IGN's Top 100 RPG's of All Time

[Wolf Kanno]

I never said FFXIII is one of the best games, and I'm not sure if I've actually said it was 'great'. I do believe that the character grouping is arguably the best ever, the time spent showing us each character is the best ever, and that (most notably) it is a good game, not a crap one. You just seem to think that anyone who disagrees with you saying FFXIII is crap seems to have some insane obligation to state that it is a great game, one of the best, etc, when really they can just like the game without seeing it as one of the all time greats.

I'm sure you said it was a great game in some thread, but honeslty, it's not that I isagree with your position, it's honeslty that I find the idea of XIII being enjoyable as such a foreign concept that I honestly have to try to construct the type of individual who could possibly find enjoyment from this insufferable, poorly told, and tedious game simply results in a migraine. I honestly can't see anything good enough in this title to feel it deserves evn being called an "okay game". It is seriously the worst thing I've played since I was a child playing some of the shoevelware titles on the NES. I will be honest when I say I don't really trust any other games such a person would recommend cause we are seriously from two different worlds if that trite is anything more that utter trout. It is 40 hours of my life I will never get back and I seriously want a refund.

Otherwise one could argue that VI's (and pretty much every other FF's) story is just as linear. All the key points happen in order, as they do with pretty much any JRPG ever made.

I also want to echo BoB's statement about FFVI's linearity. Yes, all the major events pretty much progress in a logical order. But even then, when it comes to the non-linear elements, saying FFVI is nonlinear is like saying Mega Man is nonlinear. You're basically just choosing what order you complete an array of sequences, with little to no impact on the story if you don't do them at all. Please don't berate me about the ending. Whether or not I see what happens to the 9th character or whether or not I skipped re-recruiting them is a trifle.

Well not really with VI as the player's choices can affect minor things in the game (such as the fate of one party member or whether a certain character joins you) as well as the fact that the WoR is technically non-linear as the player can choose to actually finish some or all of the characters stories, or go straight to the end, unlike most of the FF series where the final dungeon doesn't open up until all of the main story has been told. As soon as you get the airship, you could just head straight to Kefka's Tower and choose to end the game whereas the players power to control the flow of other FF games is pretty much a choice of playing or not playing. The game is filled with hidden scenes and certain consequences for choices and you will never discover them without either a guide or seriously exploring the game and trying new things, which is somethign you can't really say about a game like FFXIII or even Xenogears for that matter.

It's not Elder Scrolls non-linear but for a JRPG, especially a story driven one like VI, it's pretty unique for the genre and something I feel is important and should return. JRPGs thrive on the illusion of choice and I feel VI/CT found a pretty decent sweet spot of doing that without making the story suffer for it.

As for my preferred style, the fact that VII, VIII, V and XII are there alongside XIII as my preferred Final Fantasy games pretty much says that linearity is not my preference.

I wouldn't really count most of those titles as being non-linear. They are certainly not as linear as XIII but there are few RPGs that are linear as XIII (thank god) which is more like a high budget visual novel with a middle management A.I. battle system tacked on.

I've almost finished FFVI now! Got the six dragons (two left are in Kefka's Tower) and all espers and every character has every spell available at the moment (exception: Just got Raiden/Quick now, so am still working on a few characters for that, but not heavily bothered). So basically, Kefka's Tower and then I'm golden for FFIX. The gameplay in VI is great, I just find the story scenes to be average. That opera scene is nothing short of boring for me. General Leo remains my preferred character in the game, and... yeah.

Glad you had fun which is the most important thing in all of this, disagree about your thoughts on the story or opera scene but that's a discussion for another day. You have no excuse for not posting in the VI forums anymore, so get to work.

EDIT: Wow, FFVI's final dungeon was shockingly easy. xD I guess putting all spells on all characters = overpowering?

Yeah...

I think the CT length argument has muddled, but the original assertion, that it is a short game, can be upheld. I may have muddled it talking about how long it takes to explore all the content, but the truth is, anyway you slice it, it is a short game because there is only so long one playthrough can be. And that length is shorter than later generation games, some of which do have alternate scenarios and multiple endings.

The real question here is does it even matter? In hindsight, our discussion almost sounds like we're putting some value on the length of a game when I'm sure you and I could agree it's a meaningless assertion unless you're a budget gamer and even then we could at least agree CT offers enough content to satisfy someone who may only be able to have one game for awhile. This is probably the dumbest argument we've ever had.

And about DQ, I'll admit, it probably didn't have the same impact as the VI/VII debate. Mostly because DQ fans are, by and large, not as infeasibly insane as you FFVI fan are... The things that actually come out of your mouths are terrifying... But at the time I was a huge fan of DQVIII, I thought it was one of the best RPGs I ever played yet here I was confronted with another group of people telling me an SNES game was better. But, again, there's the distinction, that these people were arguably right.

Says the man who is part of the fanbase that lapped up every single drip of the god awful Compilation of VII just so they could get a hard on watching Sephy and Cloud fight like they were in the Matrix, or the group that argues over Aerith vs Aeris spelling, or even arguing whether Cloud should date the chick the story blatantly tells you he winds up with, or a dead chick. That's a high class fanbase for you. :semicolonpee:

On the more "serious" matters, my point is that the context is completely different in your situation. On paper it sounds like a similar scenario but everything from length of exposure to the hype as well as how meaningful the game was to you changes everything. You may have loved DQVIII, but I doubt it did for you what FFVII did so it's really not the same scenario. I honestly wasn't surprised that I liked DQV more than DQVIII but I didn't exactly 'love" DQVIII either as I felt it's main strengths were simply the series finally producing a game with modern RPG standards in terms of graphics, character building, and story. Even then I felt other games did it better. DQV is a great game and I would probably concede it's the best in the series despite my personal bias for DQIII and that I feel DQIII is a much more important game for both the series and the genre unlike DQV, but I was a little sad the game didn't completely live up to the hype, especially since I tend to have a bias for the 16-bit classics.