Free reign or Pre-determined?

[Loony BoB]

In all honesty, I've yet to really be 100% disappointed by a Final Fantasy job system. I've enjoyed every one I've played so far. If I had to pick one I didn't really catch on with it's probably XII. I agree that a lack of limit breaks adds to this, but I just ended up cycling my characters without any real regard for who they were. Perhaps at the very start I may have favoured Penelo as a mage, or something similar to that, but it's only because of the way the licences had panned out at that time. Once things got to about half-way point, everyone's licence boards were relatively full and it wasn't much of a challenge anymore. Run around, hit things, gain experience, move on. I didn't pay attention to what characters I had. That's probably a very bad sign for an RPG battle system, now that I think about it. In VII and VIII I paid attention, but only because I liked certain characters and their general feel in battle.

For pre-determined jobs such as in IX and X I really enjoyed being a bit more tactical for the most part. As time moved on, sure, certain jobs became less obvious but I don't think to an extent that they were no longer relevant. For example, if I knew that a tough enemy was weak to magic, I wouldn't think twice about drafting in Lulu immediately. To not do so would be insane for me. So that tells me that the jobs were still noticeable.

FFV remains my overall favourite job system. It is, as Murd pointed out, still a carbon copy system... but it's so damned fun.

The one thing I'd love to see is a modern FF using customisable pre-determined jobs. In other words, you do choose the jobs, but they are fixed once chosen. I think that would allow for a lot of replay value and I don't recall seeing such a thing in modern JRPGs. Please let me know if you know of a good JRPG that uses such a thing!

[kotora]

The one thing I'd love to see is a modern FF using customisable pre-determined jobs. In other words, you do choose the jobs, but they are fixed once chosen. I think that would allow for a lot of replay value and I don't recall seeing such a thing in modern JRPGs. Please let me know if you know of a good JRPG that uses such a thing!

The zodiac job system in FF12 Int. does that and it sucks balls

[Del Murder]

That's not a job though. The Zodiac system is more like assigning your team permanent limit breaks.

[DMKA]

I just hated the way it was in XII because all the characters were quite literally EXACTLY the same. People are pointing out VII but at least in VII they all had their own set of different limit breaks and different weapons. Same with VIII, X and XIII. XII is the only one where your characters are all just the exact same blank empty shells of characters in battle.

III and V (and X-2) were that way too. The difference with those is that they all use the job system which is about 50 times better than the license board.

Yeah, you're right. But those job systems are fun (particularly V's and X-2's were wonderful).

[Dignified Pauper]

I enjoy predetermined characters far more, because they seem to feel much more integrated into the story. However, in a tactics style game, like FFT, I love those job systems.

[kotora]

That's not a job though. The Zodiac system is more like assigning your team permanent limit breaks.

what are you talking about? the zodiac job system means you pick out one of several jobs for your character which are basically just isolated parts of the license grid.

[Del Murder]

Oh, I thought you were talking about the summons.

[Yar]

I would say I like the predetermined ones better, but my favorites are the job systems from V and X-2.

What I love about these two is the meticulous micromanaging I can do. I love micromanaging my characters. Also, your parties have [mostly] the same members throughout the game, so there's no need to ignore any characters.

I hate X and XIII because your characters are designed to grow the exact same way every time you pay the game, but it's disguised in some pseudo-optional manner. It's just irritating to have to manually grow your characters when they really don't have much choice anyway.