Haha "Final", Amiright? (A General Final Fantasy Thread)

Hmm, probably Tactics personally. 5 is a cool look at how the series developed and where a lot of things came from that continued in later games, but the story is only so so imo, 12 is fun but imo should have had Ashe as the main viewpoint character instead of Vaan. Tactics just sticks with me as a really solid game that holds up well to being replayed, and is one of my picks for Top Playstation Games Ever, its main competition being Vagrant Story and Legend of Mana.

 

6 is probably my favorite at this point. Fair warning, original-flavor 4 is a bit more "grindy random-encounter slog" gameplay-wise than a lot of the later games; the DS version is balanced less exhaustingly and has the best translation, but has a bunch of directorial choices that make my inner English major go >:::(((.

 

KICKS DOOR DOWN

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE LOOKING SWEET, FRIENDS

 

Attends, playstation friends, Final Fantasy VII remake now has a first portion available as a free playable demo from the PlayStation store

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

 

Okay I played it

Spoiler: Mechanics talk beneath

OH THANK GOD THE COMBAT DOESN'T SUCK.

It's quite chaotic because target lock-on is changed with the joystick (a personal thanks-I-hate-it feature) and you don't get an enemy status bar anywhere but on the enemy, the camera is way close even on the furthest-away setting, hoping that's something that gets changed. That being said, I'm so happy the game feels appreciably different from both FF15 and KH, and brings back my absolute favourite FF13 mechanic -- staggering -- although it plays a less central part when compared to ATB management.

I really liked that you could both run around and block to build up ATB -- I presume that's what the AI is doing? I never once saw it fire off any commands on its own, I started playing a lot better once I started actively jumping back and forth between the party. Hope that's customisable somehow. Blocking itself feels a little underpowered, but enemy telegraphs were a bit fast for me to react to so I might have not been getting full utility out of it. The HUD is a little pared-down for my tastes -- I did a lot better using the command menu slowdown to orient myself rather than try to muscle-memory of the quick-commands, but I liked having them, they raise the skill ceiling quite a lot.

Even with sprint on, the movement speed is a little sluggish for my tastes, not quite as responsive as FF15, and the demo's boss required positioning so that might actually be a problem. There was a liiiiiitle bit of animation jank all over the place, a little too much sliding into buttons and a bit where you gotta dodge lasers that are on a cycle that was awful because Cloud skids so much, but I didn't notice any slowdown except in a single cutscene.

I feel like I can't say anything about the presentation overall because I'm in the minority of really having liked Advent Children, especially once I got around to watching it in Japanese. It's post-Compilation FF7. You know what you're getting into.