Final Fantasy VIII vs. Final Fantasy X-2

[Forsaken Lover]

I would have to say VIII and by a wide margin actually. Then again, I happened to like VIII.

Story:
VIII
Okay, VIII's plot is bat--crazy. It starts off really intriguing with child soldiers qwelling international disputes and a supernatural evil taking over a militant country to start the games equivalent of WWI, not to mention the eerie dream sequences where your party live the lives of enemy soldiers from 20 years ago. Then Disc 2 starts and we're faced with the most BS version of a wall banger plot twists and time travel crap that the player loses any sense of being able to take anything storywise serious. At the same time though, the story has this kinda odd train wreck appeal. You know its ridiculous but you just can't turn away and well... its entertaining in a sick way. The only exception to this is Laguna's story which for all intents and purposes is very good if a bit jumbled since you are literally dropping into event in a 20 year period with little context of what's actually going on. Laguna is a fun character and the story of his life and its comical ending are quite enjoyable.

So your only defense of FFVIII's story is...it's bad except for Laguna.
Well...I can't argue with that.

X-2
What plot? Okay seriously now, X-2 is a story mission game and well... SE can't do them well. The main plot is lost in the riff-raff of mini-games and silly concerts. Most of Paine's plot is told in a very loose way and you hardly ever get to know any of the new characters except Shuyin and Lenne without collecting asinine McGuffins from every corner.

As by far the most non-linear game in the series, of course you had to do extra work to unlock the storyline. You might almost say X-2 gave you more of a role in playing the game compared to all the other FFs with their fixed endings after a very fixed journey.

What main story their is here, basically is built around retconning the only decent thing about FFX which was its tragic (though pretty sappy) ending.

This seems to be a popular mistake.
X-2 didn't retcon anything.

YouTube - Final Fantasy X - 087 - Final Cut Scene & Credits

Skip to 10:10 after the credits.

See that? That's Tidus being alive. X-2 was already planned.
Logic states Tidus was always supposed to come back.

This, of course, is discounting the fact you can choose to keep Tidus dead and gone. Which I do.

Basically the nuances of the plot are wasted on first time players or people who didn't like FFX. The overall "girly feel" of the game (which is over-exaggerated) turns off many of the FFX fans as well, but then again its hard to be justifying this game to a girlfriend if she walks into you playing as a bunch of scantily clad chicks whose every action leads to some cheesecake fan service. You know what its like to have your parents walk in to the room when Paine is transforming into the Lady Luck dressphere? At least my dad bought me some decent porn videos afterwards...

lol
What else can I say.....
I guess you're just lucky they didn't walk in on you doing the Massage Minigame.

Overall: Porn is good but train-wrecks tend to stay with you longer. Seriously, VIII has a bad plot but its better than a game whose plot only makes up 10% of the content (Assuming you picked up all the Crimson Spheres) with the rest being bubbly filler that will make you throw up. On a more serious note though, VIII has a ton of memorable moments in it like the opening the Assassination attempt on Edea, the battle between the Gardens, and Rinoa and Squall drifting in space. VIII has a lot of memorable moments, whereas I can't really think of anything from X-2 except the cringe worth song scenes and the BS retcon Super Happy ending. VIII wins.

Those are all great moments from FF8 to be sure. Though of course many would say Squall and Rinoa are cringeworthy too. Eyes on Me is about bad as real Emotion to a lot of FF fans.

Anyway, the plot of X-2 is standard FF formula. Mundane every day life or small conflict turned world crisis. The game gives you a good look into how Spira has changed after a thousand years of theocracy. You have to go around and deal with the repercussions of things that took place in X and so-on.
The main plot is decidedly small I'll grant you but there is a whole world of plot which was obviously the intent.

Characters:
FFVIII
Like the story, VIII starts pretty strong and then decides to drop the entire cast except three people after you get halfway through disc 2. Which is a shame cause Zell, Seifer, Quistis, Kiros, Ward, and most of the "villains" could have been really interesting and instead feel like cardboard cutouts. The same can't be said for Squall and Laguna; Squall especially has great character growth and you really get to see the game through his eyes. Yes, he goes all sappy once he decides he loves Rinoa but I have yet to meet a guy who says he's met the love of his life and not do a 180 in personality for it. Even then he still sticks to his calm and snarky self throughout the rest of the game. Even if the cast never does get the growth they deserve, its not like they are bad characters, shirt tempered jock Zell, Bossy but unsure Quistis, Womanizing Irvine, and obnoxious Selphie are still entertaining to watch and their relationship with Squall is what brings out the humor of the game as you watch the party constantly trying to cheer him up while he's only thinking about drowning them in the nearest body of water.

Your defense of FFVIII is quite...strange. Again you freemly admit all the characters suck except Squall and Laguna but that's okay?
I have yet to meet a more unlikable cast than FFVIII's. They're simply static characters with stock personalities. Given their total irrelevance to the plot and lack of development, you might as well cut them out of the story and glue in a character with the same archetype from another RPG.

X-2
Let's take Yuna, who already has the personality of cardboard and make her the main character.

Arguably she was always the main character. The entire game of FFX revolves around her quest after all much like all of FFXII revolves around Ashe's quest.
\

She constantly talks about finally "growing up" and "living for herself" and no longer letting "other people dictate her life" and then proceeds to spend the rest of the game helping ever human, Ronso, Guado, and rock in Spira that happens to have a sad sob story, so basically her character growth is mostly hypocrisy .

Chronic Hero Syndrome

Yuna saves people because she chooses to. In FFX she was the tool of the Yevon church, of Seymour and in the end, of Tidus even. Her decisions were inconsequential as she was led by the nose everywhere.

In X-2 she helps people because it's the right thing to do.
Living your own life doesn't mean apathy to the horrible things going on around you.

In short "You don't need a reason to help people."

Let's throw in Rikku who is horribly obnoxious and let's fill her up with even more sugar, make her legal, and by being legal, make her dress like a smurfing whore..

Yeah I definitely preferred X Rikku.

Then there is Lulu... I mean Paine, who is basically Lulu in all ways except technically being younger and being a warrior instead of a mage.

She's also snarkier and less bitchy. Lulu was a typical defrosting ice queen.

and never really justifies her presence in the story beyond just happening to be connected to the three new guys.

Except that "has little reason to be there except he's connected to a character" is usually the reason a character is part of the hero group in the first place.

Bikkal Gippal is pretty awesome but gets less screen time than O'aka, the Yevon guy, and Maechen two of which are npcs and have nothing to do with the main plot.

Fixed.
And you see Maecehn more than a lot of people. It's kind of his thing.

Lebalnc and her gang, are just plain pathetic and only help to drive the terrible fan service of the game even more.

True.

Shuyin's back-story only allows him to be sympathetic to people who have a heart the rest find him pretty pathetic and mostly at fault for his own problems.

Fixed again.
War-torn lovers is a very old and endearing plot line. Two people who want only to be together are forced apart by unfeeling murderers.
Lenne was going to die. That was beyond doubt.
So, naturally, the man who loved her did everything within his power to try and prevent it.
Some people are weak-willed and would let the loves of their lives die I guess but not everyone.

Overall: VIII's cast fails to live up to its potential, but at least they are interesting and entertaining as opposed to X-2's cast which is void of any major character that is likable. When the NPC's of your game are more interesting and likable than the main cast, I feel that's a major problem. VIII wins.

Irvine is a moron who wants to piss on anything with a vagina. And then lick it off.
If you find that "likable"... Ugh.

Berserker

It's Counter abilities are very useful and can be exploited to make it possibly the best Dressphere.

For what it's worth, I never used Gun Mages because Blue Magic has always been stupid and a chore to get.
"Derr. I want this ability. Better just hope I get hit with it".
Everyone knows how overpowered the Dark Knights are though. I've seen people finish off the superbosses with Three DKs just spamming Darkness.

In fact, the Garment Grid system pretty much destroys the entire point of the new ATB system which was trying to put the Action back into the Battle system by making them go faster, which is a pretty moot point when you are constantly going into menus so you can waste three or four turns transforming into different classes so you can get the two abilites you need to end this fight quickly when you could have spent those turns just mashing X or using the Holy Trinity'sDark Knight, Gun Mage, and Alchemist abilities to wipe them all out. Considering fan favorite spells like Holy, Flare and Ultima can only be obtained by using this ridiculous system is just more salt in the wounds.

It doesn't take that long if you know what you're doing. A slong as you remember which sphere is where, you can press R1 and switch to it within a second or so. I've seen it done a lot.

The relics are obnoxious cause most of them grant one ability like the wonderfully useful Fire Ring that gives a character the Fire spell and only the Fire Spell. This is the kinda crap you will be getting for half the game, the sad thing is, due to the game's funky stat system (I swear the creators were listening to all the complaints about X's poor stat system and algorithms) you will mostly be using ther Relic system as a makeshift armor system to compensate for your parties poor stats, attaching items that raise Vigor and Defense by 50 points or occasionally using one to gain more XP, why bother using the system beyond a glorified armory?

Because almost every RPG in history has an Equip function where you compensate for stats by equipping things...? This is hardly something new to X-2.

Overall:

You think FFVIII sucks but has a charm to its suckiness.
I don't get it.

[charliepanayi]

You think 1000 Words is better than Eyes on Me, now that's illogical.

[Christmas]

I think Kanno is saying that VIII is the better apple out of the basket of rotten apples.

Anyway, overall I prefer FF X-2 over FF VIII maybe because I like to do a lot of sidequests and prefer a more light-hearted game rather than a game led by a seriously very serious black leathered guy.

[Forsaken Lover]

You think 1000 Words is better than Eyes on Me, now that's illogical.

I don't think I ever said that. I said a lot of fans consider Eyes on Me a pretty awful song.

Both songs really aren't anything special and are only worth something when paired up with an emotional scene.

Eyes on Me - For when Laguna visits Raine's grave
1000 Words - the flashback of Shuyin and Lenne.

As backdrops to those scenes, both songs have the proper emotional power.

[Rocket Edge]

VIII is arguably the best in the series (& my personal favorite), and although I thought X-2 was decent it isn't even in the same league as VIII.

[charliepanayi]

Also 1000 Words is better than Eyes On Me.
YouTube - 60-1000 Words (English Orchestral Version)-FFX-2 OST

So you did say you thought 1000 Words was better. And I don't need to have Eyes on Me (or indeed any piece of FF music) attached to the scene to enjoy it, I love listening to the soundtrack albums.

[Chris]

What a strange thread. My philosophy is: "All Comparisons Are Odious", so I won't even go there. That being said, I can list my likes and dislikes about each game. I won't.

I'll just say that both games are far from being my favorites. Curiously, for many of the same reasons.

[Forsaken Lover]

Also 1000 Words is better than Eyes On Me.
YouTube - 60-1000 Words (English Orchestral Version)-FFX-2 OST

So you did say you thought 1000 Words was better.

Whoa. I guess I did. Sorry about that.
Just having trouble focusing today I guess.

[Wolf Kanno]

So your only defense of FFVIII's story is...it's bad except for Laguna.
Well...I can't argue with that.

I would also throw in Squall's growth as a character as well. I don't like time travel stories personally with just a few exceptions so VIII's overall story doesn't do it for me.

As by far the most non-linear game in the series, of course you had to do extra work to unlock the storyline. You might almost say X-2 gave you more of a role in playing the game compared to all the other FFs with their fixed endings after a very fixed journey.

I said before that Square (and Square-Enix) are not very good about writing stories around mission based titles. The main story almost always tends to be overshadowed by other elements at least for me. The other issue is that the rest of the "story elements" is basically you seeing what happened to Spira afterwards and considering I wanted Spira to be wiped out of existence during FFX, I can't say seeing the aftermath was at all interesting for me. So this is why I don't like the games story but to be fair, this game is more for X fans than people like me.

What main story their is here, basically is built around retconning the only decent thing about FFX which was its tragic (though pretty sappy) ending.

This seems to be a popular mistake.
X-2 didn't retcon anything.

YouTube - Final Fantasy X - 087 - Final Cut Scene & Credits

Skip to 10:10 after the credits.

See that? That's Tidus being alive. X-2 was already planned.
Logic states Tidus was always supposed to come back.

I think you are just interpreting that scene as such, I never saw that scene as "OMG Tidud lived!" but rather as a symbolic effort to take a bit of the bite out of the ending by showing Tidus happy after his noble sacrifice. Considering talks of making a sequel didn't even start til work on FFX International was in the production and even then, it was going to be based off fan reaction to the mini-prologue of the Eternal Calm shipped with the International version, I feel its pretty safe to say Square intended for Tidus to stay a martyr for the world. Most sources say that a sequel was not in mind until after the major success of FFX. The scene in question, I also feel, is far too ambiguous to say that Tidus lived as well as there is nothing within the story to suggest how it was possible or even why. Course Spira basically falls in the bad realm of fantasy known as "Anything Goes cause the Writer says so" so I guess you don't need to try and make sense of anything cause there is never enough explanation to ever give a satisfying conclusion to anything Nojima writes.

What else can I say.....
I guess you're just lucky they didn't walk in on you doing the Massage Minigame.

You know, I never liked that game anyway... but the results would probably have been the same.

Those are all great moments from FF8 to be sure. Though of course many would say Squall and Rinoa are cringeworthy too. Eyes on Me is about bad as real Emotion to a lot of FF fans.

Anyway, the plot of X-2 is standard FF formula. Mundane every day life or small conflict turned world crisis. The game gives you a good look into how Spira has changed after a thousand years of theocracy. You have to go around and deal with the repercussions of things that took place in X and so-on.
The main plot is decidedly small I'll grant you but there is a whole world of plot which was obviously the intent.

I'll agree that parts of Squall and Rinoa's relationship are definetly poorly developed and executed but oddly enough, I don't hate Rinoa (even more odd, despite my strong dislike of FFX, I actually like Tidus) so I never found her as grating as people build her up to be, of anything, I feel she's like many of the FF heroines and feels like a non-entity whose only purpose is to do something stupid to advance the plot. Even then, I feel she's not as bad as Dagger and Yuna in this regard.

As stated above, the rest of X-2's story is only interesting if you actually give a damn about the world but for me, I hated Spira, visually its gorgeous but its populated by people who are too stupid and "sheep like" to deserve to live.

Your defense of FFVIII is quite...strange. Again you freely admit all the characters suck except Squall and Laguna but that's okay?
I have yet to meet a more unlikable cast than FFVIII's. They're simply static characters with stock personalities. Given their total irrelevance to the plot and lack of development, you might as well cut them out of the story and glue in a character with the same archetype from another RPG.

I actually like VIII's cast, my main criticism of the cast is that they never grow beyond their initial personalities and most of them feel like they have one or two emotions only. Still, I actually don't mind this, cause despite they lack of depth, they are still fun to watch and they get the job done. I also like womanizers, so I never had a problem with Irvine, though I hate hyper active girls so I'll admit Selphie is quite unlikable. To be fair, its easier for a title to make a cast I'm okay with as opposed to loving them. I love very few of the FF casts as a whole so having a few duds is not a deal breaker for me. Squall alone carried a lot of the character growth for me but then again, I have a lot in common with him.

Personally, FFVII has my least favorite cast in the series but once again, I'm an oddity in the fandom apparently.

X-2
Let's take Yuna, who already has the personality of cardboard and make her the main character.

Arguably she was always the main character. The entire game of FFX revolves around her quest after all much like all of FFXII revolves around Ashe's quest.
\

I still consider Tidus more of the main character since the story is completely told from his perspective, which is more than I can say about Vaan. X is told from Tidus' perspective whereas XII took turns with each character and mostly told the story from a third person perspective.. Yuna is certainly a driving force in X's plot but so was Rinoa in VIII and most wouldn't say Rinoa was the main character of VIII.

Chronic Hero Syndrome

Yuna saves people because she chooses to. In FFX she was the tool of the Yevon church, of Seymour and in the end, of Tidus even. Her decisions were inconsequential as she was led by the nose everywhere.

In X-2 she helps people because it's the right thing to do.
Living your own life doesn't mean apathy to the horrible things going on around you.

In short "You don't need a reason to help people."

What are you talking about? Yuna did not make her decision to be a summoner in X because she was manipulated, she was just in love with the story of her father's heroic deeds and saw all the suffering around her and decided if daddy could do it, she could. The Yevon faith hardly manipulated her and Seymour's extension of manipulation was to have her marry him which he convinces her to do by appealing to her soft heart that wants to make people happy. Tidus hardly manipulated her as he himself had little control over what was going on himself, of anything they both were screwed by the games BS cosmology. She's the goody goody hero played to an extreme that makes her come across as a caricature of being a human being.

The whole nonsense with your party battling the Yevon faith was caused by Yuna being an idiot and deciding to try and deal with Seymour on her own after she discovered his secret. This could have been all avoided if she just either let it go (cause frankly this is politics) or at least told the rest of the party and her reckless need to set all wrongs right combined with her Miyaka sydrome that tells her to always do crap herself despite everything in the story saying she's a sitting duck without her competent bodyguards.

The problem is, she's still doing all this crap in X-2, she has always jumped at the chance of helping anyone in need and this never changed between either games, the extent of her transformation from either games was dressing sluttier and smiling more often but she's still the same goody good airhead as she was in the first game.

Yeah I definitely preferred X Rikku.

If by "prefer" you mean having your junk kicked instead of having your hand nailed into a wall, then I would agree, her original incarnation is not any better but as stated before, I despise the "Hyper-active Girl" cliche.

She's also snarkier and less bitchy. Lulu was a typical defrosting ice queen.

I never found Paine any more funny than Lulu, I really do feel they are interchangeable.

Except that "has little reason to be there except he's connected to a character" is usually the reason a character is part of the hero group in the first place.

Except, its mostly a tedious sidequest that is not needed to understand the plot meaning she could have been friends with Yu-Yevon and Yunalesca for all the good it does for her character. She's the loner character though, so they usually work better as a "Less is More", mentality of writing.

And you see Maecehn more than a lot of people. It's kind of his thing.

It doesn't change the fact he's annoying, even if X-2 was lampshading it, it doesn't mean I like having to deal with him even for comical purposes. His big secret was also pretty predictable as I pretty much knew he was an unsent in the original.

Shuyin's back-story only allows him to be sympathetic to people who will cry on any sob story the rest find him pretty pathetic and mostly at fault for his own problems.

Fixed again.
War-torn lovers is a very old and endearing plot line. Two people who want only to be together are forced apart by unfeeling murderers.
Lenne was going to die. That was beyond doubt.
So, naturally, the man who loved her did everything within his power to try and prevent it.
Some people are weak-willed and would let the loves of their lives die I guess but not everyone.

Fixed

No, Lenne was pretty much am upstanding soldier willing to help the cause and they lived in a time of war. She was pretty much willing to sacrifice her life for Shuyin and her home but being the clingy selfish prick that Shuyin was, he gets them both killed in a vain attempt to make himself happy cause he has convinced himself she is his everything. Not to mention its hard to think of him as sane to begin with seeing as how he built a damn doomsday device. To quote a bad movie,

"Sane People don't make weapons"
~Under Siege 2

Not to mention he spends the last 1000 years making Lenne worry and suffer over him cause he goes crazy wanting to be with her in his creepy stalker way and decides to end the world cause he can't be with her despite his revenge being against people who not only died 1000 years ago, but most likely in a gruesome way from Sin. How one goes from "Revenge against my killers" to "Wipe out all life on the planet" is just a major leap in logic and no amount of exposition and sob story is going to redeem a pathetic stalker and jerk like Shuyin after going that crazy. I'm surprised he didn't eat Lenne when they were reunited "so they would always be together". His whole story feels like a bad high school romance drama.

Berserker

It's Counter abilities are very useful and can be exploited to make it possibly the best Dressphere.

For what it's worth, I never used Gun Mages because Blue Magic has always been stupid and a chore to get.
"Derr. I want this ability. Better just hope I get hit with it".
Everyone knows how overpowered the Dark Knights are though. I've seen people finish off the superbosses with Three DKs just spamming Darkness.

Berserkers still suffer from just being outclassed by the overall usefulness of the Dark Knight. The DK dress sphere is just a game breaker through and through.

As for Gun Mages, I'm a huge fan of the Blue Mages and their ability to acquire skills I find fun and unique and sets them apart from the other mage classes, but I love them cause they are broken. You would be surprised how often Stone Breath works on everything. Hell, the Blue Magic of FFX is not so bad now that its not utilized exclusively as a Limit Break which was lame and didn't work in VIII either. They take time to build up but Blue Magic tends to be over powered in most of the FF games. Their species bullets for the Gun Mage make them competent fighters as well which is a first for the class.

It doesn't take that long if you know what you're doing. A slong as you remember which sphere is where, you can press R1 and switch to it within a second or so. I've seen it done a lot.

It still takes time, especially when you factor in some of the unnecessary spell effects and the fact the system was designed to have the CGI transformations all the time being the norm which gives them a bit of loading time for transformations even when shut off, it still only takes a few seconds but its a few seconds of all the action being completely stopped to load in the dress change.

The system is not nearly as fluid and I ended up playing the game like a straight version of FFIII with my party members ignoring class changes mid-battle and mostly not using the Garment Grid abilities. Still, the fact that I have to switch around to get sub class skills or even some decent magic is annoying, especially since half the time you'll start the battle in a class that doesn't use the ability well, meaning you have to waste time between rounds switching the classes around just so you can get the skill and fall into the class you need when a new battle starts which is a bit tedious in my book. Its almost like using some broken spell that blows all your MP and requires you to spend each time between fight restoring the characters MP in the menu screen, not exactly my idea of "fast" and "fun".

Because almost every RPG in history has an Equip function where you compensate for stats by equipping things...? This is hardly something new to X-2.

You missed my point, the Relic system allows you to augment skills and give the player special support skills and later on, nearly full job sub class abilites but most of the time you'll ignore them for the items that are nothing more than armor. How about we actually just implement a real armor system and let the Relics work like they should. I had a ton of relics and not only did I not bother using 90% of them, I sometimes felt like I couldn't cause what was the point in giving Paine the relic that gives a few Swordplay skills when I would need to sacrifice my relics needed to keep her from getting K.O. by most of the creatures from the halfway point of the game. Crisis Core had the same problem since Zack had an abysmal defense and it takes forever to build the stat raising materia...

On topic, I just feel the game misses the point of what the relic system is by not only making a lot of the times useless but then making other items mandatory to compensate for some awkward game design. The system is just poorly utilized, simple as that.

Overall:

You think FFVIII sucks but has a charm to its suckiness.

I don't get it.

Basically, VIII has its problems but depending on what you can put up with, its not all that bad. I actually like the game. X-2 on the other hand has some similar problems and I can't stand it for them cause the overall experience is not my cup of tea. Its not even the girl power crap though that is pretty cringe worthy at some points when the game tries to push it a little too hard and goes from B-movie bad to just plain unwatchable. I like VIII for its cast even if only a few of them really stand out and I like the Junction system cause I thought it was a nice idea.

For X-2, I like the idea behind the gameplay but felt the subject matter and the overall quality of the elements don't live up to the potential it could have been. Square is pretty damn awesome when it comes to the Job Class system but they seriously dropped the ball with X-2 due to balancing issues and annoying gimmicky gameplay mechanics. The system really only shines when you ignore most of its features and just except the fact that half the classes suck.

I pretty much hate Spira and Yuna so the story really never had a chance with me but despite all my criticism, I still think X-2 was actually a better game than FFX despite my feelings that the game should never had been made in the first place.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well I really have no motivation to reply to all that. The only reason I replied in the first place was because I was on an impassioned "defend something I like from its critics" fit. But it's gone now.

Honestly WK I do very much respect your opinion because you're obviously intelligent. Which is why when an obviously smart person like you critiques something I like, it makes me think there must be something very much wrong with the game and I'm just dumb for liking it.

But eh. That insecuirty comes and goes and I'm feeling pretty okay and calm right now.

I'll say this though about Shuyin's revenge thing. I notice it happens a lot in fiction. A person starts with seeking revenge against people who did them wrong but then they take it out on people who really did nothing to them. They seem to get lost in the anger of it all.
Acually, that happens a lot in real life too...probably why it happens so much in fiction. Art imitates life or whatever.

[Wolf Kanno]

Don't let me be the voice of quality, believe me. On the one hand, I can spend hours discussing the subtlety and complexity of Ico and how its minimalistic approach to story and character is so well crafted that the player finds themselves enraptured into the conflicts and lives of Yorda and the boy without realizing it and then on the other hand, I also like going out to arcades and playing DDR and lets face it, no matter how good you are, you always look dorky playing DDR.

So yeah... I'm an oddity amongst fans and despite my harsh words for X-2, the game is the smurfing RPG Holy Grail compared to trash like Crisis Core and epic quality failure like Hydlyde. I actually like the game more than FFX at least, I'm only being harsh cause I'm comparing it to another title I happen to like. Even then, I will agree that VIII is far far from being perfect and has probably one of the worst written stories in the series.

[Forsaken Lover]

Well that's cool then.

I made the topic to get everyone's views on the matter and everyone gave their honest opinion. So..that's all ya can really ask for.

To each their own as they say.

[Jessweeee♪]

I can't decide

What Mo-Nercy said for the most part!

[The Crystal]

Story:
VIII
Okay, VIII's plot is bat--crazy. It starts off really intriguing with child soldiers qwelling international disputes and a supernatural evil taking over a militant country to start the games equivalent of WWI, not to mention the eerie dream sequences where your party live the lives of enemy soldiers from 20 years ago. Then Disc 2 starts and we're faced with the most BS version of a wall banger plot twists and time travel crap that the player loses any sense of being able to take anything storywise serious.

Welcome to the Final Fantasy series. A series of games were you start as a relatively normal dude in an army/mercenary-group/terrorist-group/whataver fighting an evil empire/corporation/kingdom, but ends having to stop a demon/god/alien/demi-god/cosmic-horror/interdimensional-creature from destroying the world/planet/dimension/universe.

If those plot-twists cause you to "lose any sense of being able to take anything storywise seriously", then I suggest you stop playing FF games.

[Forsaken Lover]

Completely Missing The Point - Television Tropes & Idioms

Add yourself to that page somewhere Crystal.

He's complaining about the ridiculous "we all grew up together!" stuff. It has absolutely nothing to do with an escelation in conflict.