Census Results - Get your slack asses in here.

[Jiro]

Well you do get that bonus until the very end of the game, in a sense. Also I will use the word pun however I damn well please.

[Jessweeee♪]

A permanent +10 HP. That is to say, permanent until you get a game over because Rinoa died.

Yeah. I didn't say it was a good idea, just that you could! I wonder why they bothered letting you? Pretty funny I think.

[Mercen-X]

I will use the word pun however I damn well please.

Well, you're no pun. :sweatdrop

[Jiro]

Surprise!

Least Favourite Recurring Summon

These guys keep coming back. Why? Well I guess Square Enix thought that people appreciated a little consistency. That's probably why they went and did that stupid smurfing linking of FFVII, FFX and FFX-2. Then they went and put FFTactics, FFTA, FFTA2, FFXII, Revenant Wings and Vagrant Story in the same universe. God damn. But you hate this sort of thing. You like it when everything is FRESH and EXCITING. Well fine. Have it your way.

First Place (3)
Just two tied winners here. Say hello to Ifrit and Odin!

Odin. I don't like horses.

I'm sure they absolutely love you though Bubba. Mmmhmmm. Yeaaah.

I'll go with Ifrit. I generally dislike the early summons, particularly elementals because magic can usually do their job just as well or better, and with less MP cost. The only reason I'm going with Ifrit over Shiva or Ramuh is because Ramuh looks like Gandalf and Shiva shows some skin. Sure, these summons have been useful in some games (even if Ramuh gets replaced too often), but by and large I never use them. Maybe I've never forgiven them for being useless in FFIV since you start with Titan and the like as soon as you have access to them and Titan was always cooler.

Titan is pretty cool but the fact you vote for the weird demon over the sexy chick and gandalf makes me love you so hard.

Odin, at least until they figured out he should so damage if he can’t instant death.

Odin ever deals damage?

Odin has a habit of instant killing enemies, which can be annoying if you're trying to deal with them in a certain manner, or steal from them, or something of the sort. His ability is also random, and doesn't work on bosses, making it one really inconvenient manner of doing stuff.

Stupid smurfing instant death when you don't want it.

One Pointers

• Titan
• Chocobo
• Diabolos
• Ramuh

Chocobo, not useful in battle, but it was fun to watch in FF VII.

Way to pick one of the least recurring summons bro.

I don't know

WELL NEITHER DO I.

Diabolos...useless where it counts.

Which is where? Try being more specific guys. Come on. Seriously now.

Ramuh. Didn't really find him useful in any FF I played that has him. I'm just gonna assume he counts as recurring.

I like to think that a big beardy old dude with command over lightning would be pretty smurfing useful. Have you ever been struck by lightning? No? Well then you don't get a say.

Third Place (2)
Quite a few tied up here! Give a big warm welcome to Siren, Shiva, Slyph and Carbuncle! Way to ruin the smurfing S thing we had going, you sluts.

Siren. Nothing worth spending the MP to summon her is vulnerable to silence. And then in FFVIII you get Doomtrain anyway.

Doomtrain only causes arousal in one person I know, though.

Hard to come up with one here since most recurring summons are pretty good. I'll go with Sylph.

Didn't even know Slyph was recurring. Maybe you're wrong.

Gameplay-wise, Siren.

I think this is the second time you've done this. YES, GAMEPLAY WISE YOU GIANT SPASTIC. THAT WAS THE ENTIRE POINT OF EVERYTHING. I wonder now if you've just answered these questions aesthetically or something because it would explain why you are so far off the mark that I want to kill myself before you.

Carbuncle, because it's rarely useful after the token boss battle after you just acquire it(Exdeath, Edea, ect...). The only game it would have been super useful in is a game that predates it's existence (IV).

That actually makes sense so I forgive you for breaking the S chain we had going.


SEE HOW smurfING CONFUSING THINGS ARE WHEN YOU CHANGE THEM UP? Let's not hate on tradition, folks. Let's enjoy it like one enjoys a nice glass of chocolate milk after a hard day of being awesome. Not that you would know.

[Del Murder]

Sylph is in FFIV and FFV!

[Jiro]

That's like saying Gogo is a recurring character. One cameo does not count.

[Loony BoB]

That's like saying Gogo is a recurring character. One cameo does not count.

On the first occasion, Sylph occurs. On the second occasion, Sylph reoccurs.

Also, all summons are cameos, surely?

How is Siren off the mark!?

[Jessweeee♪]

The only reason I voted Siren instead of Carbuncle is because Carbuncle has at least one boss fight it's useful for in FFVIII. If you summon him your first fight against Edea then she won't do anything until she's dispelled reflect from your whole party (in later fights she'll just cast reflect on herself). Siren was never useful (at least as a summon in battle).

[Mercen-X]

I ended up voting Titan? Despite not even knowing he was really a recurring summon because I've only seen him VII... and my answer of "I don't know" was inaccurate. Titan is more or less useless in VII because it doesn't damage flying creatures (which there is a surprising number of) and you get him late in the game. If I had had access to Titan like perhaps against Aps, I'd probably have voted for some other summon. Oh well...

[Slothy]

Well, it's the end of a long day and we're nearing the end of the census reveal (should only be another week or seven) so I don't really have the energy to be a jerk. Lucky for all of you I'm sure.

Favourite Limit Break System
First the one pointers because changing things up just to confuse people is cruel when you're IQ's are so abysmally low:

Skillchains
Desperation Attacks (VI)
Trance

I don't know what skillchains are.

Favorite limit break system - Skillchain System (FF11)

Still don't know what they are, but at least now I know which game I won't be looking up on the FF wiki because I don't really care.

Spooniest voted for FFVI's desperation attacks making him one of the 1% of FFVI players who has ever even seen them. He offered no explanation for his answer. My guess is he was high on LSD when he voted.

Favorite limit break system - Trance, I appreciate that it wasn't simply just some special FMV style attack but something that changed the effectiveness of a character's given role in battle. I also actually don't mind having them non-transferrable because I feel Limit Breaks break the games when they are made too useful. I mean they seriously suck the challenge out of boss battles in VII, VIII, and X.

I agree with you on the first part, but not about them being used immediately and never being able to be saved. Yeah you could argue that limits break VII, VIII, and X. Instead I'd argue they were already broken so twisting the arm a bit more doesn't really matter much. Either way, I'd rather have the ability to control them. Whether they're broken or not is really a separate issue altogether.

Next up:
Quickenings - 2 total votes

Favorite limit break system
I wouldn't say I'm super partial to any of them. I guess I'll go with FFXII though. It was useful, could be used when it would benefit you the most, but had the potential to fail spectacularly and leave you vulnerable without much MP. Every other system was either too exploitable, or tried to remove your control over it to make it less exploitable, but also a lot less useful.

It's almost like I tailored my answer as a response to WK's despite getting my votes in before his. Yep, here we go. Useful, but with a massive downside, especially if you don't do much damage. Pretty much the best expression of limits so far if you ask me, even if they did look ridiculous.

Sadly, by voting for FFXII here I also happened to agree with Sum1sGruj. If it weren't for him being banned (and crazy) we may have been able to bond over this common ground.

Third place:
Desperation Attacks (VIII) - 3 total votes

Favorite limit break system
FFVIII. Partly because they all function in a unique way and parly because they're pretty broken. When I want to just beat something into the ground I bring Irvine with his bottomless supply of ammo (courtesy of Ifrit) and Zell with those .3 second punches.

Voting for them because they're broken? Ok, I can understand that I guess. I mean, it's not like FFVIII wasn't broken already with that awfully balanced junction system so adding on the limits on top of it is really just the final straw that broke the camels back.

Favorite limit break system: FFVIII - Unique per character, more likely to come around during low health, making you weigh up the risk of death vs. the strenght of attacks. It can get out of hand at times, particularly with the 'luck of the draw' bit. But I think if they combined VII with VIII so that the limit bar just went up far faster when in 'yellow' health, that would probably make the perfect limit system for me.

Wait, Loony BoB made a valid point for once? smurf me sideways! Yep, limits were so over the top broken in FFVII that they at least tried to fix them. Of course the whole risk/reward thing didn't pan out too well when there was some risk, but the reward was instantly killing anything ever.

Second Place:
Overdrives - 7 total votes

Favorite limit break system: FFX. I liked the different methods you could set to get your Overdrive and the different button presses for each character were cool too.

Pretty much every explanation ctrl+f found for me was a variant of this. Yep, FFX let you choose how best to break the game. And apparently people like pressing buttons or something.

First Place:
Limit Break (VII) – 8 total votes

What else but the game that started us on the sketchy train to broke town could you possibly pick? Yeah, I know, FFVI had limits first. But until someone other than Spooniest sees one they don't count.

Favorite limit break system: FFVII. Omnislash. That is all.

Concise, to the point, and the best example of how broken FFVII is. Fair enough.

Favorite limit break system: FF7. I liked the fact that you got more of them the tighter a spot you got into, that you could have some control over when you used them but by having them eliminate the ‘Attack’ command it was difficult to save them for extended periods of time.

You heard it here first folks. Limits: the FFVII easy button.

Well, that's all we have time for now folks. Join us next time when we'll be randomly selecting a single voter and petitioning WK to ban them if their answer offends us.

That or we'll just have more reveals or something. I don't know.

[Mercen-X]

Please! Let it be me!

[Del Murder]

The only reason I voted Siren instead of Carbuncle is because Carbuncle has at least one boss fight it's useful for in FFVIII. If you summon him your first fight against Edea then she won't do anything until she's dispelled reflect from your whole party (in later fights she'll just cast reflect on herself). Siren was never useful (at least as a summon in battle).

Carbuncle is also super useful in FFXI and super cute too.

[The Man]

I don't really have the energy to be a jerk. Lucky for all of you I'm sure.

Who are you kidding, you and Jiro being jerks is the best part about this census.

[Jessweeee♪]

The only reason I voted Siren instead of Carbuncle is because Carbuncle has at least one boss fight it's useful for in FFVIII. If you summon him your first fight against Edea then she won't do anything until she's dispelled reflect from your whole party (in later fights she'll just cast reflect on herself). Siren was never useful (at least as a summon in battle).

Carbuncle is also super useful in FFXI and super cute too.

I wish I could play FFXI!

[Jiro]

Oi. Dickheads. Over here. Yeah, you. I'm talking to you, the slackjawed halfwit who is clearly suffering from at least two mental disabilities and three or more physical ones. Time for another reveal. You thought I had forgotten? No, I just had better things to do then feed you swines useful information. Don't be bitches about it.

I hope you are as attentive as I am because we're going to try something again. Two-in-one. You remember how this went last time? Good, because it will be completely different. Let's try and use some tables.

Favourite Limit Break System ----------- Least Favourite Limit Break System
Limit Breaks (VII)................8 ---------------Trance...............................10
Overdrives.........................7 --------------- Desperation Attacks (VI).......4
Desperation Attacks(VIII)....3 --------------- Desperation Attacks (VIII).....3
Quickenings.......................2 --------------- Full ATB Attack....................2
Skillchains..........................1 --------------- Overdrives...........................1
Desperation Attacks (VI).....1 --------------- Quickenings.........................1
Trance..............................1

Favourite Limit Break System
I wouldn't say I'm super partial to any of them. I guess I'll go with FFXII though. It was useful, could be used when it would benefit you the most, but had the potential to fail spectacularly and leave you vulnerable without much MP. Every other system was either too exploitable, or tried to remove your control over it to make it less exploitable, but also a lot less useful.

Least Favourite Limit Break System
FFVI. Since your characters only use theirs at random when low on health I didn't even know about them until years after buying the game and several playthroughs. And even after I found out about them, it was another few years until I saw Mog use his. I've never seen one used since that either for the very simple reason that I don't let my characters remain low on health. Usually they won't even lose enough to be able to use their abilities.

Favourite Limit Break System
FF7. I liked the fact that you got more of them the tighter a spot you got into, that you could have some control over when you used them but by having them eliminate the ‘Attack’ command it was difficult to save them for extended periods of time. Honorable mention goes to FF10. Though the fact you could just have them constantly saved to unload on a boss was unbalancing the fact that you could change how they charged enabled you to fit them in a little more with your strategy. It would be interested to see this implemented in a better way.

Least Favourite Limit Break System
FF6. In theory having an awesome desperation attack come save you is cool, but they were so infrequent I have to be constantly reminded they exist. Honorable mention goes to FF8 for being so exploitable.

These are the only two people who gave me answers that could be used here. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. The Desperation Attacks of Final Fantasy VIII have people on the fence, but it seems that, for the first time this entire smurfing Census, you people haven't been completely garbage. Well done!