't come as often and either give them limit breaks as their full summon attacks or make them automatically use them after some odd number of turns and then cancel the summon and bring back the summoner. The party will now have Holy cast on their weapons temporary and all have protect cast on them as well. Making them an excellent means of buffing and combat as well as just finally making them change the course of the battle for you. Another element I would add is the ability to have multiple summons on the field. For the sake of balance, the summons will be broken into tiers where its possible to have the whole party be replaced with summons like Ifrit, Ramuh and Shiva whereas summons like Titan and Carbuncle are tier two and can only share the field with one other tier one summon. Tier 3, with the likes of Alexander and Bahamut will only be able to have them alone be played on the fields but for the other summons to be on the field I thought it would be fun for them to also have dual or triple attacks as long as the other summons are on the field. So instead of Ifrit and Shiva doing Diamond Dust and Hell Fire, they do a combo limit break together or a triple one if Ramuh is on the field.
Summons can level up, but as they do, they grant more bonuses to the party. Ifrit starts off by giving the party a 20% resistance to fire based attacks while he's on the fieild, as he powers up, the amount increases until it reaches the point where you absorb it, also later on he will have fire cast on your weapons and even raise your parties strength. Then what abilites stay behind will depend on the summons level as well. Imagine entire boss battles in the story that would require your to have to summon Ifrit, Shiva, and Ramuh in the beginning of battle just so you can have immunity to the three basic elements for the fight. Cause obviously the game is going to have to be really difficult to balance out how super special awesome the summons are. ;)
This was the idea I was toying with at least...
I almost never use summons in the older games since they're basically black magic with higher MP costs. As far as I'm concerned, Rydia is a black mage. :P