I hate this game, why does anyone play it?

[Shauna]

I don't understand the complaint about not being able to skip cutscenes. That was never an option in any FF before it, and having to sit through all those cutscenes again and again with every repeated playthrough is common to all the FFs preceding it. If you're going to complain about FFX not having it, then it's a complaint for all FFs, as this is not a "problem" localised to this game. It's not a reason FFX is bad, it's a reason Final Fantasy in general is bad.

You don't like the story - of course you won't like the cutscenes and everything that comes with it. I'm playing through FF7 for the first time. I find the story horribly dull, so having to sit through all the cutscenes and dialogue there is pretty awful. Heck, I can't even leave the room for 10 minutes for the cutscene to play itself out, because I have to progress it myself.

So yeah. Don't get it. xD

[ReloadPsi]

Well cutscenes (or "people standing around with dialogue boxes" in the much older entries) were very short in the first five games. In 6, 7, 8 and 9 I did eventually get tired of having to rattle the action button to skip dialogue boxes I'd already read about forty times before, but a turbo-fire controller with a bowl on the action button served as a passable solution for that while I checked my email or sent a text to a friend or something for a couple of minutes. Actually the fact I used a bowl made me hungry for cereal, heh. Even that lifestream sequence that I found rather dull after just the first time in FF7 only takes about fifteen minutes (still too long, though) with that technique, everything else is way shorter.

Yes, I do have films and TV series I've watched all the way through more than once, but after a while I just put them on as background noise while I do something else; I don't give them my full attention. I treat cutscenes in games I've given multiple playthroughs the same way. Unless I can skip 'em.

FFX's cutscenes occasionally let you cut off a line of dialogue but the pause still seems to be there as though they said the entire line anyway. There is no way to make them go by quicker. By FFX-2 they finally saw the damn light and added a skip function, so that's the game where I don't understand the complaints about its content :P

And like I keep saying, I was essentially browbeat into playing the game by my friends just so my opinion on it would be respected (people thought I would come around; they were wrong, and they've never used it since, with me now citing FFX as one of the games I use as my good reason not to give a game a chance if I instantly hate it... what really bit them in the ass was I was now constantly giving them advice with battle strategies because I had gotten better than they at the game in no time at all because it was so damn easy) so stop using the "shouldn't have played it" argument, because then I am roughly 412% certain you would instead argue that I couldn't knock it if I hadn't played it all the way through and "given it a chance."

Okay, you've earned it. I'm going to admit that I think a lot of the endgame content (dark aeons, other optional bosses and so on) is mostly really good, although some of the Sigil-earning minigames can smurf off and rot in a pit of cancerous AIDS flu.

[maybee]

I don't understand the complaint about not being able to skip cutscenes. That was never an option in any FF before it, and having to sit through all those cutscenes again and again with every repeated playthrough is common to all the FFs preceding it. If you're going to complain about FFX not having it, then it's a complaint for all FFs, as this is not a "problem" localised to this game. It's not a reason FFX is bad, it's a reason Final Fantasy in general is bad.

You don't like the story - of course you won't like the cutscenes and everything that comes with it. I'm playing through FF7 for the first time. I find the story horribly dull, so having to sit through all the cutscenes and dialogue there is pretty awful. Heck, I can't even leave the room for 10 minutes for the cutscene to play itself out, because I have to progress it myself.

So yeah. Don't get it. xD

Agree so much with this.

Why do you want to skip the cutscences anyway ? I mean, don't you want to know the characters, story and the world ?

It just doesn't make sense.

[Jiro]

Cons > dreadful villian compared to Kefka, Sephiroth and Kuja.

I can't even begin to understand how you came to this conclusion! Seymour is far from being a terrible villain. His motivations are definitely misguided. He wants to become Sin - or at the very least, just kill everything himself - in the pursuit of ending Spira's inevitable cycle. If you think about it, he's actually after the same thing the party wants, in a sense. But his means and the specific end that they lead to are all wrong according to, I think, most people.

But when you think about his background as a half breed and the sheer amount of torment he must have endured, then coupled with his mother's death, the identity crisis with his whole being half n half, and that. Then obviously his pursuit of power and oh man Seymour is actually a rather great villain. He's creepy, but suave. The whole of Spira loves him. I could easily compare his insanity to that of Kefka, and then point out the fact that at least there is a reason for Seymour to be a sociopath.

I could expand further, but really, I think Seymour is a far greater villain than people give him credit. Also, I defer to Goldenboko on all other points: this game is a masterpiece and we should learn to appreciate it more.

[Pete for President]

Cons > dreadful villian compared to Kefka, Sephiroth and Kuja.

I can't even begin to understand how you came to this conclusion! Seymour is far from being a terrible villain. His motivations are definitely misguided. He wants to become Sin - or at the very least, just kill everything himself - in the pursuit of ending Spira's inevitable cycle. If you think about it, he's actually after the same thing the party wants, in a sense. But his means and the specific end that they lead to are all wrong according to, I think, most people.

But when you think about his background as a half breed and the sheer amount of torment he must have endured, then coupled with his mother's death, the identity crisis with his whole being half n half, and that. Then obviously his pursuit of power and oh man Seymour is actually a rather great villain. He's creepy, but suave. The whole of Spira loves him. I could easily compare his insanity to that of Kefka, and then point out the fact that at least there is a reason for Seymour to be a sociopath.

I could expand further, but really, I think Seymour is a far greater villain than people give him credit. Also, I defer to Goldenboko on all other points: this game is a masterpiece and we should learn to appreciate it more.

Well said. I definitely agree on Seymour being a great villain and he indeed has the same goal as the party has. It's also pretty rare to see a villain be so friendly to the party (and all of Spira) at first, and Wakka's dilemma when you first fight him always gets to me.

I don't think I can appreciate this masterpiece more than I already do though, it's been my #1 fav game since I first finished it in 2003/2004...

[Jiro]

You're excused from stepping up your love then, Pete!

[ReloadPsi]

I don't understand the complaint about not being able to skip cutscenes. That was never an option in any FF before it, and having to sit through all those cutscenes again and again with every repeated playthrough is common to all the FFs preceding it. If you're going to complain about FFX not having it, then it's a complaint for all FFs, as this is not a "problem" localised to this game. It's not a reason FFX is bad, it's a reason Final Fantasy in general is bad.

You don't like the story - of course you won't like the cutscenes and everything that comes with it. I'm playing through FF7 for the first time. I find the story horribly dull, so having to sit through all the cutscenes and dialogue there is pretty awful. Heck, I can't even leave the room for 10 minutes for the cutscene to play itself out, because I have to progress it myself.

So yeah. Don't get it. xD

Agree so much with this.

Why do you want to skip the cutscences anyway ? I mean, don't you want to know the characters, story and the world ?

It just doesn't make sense.

Then like a fair few others you haven't been paying attention to what I typed, which I guess speaks volumes.

I suppose I'm now going to have to subject myself to a third run through this with a DVD recorder or similar just so I can isolate and point out everything that sucks about this game and show you why you are wrong and I am right. Of course the only person I know who owns it refuses to lend me it because I voiced that intention, plus I don't have - nor can I afford - a DVD recorder at the minute :P

[Nebulance]

I don't understand the complaint about not being able to skip cutscenes. That was never an option in any FF before it, and having to sit through all those cutscenes again and again with every repeated playthrough is common to all the FFs preceding it. If you're going to complain about FFX not having it, then it's a complaint for all FFs, as this is not a "problem" localised to this game. It's not a reason FFX is bad, it's a reason Final Fantasy in general is bad.

You don't like the story - of course you won't like the cutscenes and everything that comes with it. I'm playing through FF7 for the first time. I find the story horribly dull, so having to sit through all the cutscenes and dialogue there is pretty awful. Heck, I can't even leave the room for 10 minutes for the cutscene to play itself out, because I have to progress it myself.

So yeah. Don't get it. xD

Agree so much with this.

Why do you want to skip the cutscences anyway ? I mean, don't you want to know the characters, story and the world ?

It just doesn't make sense.

Then like a fair few others you haven't been paying attention to what I typed, which I guess speaks volumes.

I suppose I'm now going to have to subject myself to a third run through this with a DVD recorder or similar just so I can isolate and point out everything that sucks about this game and show you why you are wrong and I am right. Of course the only person I know who owns it refuses to lend me it because I voiced that intention, plus I don't have - nor can I afford - a DVD recorder at the minute :P

If you want to see someone rip FFX apart, just watch Spoony's review.

PS -- ReloadPsi: If you hate this game so much, why waste so much of your energy showing it here, a forum dedicated (mostly) to how much we love it? I understand the whole 'free speech/opinion' argument -- and I respect your opinion, I just don't agree with it, but why waste your time? I highly doubt anyone will change their opinion after reading a few posts of negative/critical comments.

I just think there's got to be something else that you can spend your time on that won't fall on deaf ears, that's all.

This isn't to say I don't enjoy the discussion.

[ReloadPsi]

Honestly? I didn't actually agree with some of Spoony's points. Let's see...

His claim that Tidus was not the hero of the story is total BS; he appears out of nowhere and, largely by accident mind you, creates enough of a stir (largely because Jecht did so already when Yuna met him, leaving her a bit more incredulous than all the other summoners) that he ultimately forms a team of militant atheists to take down the evil church of Yevon. If Tidus had not been brought to Spira, none of it could've happened. In the sense he was suggesting Yuna was the true heroine, she was about as heroic as any sacrificial victim of any other religion with such practices that our planet ever had, i.e. not very; just an innocent victim.

Also his remarks about Seymour showed that he didn't seem to have grasped the plot very well. Seymour was half human, half Guado. Makes sense that his hair would be that wacky considering his father was a tree-headed thing, but Spoony bitches for many minutes about how ridiculously he styles his hair. I guess he was going for funny but it just comes off as ignorant. He also suspected Seymour headed Operation Mi'hen, when in reality the Crusaders did it without Yevon's input. Seymour just came to give his "blessing" to put the writing on the wall in what I thought was brilliantly cynical actually.

Uh... that's all I can remember :P I'd re-watch it and count more points that I disagree with but I'm very, very limited on bandwidth these days unfortunately.

Now to answer your other question: because the thread title is "I hate this game, why does anyone play it?" - I throw these points out to reinforce the validity of the question. If you have a problem with that then kindly direct it at whomever started the thread.

In all fairness I preferred X-2 for like a bazillion reasons, the main one being there's only one tutorial battle in the entire game and then it leaves you to figure everything out for yourself. Well, I say everything, but it's almost as easy as X was anyway.

[Nebulance]

Honestly? I didn't actually agree with some of Spoony's points. Let's see...

His claim that Tidus was not the hero of the story is total BS; he appears out of nowhere and, largely by accident mind you, creates enough of a stir (largely because Jecht did so already when Yuna met him, leaving her a bit more incredulous than all the other summoners) that he ultimately forms a team of militant atheists to take down the evil church of Yevon. If Tidus had not been brought to Spira, none of it could've happened. In the sense he was suggesting Yuna was the true heroine, she was about as heroic as any sacrificial victim of any other religion with such practices that our planet ever had, i.e. not very; just an innocent victim.

Also his remarks about Seymour showed that he didn't seem to have grasped the plot very well. Seymour was half human, half Guado. Makes sense that his hair would be that wacky considering his father was a tree-headed thing, but Spoony bitches for many minutes about how ridiculously he styles his hair. I guess he was going for funny but it just comes off as ignorant. He also suspected Seymour headed Operation Mi'hen, when in reality the Crusaders did it without Yevon's input. Seymour just came to give his "blessing" to put the writing on the wall in what I thought was brilliantly cynical actually.

Uh... that's all I can remember :P I'd re-watch it and count more points that I disagree with but I'm very, very limited on bandwidth these days unfortunately.

Now to answer your other question: because the thread title is "I hate this game, why does anyone play it?" - I throw these points out to reinforce the validity of the question. If you have a problem with that then kindly direct it at whomever started the thread.

In all fairness I preferred X-2 for like a bazillion reasons, the main one being there's only one tutorial battle in the entire game and then it leaves you to figure everything out for yourself. Well, I say everything, but it's almost as easy as X was anyway.

All I'm saying is that you're putting an awful lot of energy into it, after a while I don't see the point.

I agree about Spoony. He seems to have missed the point. It is funny to watch however. His comments about Wakka's weapon always crack me up.

[ReloadPsi]

I'm putting energy into it because I really do have a lot of contempt for this game. Even now I still get a lot of crap off some people for not liking it so I really have to give back. I know that's the people's fault and not the game but if the subject comes up I'm not gonna hold back. It boggles my mind that a game that spends most of its run giving you clear instructions on how to win every battle (and minimal options to the contrary until much later on, even if you picked the advanced grid) or constant padding with redundant unskippable dialogue can be considered good, especially an RPG, a genre that should be all about replay value.

I do like some games (Bubsy on the SNES, Metal Gear 2 on the MSX) films (Alien 3, Jurassic Park II) and TV shows (Dragon Ball Kai) that can be objectively considered crap (Bubsy is a cookie-cutter platformer with really dodgy jumping/falling physics that goes too fast for a character who dies in one hit; Metal Gear 2's backtracking sucks and the level design is utterly deranged; Alien 3 basically doesn't feel remotely like the first two films; Lost World turned a beautiful concept about seeing extinct creatures believably interact with humans into a basic B-movie plot about watching some annoying twats die; Dragon Ball's writing comes across as though Akira Toriyama likes to just pull stuff out of his ass at any given moment) but at least I'm willing to admit it.

[Skyblade]

Cons > dreadful villian compared to Kefka, Sephiroth and Kuja.

I can't even begin to understand how you came to this conclusion! Seymour is far from being a terrible villain. His motivations are definitely misguided. He wants to become Sin - or at the very least, just kill everything himself - in the pursuit of ending Spira's inevitable cycle. If you think about it, he's actually after the same thing the party wants, in a sense. But his means and the specific end that they lead to are all wrong according to, I think, most people.

But when you think about his background as a half breed and the sheer amount of torment he must have endured, then coupled with his mother's death, the identity crisis with his whole being half n half, and that. Then obviously his pursuit of power and oh man Seymour is actually a rather great villain. He's creepy, but suave. The whole of Spira loves him. I could easily compare his insanity to that of Kefka, and then point out the fact that at least there is a reason for Seymour to be a sociopath.

I could expand further, but really, I think Seymour is a far greater villain than people give him credit. Also, I defer to Goldenboko on all other points: this game is a masterpiece and we should learn to appreciate it more.

Well said. I definitely agree on Seymour being a great villain and he indeed has the same goal as the party has. It's also pretty rare to see a villain be so friendly to the party (and all of Spira) at first, and Wakka's dilemma when you first fight him always gets to me.

I don't think I can appreciate this masterpiece more than I already do though, it's been my #1 fav game since I first finished it in 2003/2004...

Seymour was bland. He was a boring, vacuous, non-entity. And somehow, when he dies, he just gets worse.

His motivations, in addition to being cliche, make no damned sense. Destroying Spira will not save it, and we see proof of that thousands of times throughout the game. Heck, Seymour is proof of it himself. He was destroyed, he died, and yet he is not at rest or at peace, instead he gets even more obsessive over his destruction goals. He's more driven, more determined, and more boring after he's dead.

Auron died, yet he wasn't at peace. Nor was Belgimine, Maester Micah, Maechan, or any of the hundreds of others of unsent we see throughout Spira.

And, no matter what your arguments of "oh, he's half-Guado, so that's why he looks like that", it doesn't change that his character design is frelling stupid. Nor, frankly, is it that accurate. His hair is far longer and more intricate than either any Guado or human character in the game. The Guado almost all have short hair, that, while styled similarly to a much smaller degree, don't match up with the far larger idiotic hair design Seymour wears.

He's a boring, cookie-cutter, stupid villain, and one of the worst, if not the worst, thing in the game.

[Levian]

Tidus is about as charismatic as a seagull, but everything else in the game more than makes up for it.

It's one of the best games of all time.

[ReloadPsi]

His motivations, in addition to being cliche, make no damned sense. Destroying Spira will not save it, and we see proof of that thousands of times throughout the game. Heck, Seymour is proof of it himself. He was destroyed, he died, and yet he is not at rest or at peace, instead he gets even more obsessive over his destruction goals. He's more driven, more determined, and more boring after he's dead.

He think he's assisting in the suicide of people who do not want it, but that he believes to have such a desire deep down. It made perfect sense to me, especially when you keep in mind most of the unsent are supposed to become fiends, not slightly pissed-off zombies. Even then, if he were Sin, he could just sit on any unsent that stayed human. Ain't no way they're retaining their form after that.

Also I'd argue that Maechen actually seemed very happy. He got to continue wandering Spira, learning about - or rather living - its history and recounting it to others. Sometimes learning and imparting knowledge can be a joyous, satisfying thing to do. Maechen seemed to be well into it.

Oh christ did I just defend the game again?

And, no matter what your arguments of "oh, he's half-Guado, so that's why he looks like that", it doesn't change that his character design is frelling stupid. Nor, frankly, is it that accurate. His hair is far longer and more intricate than either any Guado or human character in the game. The Guado almost all have short hair, that, while styled similarly to a much smaller degree, don't match up with the far larger idiotic hair design Seymour wears.

He's a boring, cookie-cutter, stupid villain, and one of the worst, if not the worst, thing in the game.

Oh man. Every time I find something to appreciate or defend about this game I'm proven to have been wrong. This game really is a huge turd innit? :P

[Hollycat]

Seymour = Necron.