What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy's first expanded setting? Do you think we'll ever see a new entry in this setting or did it die with Matsuno's departure? What your favorite things about Ivalice? Least favorite?
Ivalice
What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy's first expanded setting? Do you think we'll ever see a new entry in this setting or did it die with Matsuno's departure? What your favorite things about Ivalice? Least favorite?
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
I hope not. I liked FFT, but even in that game looking through the details made Ivalice sound like an overbloated mess with some details not matching up. Pwehaps it was the bad translation, but I'm more inclined to blane it on Matsuno. Subsequent entries in the series have been worse and seem tp be even nore about yammering on about the great world Matsuno thought up and forgetting to tell a story, so I'll pass.
Ivalice is easily the best thing to ever come out of the FF brand. I love the moogles here the best, all the other races in here are great too, and the Mediterranean/Arabic setting is incredibly refreshing. Ivalice’s worldbuilding is something I miss dearly and I wish some other game in the series would come around to do something with it again.
Choosing a favorite and least favorite game is hard because I really love them both. XII is tied with VI for my favorite numbered FF, and FFTA is my favorite FF period (best job system and controversial plot? Oh boy!). That doesn’t mean I dislike any other tactics games - far from it, they’re both top tier, even if TA2’s main plot leaves a lot to be desired. And then there’s the masterful Vagrant Story. So yeah, no such thing as a least favorite for me. Matsumoto needs to come back and do more.
Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno
Not saying. Don't want to get killed.
I do really like the world building of Final Fantasy XII. It isn’t quite my favorite world, but the way the world is built up is done so well. The moogles are great in Ivalice too. I also feel like the battle system in XII seems a natural evolution to the atb system. The gambit system is also one of the only systems where I don’t mind having direct control over more than one party member because you basically can have complete control over what everyone does. I just don’t like that you have to buy gambits and think you should just unlock all the gambits early on after it gives you some time to understand how gambits work. I also always go back and forth on how I feel about the license system, but it doesn’t bother me too much.
The only downside to the ivalice universe is that most of it exists as srpgs. I just can’t ever seem to beat them because I get burnt out with that style of gameplay. I do really want to play all of the Tactics games though. Also Revenant Wings is awful.
I totally forgot RW was a thing. So I guess I do have a least favorite. I think I just didn’t count it because it’s very much a Toriyama game not a Matsuno one, and Toriyama can die in a fire for all I care
I like ivalice quite a bit. not counting FFXIV's ivalice as it is obviously not the same as the real ivalice.
I have only played Tactics, and FFXII/RW. I used to like RW cos i could just play it on downtime when i was in tunisia (which is fitting given how as fynn said, FFXII is in a kinda arabic mediteranan area.) But when i actually look at the game its kinda meh and the final boss is unfair imo.
Tactics is pretty fun, really hard for a small brained individual such as this dumbass called Galuf. I dont really understand the political side of its plot, but i do understand teh lucavi side so that part is fun.
FFXII is among my favourite FF's, largely in part of its music and half of its characters. And i also played it during a pretty bleak time so it was like the fun part of that time too. At first its story confused me cos it was political, but on a second run through it made alot of sense and was really fun to play. I like all the races too, very diverse. And again like fynn said, They have the best moogles by far. The only moogles that dinny make me want to skin their fur off and eat it cos they are annoying ploofs.
yeah ivalice is cool.
I don't like four of the Ivalice games, so I can't say I'm much of a fan
That said, I do like the concept of a shared world between entries that aren't necessarily sequels to each other.
I'm curious to know what you felt didn't add up in the details?
To be fair, even Toriyama's team have stated RW isn't canon and they seem to be as annoyed about having to make it as fans were considering it started it's life as a new IP before the higher ups told them to slap the FFXII cast onto it.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
Sorry, it's been too long for specifics. I'm referring to the info dumps in the dictionary section or whatever it was called.
Honestly, I have more attachment to individual stories told within Ivalice than to Ivalice itself and don't see it as an especially realized world. I've never noticed narrative threads tying together the various games in the world I've played (so, FFT, TA, and 12), and even if they do exist they do not do so at a strong enough level to have ever truly begun developing the world itself. This is in contrast to, for instance, Front Mission, Star Ocean, and Suikoden, all of which did excellent jobs defining and engaging the player in their shared worlds within the first three titles, and each game managed to tell its own independent story while still drawing on and contributing to the fiction of the universe overall, sometimes with fairly substantial chronological disparity, which is something I never felt Ivalice achieved. The story and events in FF12 should have had worldwide implications, but there is no sign of anything other than Balthier from it impacting FFT, and nothing related to the Lucavi or Occuria touch anything outside of their respective titles. This lack of a building fiction between the titles always left Ivalice feeling rather flat to me, and I don't especially care if more entries appear there or not, and I especially don't want them if SE decides to make entries to tie the world together, as I have no faith in their ability to properly do that at this point.
That said, while I may feel Ivalice fails as a shared world, it definitely succeeds as a setting, with a great collection of races, level of technological progress, and mystery surrounding magic and crystals. It feels fantastic in a way most other titles in the FF series don't especially manage, if they do it at all. The games themselves also succeed on the narrative side completely, and I always find the behind the scenes powerplays and 'schemes within schemes' engaging, and even in the case of FFTA, where I don't enjoy the story at all, I can still appreciate the effort the writers put into the ideas they were trying to address without necessarily sacrificing their characters and replacing them with the railroad spikes needed to tie the vision of the greater plot together.
So, in short, the games are great, the setting is great, the world itself is unactualized.
EDIT: Wait, I just remembered something, I think the Lucavi might appear as the summons in FF12, but even if they do I don't think they do so with the weight they should have, considering their role in FFT.
Last edited by Rez09; 10-25-2018 at 06:10 PM.
Based on one line in FF12, it sort of seems like Ashe is supposed to be St Ajora, but I don't think anything matches up well enough for that to make sense, ao it's probably a throwaway homage more than an actual story tie.
There is not a single instance where it’s implied Ashe is Akira, from what I remember
It's more like they subtly plant the idea. One of the Lucavi type guys says "You are our Saint Ashelia." Given the rareness with which that term is thrown about plus the name similarity (especially considering bad translation theme of FFT) it certainly conjures the idea that she could be St Ajora. At least it did for me.
And why not let me have it? The idea that she's St Ajora counts as more story than actually exists in the game anyway.
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