I Love You but...

[Wolf Kanno]

All right, here's an interesting idea I thought of to offer and interesting introspect of the series. Name your favorite FF(s) and list things you would honestly change about them. Deep down we know that no game is perfect and even our personal favorite gems may have a few flaws we overlook cause we love them so much and the rest was so damn awsome.

Of course, in order to limit stupid fan answers, I'm setting up ground rules.
1) No stupid answers like "The only flaw with FFVII is that it ended! I could have played it forever! Clouds my stud! Wheee!!!"

2) No pretentious answers like "The only problem with FFVI is that it was so perfect it makes every RPG before and after irrelevant! Bow before the greatness of 16-bit superiority!"

3) You cannot wish that other characters appeared in the game. "Squall, totally should have been in FFIX!" Also, on a similiar note, you cannot wish for sequels or side stories or spinoffs...

4) Please be respectful to others opinions when commenting on their views.

5) Lunarweaver can't say he wishes Tidus was real Also any answer of a similiar meaning is outlawed. (That means you Goldenboko...)

I also wish that you may actually touch upon both story and game mechanics but I'll take what I can get.

I'll start...


FFVI

From a story point of view, I wish the game had touched upon both Kefka and Mog's past. They are two of my favorite characters and I'm curious to know more about them.

From a gameplay perspective, I wish VI wasn't so easy. The difficulty could have been better and I really feel that Edgar, Sabin, Cyan, Gau and Setzer all need to be balanced better cause all of them are horribly broken and don't help with VI's difficulty problems. I also wish summons were done a little better, they seem more like an afterthought in the game design. Sure Golem, Palidor, and Zoneseek are useful but most of the offensive summons are horribly overshadowed by magic (I swear Ramuh does as much damage as Bolt 1:rolleyes2 ).


FF Tactics

From a story perspective, I only wish for a better translation (or one that's available on a system other than the PSP) I also wish you could view "all" story scenes including the one's in-battle.

From a gameplay perspective, I wish that story enemies leveled up with you. Nothing is more sad than to put a healthy amount of work into your party to only have them fight supposedly "powerful" enemies who are 20 levels under you.

I also wish some of the classes weren't so damn broken (Looks at Calculator, Samurai, and All Swordmen ) and that the mage classes didn't need so much damn work to make them battle useful. I mean magic has more variables to decipher damage than any other system in the game. Just don't try to fix it like TA did which made every class horribly broken...

[f f freak]

I'll give this a try.

FFVI:
On story I'd like it to give a bigger view on what the characters were doing for that year. Celes was sleeping, Cyan was writing letters, what were the other characters doing? was Sabin holding that burning house forever, hoping someone might turn up? Was Locke just waiting in the Phoenix cave all that time? That actually brings up an important question, two actually. 1. How did Locke get there? We needed an Airship yet he doesn't? 2. How did he get through it? we needed two teams yet one man can do it alone?

Gameplay wise I would make the espers stronger. What's the point of Maduin if he inflicts barely 300 damage? Yay I got Ramuh!!! What's that? You cast a flahier version of Thunder that inflicts the same damage as Thunder but costs like more than 3x the MP? No thanks.

I'll think of more later.

[Bolivar]

Wow, therapy for fanboys!!! j/k...

FFII
- There's no sidequests in this game, not even in the GBA version, really. The final dungeon is like 50% optional but to me that isn't enough. It would've been cool to see what happens with Ricard's son (I guess we found out in FFIV )

- It would've been cool if at the end you can switch the members of your party. I think it's too late for me to tell square about this now

- Physical damage is possibly a little useless against the final boss

- should've had more than 1 chocobo forest

- more than 1 type of armor in the beginning would've helped

- The Emporer really has no backstory for what he's doing. I know it was the 8-bit generation, but it would've been cool if he had like...talked more.

[Griff]

FF1:
- Very Frequent random encounters.
- Having to talk to almost everyone to continue through the story.
- Wouldn't a ninja be a more sensical upgrade for a black belt than for a thief?

FF8:
- The fact that monsters' strength depends on your own was troublesome, and really made levelling anyone other than GFs p.ointless.
- Would like to be able to use GFs without being practically guanenteed to lose in the final battle.

FFX:
- At. Times. Yuna's. Voice. Actress. Sounded. Like. William. Shatner.
- Very linear before reaching the airship.

[ReloadPsi]

FF7: Sound effects out of battle were terrible. I swear that the more complacent dogs sounded like cats.

FF6: I wish the WoR had not been quite so non-linear. This may sound crazy, but WoR was just a boring experience grind and totally put me off playing the game again.

FF8: Apparently compressing time really means "Prevent the leader of SeeD and his party from accessing civilised settlements". That annoyed me. Also, the big clock in Ultimecia's castle should've played a much, much larger role, simply because that clock is awesome.

FF4: Difficulty fluctuations, the best example of which would be that dungeon with the Trap Doors was far too hard in relation to its overall position in the game's sequence.

FF10: All I can say is that FF10's biggest flaw, something which puts me off replaying the game almost as much as FF6's experience grind in its second half, was addressed in X-2 and 12 in a big way. Scene skipping, baby!

FF5: Better thought out villain please. "X-Death"? "Neo X-Death"? Come on. Don't try and tell me it was supposed to be "Exodus" either: X-Death transliterates into Japanese as "Ekusudesu", while Exodus would be "Ekusodasu". Slight difference there.

FF1: It's ironic that they try to make the mages sound more useful, yet the Fighter is so damn strong that it constantly renders mages obsolete except in the midpoint of the game where you can torch everything with FIR2. Balance in job class usefulness is a bit lacking, as you can win the game far more easily with two Fighters and two Red Mages.

FF9: Steiner is flagrantly overpowered, especially with Vivi in the party.

FF1:
- Wouldn't a ninja be a more sensical upgrade for a black belt than for a thief?

That's actually a very good point.

[Galvatron]

FF1: less random encounters in dungeons please.

FF6: Needs Harder final battle, more interesting things to do in WoR

FF7: Needs to go into the characters more, example: Tifa's mom died....Okay, what else?
Stop. Showing. That. Freaking. Burning. Town. Memory. NOW!
Better dungeons, not just walk through then fight boss.

FF9: Could have explained Necron more, I mean come on.

FFTA: The message was presented in a weird way, it made Marche look like a freaking douche instead of proving reality is better than escapism.
"What? You want legs?
F THAT.
YER GOIN HOME."
Needs less crazy laws...

[qwertysaur]

FFX

Aeons would not be rediculously overpowered.
Also I would add another temple and leviathen as an aeon. Place leviathen in Djose and change the temple to a water theme. Finally build a new temple in the thunder plains for ixion. And remove auto life for the final battle.

FF VI

Fix espers. The attack summons should have higher base power. Also, I would allow 2 espers to be equipped at once, and you chose three spells to learn at a time.

FF VIII

Adel needs to look more like a woman than a man.

FF X-2

Fix completion percentage. I didn't like redoing the entire game for .7%
And no doubles of dresspheres in new game plus.

[sockmonkey]

FFI
Like everyone says, make the magic suck less and use MP like the later games instead of spells-per-level.
Decent upgrade for the BB

FFVI
The "missing year" scenarios would have been a nice addition. Every character would have had their own solo adventure prior to Celes tracking them down.

Yes, it the WOR was way too non-linear. I think this was in part because of how soon we got the second airship.

Yep, the esper summon did seem pretty pointless. There was also too much duplication of the less useful spells.

It would have been nice for there to have a been a "best weapon" to get for each person like there was in Chrono Trigger.

Some characters were too strong and others were pretty pointless to have.

More split-up type scenarios where you have three or more groups doing seperate adventures all over the world at once. This would justify having 14 characters.

Honestly though, with that many people it seems pretty hard to come up with a fighting style and abilities that are both useful and unique to each person.

Cyan's sword techs are useless as hell. By the time he charges up, the battle is over. No good in battles with a time limit. The only time it was worthwhile was when the enemy was doing an attack with a big complex effect that took a long time to do.

FFVII
Tifa wasn't naked.

(just kidding)

[No.78]

FFVI- Better graphics?
FFVII- ...Better graphics?
FFVIII- ...Better...graphics?
FFIX- Repeat
FFX- Repeat
FFXI- Repeat
FFXII- Repeat

I tend to appreciate a game for what it is.

[Wolf Kanno]

FFVI

It would have been nice for there to have a been a "best weapon" to get for each person like there was in Chrono Trigger.


More split-up type scenarios where you have three or more groups doing seperate adventures all over the world at once. This would justify having 14 characters.

Actually, FFVI Advance addresses both these issues. The Dragon's Den is a well constructed multi party dungeon and all the bosses drop character specific "Ultimate Weapons" even though Illumina and the Atma Weapon are still stronger than a few of them.

[beema]

FFVII:
Better character graphics. I don't understand why they didn't just use the graphical renditions of the characters used in battle sequences. Even those would've been much better than the goofy pieces of crap that are used in most of the game. It's hard to get wrapped up in the serious and deep atmosphere of the game when all your characters are 2 foot tall creampuffs with dots for eyes, especially when they stand out so starkly from the more realistic background of the game.

I frankly don't like the Materia system. Mostly because I dislike the idea that you can only "equip" magic, but never really learn it.

Either tie up the lose ends of the game, or cut them completely. Why would you leave so many things in a game that were never flushed out completely, especially things that might tie into the main storyline. I understand that it happens in lots of games due to budget or schedule constraints, but if you aren't going to finish some element of the game, don't leave half of it still in the game to confuse and upset people.

[LunarWeaver]

LE GASP! Tidus is real already, Kanno!!!11!!on1!NotTwo1!!!!

FFX:

-Include the Japanese voice track to appease the lip-synching disgruntleds and general yayness of it all. I know the disc was full, but I dunno, some special edition with a second disc that had it. The Great Jubbah knows Japan gets enough special editions.

-Makes it more challenging. A few key battles felt just right (if you didn't overlevel), but many of the random battles were more a game of putting the right key in the right lock than actual strategy. I don't want a grinding experience, but nobody asked for a hand-hold either.

-Blitzball was supposed to be fast-paced sport, not slower than a Strategy-RPG smothered in snail juices.

-Scene skip feature for the impatient / replays. Don't worry baby, I'd never skip your story myself .

-New Game + with various features like starting the characters at different points on the Grid or keeping all your accessories or something. Some excuse for me playing the game over seven times because without it I just look like a freak.

-An option that will automatically move you to the next point on the Grid and activate any nodes until you tell it otherwise. Maybe a feature where you can manually map out a path then have the game automatically go down it from then on.

-I never liked the idea of earning spheres to activate nodes on the Grid. If you earn the experience to move there, you should be able to just get it. It didn't add anything other than an annoyance.

-The Chocobo Racing and Lightning Dodging thing was the opposite of fun, and games should be fun.

-Am I allowed to at least wish Tidus was more naked? No? Oh, fine, I wish Lulu had more magic spheres towards the end, as her balance tips away in Yuna's favor quite dramatically at a certain point if you know what you're doing.

-Kimmy needs more development. He's so the Amarant of this sucker.

[cloud21zidane16]

FFVII- arrive at Corel, Barret-My hometown oh god awful memories rahhhhhhh im running off in a rampage i cant go on with my life i think i might just huh!!?? we re leaving!!??? ill act myself again then.

They focused on characters well at their hometown, other than Cloud and Tifa, everyone elses problems kinda faded once theyd talked about their past for just a short time

[Comet]

FFVIII:

What I really hated was when you get out of a room or something, it takes so long to fade and re-enter into the other room...

That is all.

[AOp]

FFVIII: Change the leveling system.

FFIX: Make Trance not so random, so that you can actually gameplan around it.