The greatest games - A Personal list of Neocracker~

[NeoCracker]

Let alone why the Digimon alternative hasn't created one,

...Yeah, I'll be getting to that relatively soon.

And now we get to it!

Time to stir up a bit of hate

130. Digimon World 2 (PSX)
      I feel the need to apologize for this one. Because this is not a good game. Oh sure, there are a few good points to it, it’s not completely without merit. But still, I don’t think anything on my list has as much objectively wrong as this game does.

      I’ll start with the good though. There is an insane amount of party options. And with their D.N.A Digivolution of combining different types, I actually think it’s a much better customization set up then Pokemon has ever had.

      With limited item space in dungeons, liminted amount of moves based on engine, and all attacks costing MP, it’s actually a nice set up to force a person to plan thier dungeon dives to an extent. True, it’s not much, but still deserves a bit of credit for the effort.

      Now to the bad. This game has, bar none, the laziest Dungeon design I have ever seen. No matter where you are in the game, it’s the same color scheme, and no dungeon has a defining characteristic. I mean smurf, NES titles managed to have more varience within a single dungeon then this entire game.

      And the second problem, the game is long. But not for good reasons. This game is 2% story and character devlopement, 1% prepping and customizing, and 97% grinding. That is this game. Grinding. Grinding for the purpose of creating new Digimon. Grinding for the purposes of beating the boss’s. Grinding because this game offers nothing else to do.

      I could go on, but I’ll stop the bitching. I will never be able to explain my joy for this game. It is truly an awefully designed game with little good, and what good it does do (The DNA system and dungeon prep) Is undermined by it’s like of versatility in abilities and over all designer ineptitude.


129. Final Fantasy VII(‬PSX)
      Oh yeah, this game isn’t even in the top 100, and to top it off my lowest FF on this list. But to be honest, I enjoy this game, it does a fair amount right. Though, I guess I’ll need to justify putting one of, if not the most, loved FF so low on the list.

      It’s known here I love FF VI, so I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying I prefer this one, as you know its going to be listed higher. But if I had to bring up one thing that bothed me was by the second half of the game, due to their Esper system and per level bonus, your party started to become irrelevant. There wasn’t a big reason to use on person over another.

      FF VII was an extention of this, and expanded that to where you really started to feel like your characters were intertchangable in battle, leaving no reason to use someone other then thier limit breaks. This creates a problem, because some Limit Breaks are objectively worse then others.

       There are very few characters I really like from this game, though they do exist. On the Heroes side, Cid is my favorite. And for more then his comically foal mouth. I really get a feel for his dream, and why he cares so much. I even understand why he’s so upset and angry. He’s probably FF VII’s best devoloped character, the stretch where he’s made Party leader basically solidifying my love of him.

      The other is Hojo. Well, Hojo pre-cannon. That whole scene just has me scratching my head, and it didn’t seem like something Hojo would do considering all his developement up until that point.

      The other issue I take is that Sephiroth, the main villain, is overshadowed entirely by Shinra. Rufus himself I wasn’t to fond of, but the organization as a whole had a pressence and flair about them Sephiroth just didn’t have. Sephiroth was a bit of a mess when it’s established that he is in fact in control, yet his plan is, to the letter, to do what Jenova wanted to do.

      Still though, for all the issue I take, the story is well done enough. Theres some great areas to explore, a lot of fun side stuff to do, and a lot of custimization options with a variety of Materia. This game has plenty about it to enjoy once you get past some of it’s dumber bits.

[Futan]

Are all the FFs on this list or VII is just your least favorite of the x number that are on it? :x

[NeoCracker]

Least favorite of the ones on the list.

Wheres a few FF's that won't be appearing on my favorites list. I'll have some appearing in the briefs chunks of the games I hate list that'll I post from time to time. Then there is the first FF that won't be appearing, as I couldn't get into it. It was already PS2 era by the time I'd played it, and it felt just to archaich, but at the same time I don't hate it and can see what makes it a good game. Had it not been so long before I got to it I probably would have enjoyed it.

FF XIII won't be appearing either, on the basis that games is basically a Non-Enity to me. I can understand all the hate it gets, and while I don't like it, I can't bring myself to hate it. And never played XIII-2, so those two games will appear in no fashion.

[Slothy]

And I liked the Cyborg Ninjas.

I have to admit that they were one of the more enjoyable things about MK3. Even if they do look more like they're ready to take the dirt bike out for a ride than actual cyborgs.

[Bubba]

I have never played Digimon so I have no comment to make on it.

FFVII is still my favourite game of all time. I understand why it is not held in high regard by many people so I don't mind seeing it this low down. For me though it just blew me away when I first played it at 15.

[Loony BoB]

I think you only put FFVII this far down for the sake of controversy and discussion. I don't say this as if it's impossible for it to be this low, but rather because if you put as much thought into the reasoning for it being that low on the list into other games, you'd probably have good reason to drop them, too.

Balanced characters being very similar in style isn't great, but it's far better than having three or four characters that are clearly better than the others to the point that using the others is pointless. Likewise, I like that I can use any character in FFVII according to who I enjoy in the story instead of who is the most useful in battle. Again, I'd prefer a perfect balance of more varied jobs, but I'll take what I can get in this case because it's still better than most other FF's.

I don't think Sephiroth was ever really overshadowed by Shinra. I think he was always clearly the big bad guy in the game and Shinra, to coin a famous phrase from around this site, 'get in the way'. Also, far better to have two clear enemies throughout the game than to have the final boss sprung on you very late in the game like many other FF's do (here's looking at you, VIII/X/XII/XIII/possibly more I haven't beaten).

[NeoCracker]

I think you only put FFVII this far down for the sake of controversy and discussion. I don't say this as if it's impossible for it to be this low, but rather because if you put as much thought into the reasoning for it being that low on the list into other games, you'd probably have good reason to drop them, too.

Balanced characters being very similar in style isn't great, but it's far better than having three or four characters that are clearly better than the others to the point that using the others is pointless. Likewise, I like that I can use any character in FFVII according to who I enjoy in the story instead of who is the most useful in battle. Again, I'd prefer a perfect balance of more varied jobs, but I'll take what I can get in this case because it's still better than most other FF's.

I don't think Sephiroth was ever really overshadowed by Shinra. I think he was always clearly the big bad guy in the game and Shinra, to coin a famous phrase from around this site, 'get in the way'. Also, far better to have two clear enemies throughout the game than to have the final boss sprung on you very late in the game like many other FF's do (here's looking at you, VIII/X/XII/XIII/possibly more I haven't beaten).

Part of me likes poking at people who like the game so much, because I'm a terrible person, but it honestly is this low on the list for me.

And every FF has reasons for it be be low, this just has more then most of the other good ones for me.

In response to your balanced characters, FF VII really isn't ballanced in the slightest due to the Limit Breaks. These are a characters most relevant difference, and there is no way in hell Limit Breaks are balanced between characters. When you get to the higher end ones, there becomes a clear difference in whose Limit Breaks are better, even before the Final Limit Breaks. Stat and ability wise your choices are irrelevant, but the imbalance in Limit Breaks means there are some characters that will pretty much always outshine the others. FF VII has an odd mix of lack of diversity and lack of balance.

Also, I pretty much agree VII is better then 3/4 fo the ones you listed. XII, however, I don't have on this list because while I liked it, I never kept playing it past the first few hours, and cannot comment. IX kind of had the out of no where villain, but not really. That is an... Interesting discussion which we will eventually get too.

I also agree that it's clear Sephiroth is the games main villain, but that wasn't my point. My point was the secondary entity of Shinra was easily the more interesting of the two. There is always a part of me that is bothered when the secondary villain is the more interesting. To top it off, I was just never that impressed with Sephiroth. I don't think we was that good of a villain.

Oh, and in the case of other FF's villains, VI's main villain revealed at about the half way point, IV's about 60-70% in, V's is pretty much the whole game, VIII actually is a bit over half way if I remember, IX you know most of the game, X is abit difficult to decide depending on if you go with 'Sin' or 'Yu-Yevon' as the villain when you find out.


Don't get me wrong though, in FF VII it's easy enough to get by with whatever party you want, but honestly I find that holds true in all of the FF's that give you party options.

[Loony BoB]

In VIII firstly it's Edea then it's Adel then it's Ultimecia and you don't even see or hear Ultimecia until the end. Which is absurd, for me. It's probably my #1 gripe with VIII. For X, it's definitely Yu-Yevon. XIII, ugh, don't get me started.

I'm a firm believer in having the main villain at least involved most of the way through the game, known to be the main villain well before the halfway point and visible waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before the end. xD

I liked Sephiroth's story and character, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I feel Shinra were awesome, too, though. I don't hold it against VII that it has two incredible villains and one is better than the other, though. I think they did a masterstroke by having two seperate villains without the "world plot" being turned into a complete XIII-esque shambles because of it.

I don't think the final limit breaks unbalance things all that much, personally. Cloud's is obviously insane, but the others are irrelevant for me.

[NeoCracker]

I will agree I like Sephiroth's story, it's his character that does nothing for me.

And I don't mind if the villain is revealed a bit later, (At least by the 70% Mark usually. ) but ther are acceptions to that, one of which I'll get to eventually. ;P

And I can think of very few main villains which are NOT involved in most of, if not all, the games plot. It just depends on when you run into them. ;P

[Loony BoB]

When I say 'involved' I mean like Kefka. You mentioned him being revealed as the main villain about halfway - I would say he was involved much, much earlier than halfway. He's seen doing bad things, basically. He's a known bad guy at that point, although perhaps not known to be the main villain. Whereas you have, for example, Ultimecia who is not involved in the plot until it's too late to really care about her as a villain. In the game of FFVIII, I would say that I felt Galbadia was the enemy almost the entire way through the story, and spent more time thinking of the main enemy as Edea and then as Adel than I did considering Ultimecia. She just felt like someone who got tacked on at the end, similar to Orphan in FFXIII (although not to the same extreme).

[NeoCracker]

I hate VIII, a lot, but anything you saw Edea doing WAS Ultimecia, so here involvement is active for a long time, just concealed.

God, I'm offering a defense for FF VIII. I think I need to shower. *Shudders*

[Loony BoB]

Perhaps I should have said "directly involved" but you know exactly what I mean. I could make the same argument for Yu-Yevon and Orphan but it would be utterly ridiculous.

[NeoCracker]

I don't mind a villain not being Directly involved so long as it's handled right. I have a great example of this, but's rather high ranked on my list, so I think I'll keep it to myself for now so It's not spoiled. ;P

Again, mind you, I still enjoy FF VII. After I play through Anarchy Reigns, and probably my current Tactics run, I was considering playing VII again.

[Polnareff]

Digimon World 2 was horrible. The first one was kinda like a more fleshed out version of the DigiPet toy, but the second was a slow, boring dungeon crawler with the most slow-paced battles ever. Kind of like Evolution for Sega Dreamcast but even more boring than that and with Digimon. Third one was better but still slow-paced and you're limited to one on one Digimon fights.

I didn't see that NC had mentioned Street Fighter 2. It's probably too late for me to talk about that game now, but it's one of the games that ignited my love of fighting games and Capcom's games in particular. So much so that I'm literally a walking encyclopedia now when it comes to most Capcom games that came out before last year.

[NeoCracker]

Meh, feel free to talk about it. I'm not really all that picky about that, especially if you just missed me posting it.

Also, Dhalsim and Vega were the best guys in that game.