What in the smurf is Final Fantasy IX fans problem?

[Fynn]

It’s because on replay I found out the story totally falls apart by then with the huge materia quest being one of the most contrived, idiotic plots I’ve ever seen in a video game. Shinra is trying to save the world at this point and your party is literally trying to prevent them from doing that just because Shinra’s doing it and not them. At a point where Meteor is already falling and you have seven days to live. Instead of trying to come up with an actual plan, they go ahead and sabotage the guys with the actual plan.

That is smurfing dumb and indefensible.

And even though I’m not big on IX’s battle system (ATB peaked at IV), I still like it more than VII’s since at least the bars never stop going, while FFVII has the bars stop for every tiny animation even on active. And that’s more frustrating to me.

And just keep in mind that I still like FFVII despite sounding harsh, but It’s just that I hadn’t realized how stupid everything past disc 1 is until my recent playthrough, so I felt a little betrayed because VII had been in my top tier before that. Now - not so much, but I still like it and would definitely return to it someday

[Rez09]

Huh. I'm normally fairly negative towards IX, relatively speaking, but the combat is always what I've considered one of its high points, especially in regards to the other two PS1 entries; the general restrictions on your party always made choices feel more strategic and meaningful. Whole lot less black-mage-healer-dps-tanks in the game, you know?

[MJN SEIFER]

It’s because on replay I found out the story totally falls apart by then with the huge materia quest being one of the most contrived, idiotic plots I’ve ever seen in a video game. Shinra is trying to save the world at this point and your party is literally trying to prevent them from doing that just because Shinra’s doing it and not them. At a point where Meteor is already falling and you have seven days to live. Instead of trying to come up with an actual plan, they go ahead and sabotage the guys with the actual plan.

That is smurfing dumb and indefensible.

The point probably is that the huge materia shouldn't be used like this, and it should be protected, but even then it is a poorly done storyline, because of exactly what you said. If they had made it more clear that what Shinra was doing was still bad, albeit with good intentions, like they could have made it obvious that Meteor wouldn't be destroyed this way, and that Shinra are not only fighting a lost cause, they could be doing something wrong unknowingly (like the Meteor could gain power from being near materia, hence why you have to stop Shinra using it, for instance.)

As the way the story stands, it just seems to be "The gifts of the planet must be protected by the evil corporation" which, while the overall storyline of the first part of the game, there's a time and a place for that, and it's not now. Basically, yeah, they should have handled that better.

Also it's strange - Final Fantasy VII is my favorite of the series, but I also think it pales in some places when compared to Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X. Basically, FFVII was my first of the series, and it means a lot to me, and I do see where it has a superiority to the other games, at least in my opinion, but I think with the battle system of both FFVIII and FFX (i.e. interactive) and the overall unique characters of all the three games I mentioned (and other FFs), I think it could have been a lot better,

So yeah, the strange part (in case it got buried in my rambling) is that I still find FFVII the best, but think it did some things worse than other FFs

[maybee]

the battle system is bland and uninspired; every character is a blank cookie cutter slate*, the graphics were kind of trash even for the time and have aged horribly.
It's not some edgelordemofest. The characters are actually one of the few truly good things the story has going for it. Except Aeris and Cloud.

What ????

What the smurf ?????

It’s because on replay I found out the story totally falls apart by then with the huge materia quest being one of the most contrived, idiotic plots I’ve ever seen in a video game. Shinra is trying to save the world at this point and your party is literally trying to prevent them from doing that just because Shinra’s doing it and not them. At a point where Meteor is already falling and you have seven days to live. Instead of trying to come up with an actual plan, they go ahead and sabotage the guys with the actual plan.

That is smurfing dumb and indefensible.

Finally some good food.

[Psychotic]

the graphics were kind of trash even for the time

now listen here u little trout, the pre-rendered backgrou-

The music...okay, the music is smurfing fantastic, as are the pre-rendered backgrounds. Lordy.

Oh. Welp. Never mind. You're cool.

Real talk though, while FFVII's field character graphics are not a hill I'm going to die on because they were indeed ugly, I do think some credit is due what they did with those models. I always remain impressed with how each character had unique walking and running animations when it would've been far simpler to give everyone the same generic movement animations. I also really like how they all had their own little personal animations like the Aerith lean, Yuffie air punching or Barret beating his chest. I guess what I'm saying is yeah, they were ugly, but they worked well with what they had to give them a sense of personality and identity.

Also, even outside of the character models and pre-rendered backgrounds they did some neat little tricks to do the best with what they had. Here's a cool little video (in a wonderful series) that I hope you'll all find interesting. It's worth your time I promise!

[Jinx]

I'll meet you in the middle, Psy, and say that the FMVs were not bad to look at, and still aren't. Aged, yes. But age =/= bad.

Maybee--every character in FFVII is the same, except for some minor stat differences. Their fighting/weapons are purely cosmetic. Aeris is THE only character that arguably is meant to be a specific role. Every character is able to equip the same materia and be a mage, and that to me is bland and uninspired. Abilities in the game are basically useless. Yes, they can make things easier, but outside of the Cure line, the entire game can be x-mashed.

[MJN SEIFER]

every character in FFVII is the same, except for some minor stat differences. Their fighting/weapons are purely cosmetic. Aeris is THE only character that arguably is meant to be a specific role. Every character is able to equip the same materia and be a mage, and that to me is bland and uninspired. Abilities in the game are basically useless. Yes, they can make things easier, but outside of the Cure line, the entire game can be x-mashed.

Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, that's basically what I was saying earlier about "unique characters" - if Final Fantasy VII had somehow mixed the materia system with a unique system for each character (i.e. there are some abilities that everyone can learn, but other abilities that are unique to a specific character, that aren't Limit Breaks) we could have had an interesting system.

[Jinx]

every character in FFVII is the same, except for some minor stat differences. Their fighting/weapons are purely cosmetic. Aeris is THE only character that arguably is meant to be a specific role. Every character is able to equip the same materia and be a mage, and that to me is bland and uninspired. Abilities in the game are basically useless. Yes, they can make things easier, but outside of the Cure line, the entire game can be x-mashed.

Sorry to interrupt, but yeah, that's basically what I was saying earlier about "unique characters" - if Final Fantasy VII had somehow mixed the materia system with a unique system for each character (i.e. there are some abilities that everyone can learn, but other abilities that are unique to a specific character, that aren't Limit Breaks) we could have had an interesting system.

Agreed. I do think it was """"inspired"""" for its time, as it was the first game to really fully break tradition with the job system of past titles. But I think it broke it a little bit too much. FFVIII is for better or worse the same system with an extra "feature" (Drawing your magic). After that, the series went back to its roots. I haven't played FFXIII or FXV, so I can't say if they stuck with that.

But yeah, if they'd done just a little bit more outside of limit breaks to differentiate the characters, I might not be here saying it's bland.

As always I feel like I have to qualify this post by saying I love FFVII despite its flaws, and sometimes because of them (this guy are sick).

[Mercen-X]

It's truly a sad and pitiable thing for fans to join a conversation meant to praise one game only to try to sway the topic onto the game they like better or trash the topic game. Making unbiased comparisons is acceptable (though admittedly slippery territory for those not already experienced in debate or journalism or writing unbiased reviews) in moderation, but if your only concern is telling everyone how much you love an entirely different game, join or start a different conversation for THAT game.

[maybee]

Maybee--every character in FFVII is the same, except for some minor stat differences. Their fighting/weapons are purely cosmetic. Aeris is THE only character that arguably is meant to be a specific role. Every character is able to equip the same materia and be a mage, and that to me is bland and uninspired.

Fair enough ! Though the Materia System and how you use it is basically up to you. Do you want Cloud as the healer? Done. Vincent as the Black Mage? Done. Tifa as the brawler with no materia expect for protecting materia ? done. Barret as the summoner? Done. Cid as the Blue Mage? Done.

Or you could just keep some things fair between the party and give everybody a bit of healing and elemental magic each, or just give everything to Cloud, or not really use materia for the party at all, or even just have the summons or protecting materia.

Yes, they can equip the same materia and be a mage, but only if you make it so.

You could " FF3/FF5 " everybody with a "job class system ", or you could do something like FF10 and have a "summoner ", or you could "FF8" things and a keep a limit on magic use, unless you have too.

I thought that you meant characterization wise though, which is why I was disagreeing so much because one character believes that he's somebody else for a decent chunk of the story, and another character is a talking dog.

Yes, they can make things easier, but outside of the Cure line, the entire game can be x-mashed.

To be frank though, all of the FF's can, if you allow it so.

[Rez09]

Pretty much every RPG can, if you invest the time.

[Example]

Except for XII since you can just watch the game play itself.

[Fynn]

Only if you really know what you’re doing and put in time and effort to come up with an algorithm that will make the game play itself

Unlike XIII where all you do is press a button and the game does all that stuff you don on your own in XII for you

[Loony BoB]

Nah, XIII is the only game in the single player series that you literally can't rely on smashing X to win for 99% of battles, because they cap your level and force you into situations that you have to consider what three jobs are best suited to the situation, and have to alter between those job sets. People who are blind ignorant to this baffle me, and I can only assume it's because they don't like the game so are trying hard to find ways to trash it.

You could argue that you can do a lot more variety in moves by smashing X because the game puts in the generally best patterns, basically a gambit system set up for each job, but in the end you are having to do marginally more than you have to in all the other games unless you're doing a low-level run (and you can do that in FFXIII, too).

[Wolf Kanno]

Nah, XIII is the only game in the single player series that you literally can't rely on smashing X to win for 99% of battles, because they cap your level and force you into situations that you have to consider what three jobs are best suited to the situation, and have to alter between those job sets. People who are blind ignorant to this baffle me, and I can only assume it's because they don't like the game so are trying hard to find ways to trash it.

You could argue that you can do a lot more variety in moves by smashing X because the game puts in the generally best patterns, basically a gambit system set up for each job, but in the end you are having to do marginally more than you have to in all the other games unless you're doing a low-level run (and you can do that in FFXIII, too).

Oh BoB, you and your defense of XIII's combat system.

The issue is that you're stuck with six classes, as opposed to XII where you could build your party around weapon and magic types which gave you over twelve different options with character builds.

Of the six classes, half have great synergy with each other and the other half have great synergy with themselves. Due to bonuses you get for having certain classes together, it's usually better to group these classes in this way to maximize yourself. Tactics basically falls into the player building three variations of the same paradigm sets. You'll have one offensive mage focuses set for breaking the enemy guard, and a physical one for when it breaks. Then you'll have a sentinel with a two medics, a medic and a Synergist, or a sentinel with a medic and Saboteur if your staying offensive focused. Battles devolve quickly into using the first combat set to break the enemy, switch to the second combat mode when they do break, occasionally switch to one of the three defensive sets mentioned above if the enemy happens to actually survive a break and you need to keep the troops alive. Then you rinse and repeat until you win.

With the lack of variation among the cast, the auto-attack option making your own in-battle contribution meaningless outside of paradigm shifting, and the more difficult battles often just involve getting around the game's overly simplistic A.I. that you can never directly control; battles are pretty boring after awhile cause this setup works on just about everything. Not to mention the level cap means nothing when that stigma doesn't apply to your equipment and you can often make a hard battle super easy by just actually leveling up some of your gear to compensate. The grade scale is just the game trying to punish you for being pragmatic, so honestly the game is pretty easy if you don't care about S Ranking every battle. The only battles I found hard were usually solved by either leveling up my gear, dealing with the stupid A.I. for the Sentinel and Synergist classes, and funny enough, actually level grinding once you unlock the full Crysterium for a few meager extra stats.

I could honestly build a better version of every class in XIII with XII's mechanics and have more control to boot. Not to mention XII has skills like Darkness and Horology to add variety, and enemies who force you to actually think outside of the box to defeat them like the Esper battles and higher marks. XIII's combat is too streamlined for my taste and sucks the joy out of the combat cause there is no real variety in it. It's only fun for people who probably find combat a chore in the series to begin with and likely never used anything more than Fight and Cure for everything.