Census Results - Get your slack asses in here.

[Slothy]

Time for another reveal. Now for those that don't know, while I can be a bit of an obnoxious, self-righteous, hateful ass sometimes, I'm generally not that bad all of the time, or even most of the time. In fact, I find laying it on as thick as I do in the census reveal to be emotionally draining. Far more than you might expect because I really have to throw myself into it to the point of almost believing the things I say. This is why the reveal usually took me the better part of a week in the past. But since Jiro is co-hosting and we want things to move along a bit more quickly than they previously have (and seriously, these write ups take longer than you'd expect), I'm going to drop the shtick for a few minutes to give myself a mental break and keep on updating for you folks. I'll probably still offer up some criticism of your choices, but it won't be filled with quite so much seething rage.

Moving on. We're going to reveal the results for:

Favorite dungeon

Coming in dead last are the usual 1 vote entries:
Cleft of Dimensions
Ultimecia Castle
Tomb of the Unknown King
Pandemonium
Temple of the Ancients
Deep Sea Research Center
Shin-Ra Building
Archylte Steppe (XIII-2)

I don't have too much to say here. Most are bit meh for me, but the Shin-Ra Building stands out for being quite a unique dungeon experience. More like part dungeon, part town really given the large sections with no combat. It also has the distinction of setting up a mystery which is far cooler than its eventual resolution.

Cleft of Dimensions was also cool, but I'll let Velo explain why:

Favorite dungeon: Cleft of Dimension
I thought it was cool how you just went through all of these incredibly non sequitur locations.

Pretty much what I was thinking. It's a bit of an interesting journey through seemingly unrelated areas which were pulled into the void. Certainly an experience to say the least since you never know where you'll end up.

Second Place:
Lunar Subterrane – 2 total votes
Memoria - 2 total votes

Confession time: I barely remember Memoria. Why? Because despite FFIX being one of my favourite FF titles, I've found the time to beat it precisely once over the years. Yep, I've owned it for 12 year now, have played through large portions of it multiple times, consider it easily one of my top 3 FF titles, but I've yet to see the final dungeon for a second time. Can anyone else explain why it's worthy of second place?

Favorite dungeon: Memoria!

Favorite dungeon: Memoria

I guess not, though Freya's exclamation mark does shed some light on the mystery.

Luckily, I am far more familiar with the Lunar Subterrane. A wonderful place filled with cool gear, tough enemies, tougher bosses, and all kinds of hidden paths and secrets to explore. Were it not for the stupid encounter rates in FFIV I'd say it was a contender for first, so second is pretty good.

First Place:
Kefka’s Tower - 3 total votes
Northern Crater - 3 total votes

And here we are. The top two. FFVII shows its inexplicable popularity again. I'm not sure why people like the Northern Crater this much as I remember it being pretty unremarkable. I'd like to give someone's explanation, but no one backed up their choice. So I guess we'll just have to assume that you folks just like big giant holes.

But Kefka's Tower makes sense to me. A three party boss gauntlet with multiple sections where all parties are needed to advance, with some cool gear, epic battles, great music, and of course, it ends in one of the best final boss fights with the best final boss theme in the series.

Favorite dungeon
Kefka's Tower. By that point you'd been introduced to splitting up parties, but never forced to do it with three whole groups. Add in that the whole thing was a bit of a puzzle and one long boss rush and it made getting to Kefka feel as epic as it should have. Especially if many of your characters were under leveled. It also feels a lot more like the final showdown if you have to bring almost every character you have out of a cast of 14. Brilliant design for a game with such a huge cast. Simply heading into the final dungeon with 4 people wouldn't have cut it.

Favorite dungeon: Kefka's Tower, for embodying just what happened to the world.

Not really gameplay related but we'll take it.

Favorite dungeon - Kefka's Tower, I mean it involved three parties doing a massive switch puzzle and it's combined with a heavy dose of Boss Rush, including a rematch with Ultima Weapon, finally tackling the unstoppable Crusader, and battling the awakened Warring Triad. All this, just before you meet up with Kefka himself and his four tier boss battle done to the best final boss theme in the series. It was the right combination of puzzles, good boss battles, and excellent pacing as you climbed the tower that really set the pace for the climax of the story.

I don't think anyone's surprised that WK and myself agree.

Well, that was nice and relaxing. Which of course means that Jiro will have to be twice as hateful in his next post.

Though not to leave you all without some hatred: FFXIII's paradigm system is terrible Jiro and I should toss you off the census committee for even implying it's good. Luckily for you I'm being nice this post.