Be Excellent To Each Other

Hmm, I thought Blue Dragon was okay, but the level up system was virtually non existant, the story line was rubbish, and the characters annoying.

Why wasn't my



post included in the mod split?

I demand transparency.

Yep, that's Final Fantasy all right.

What was the post about?

Sorted, that's that money saved! Cheers!

Hmm. The characters are most certainly annoying. Storyline rubbish? Overblown and occasionally nonsensical, perhaps, but I'd struggle to say rubbish. I'd strongly disagree with the first part. I've never seen any kind of RPG put more effort into levels/skills than FF games.

IX was lovely and I've played it at least twice (in fact I'm playing it again, right now). VII took me a few goes to get into, but I eventually got through it. X was chore from start to finish and I had no desire to touch any of the side quests. I played XII as far as the first save point and never loaded it again (I seem to remember a city, a desert and lots of stairs).
I've played one of the earlier ones (possibly VI, involved lots of knights) on a snes emulator, but it just got abandoned at some point. Oh, and I think I set myself up with FF I & II on the GBA for a flight to Japan, but never really played much of either of them.

Also, I really enjoyed Skies of Arcadia (apart from the horrible cheesy speech) and I have an unplayed copy of Eternal Sonata, should I play it?

Pst. Neither FFXII nor FFXIII have random battles.

So far, I'm really liking XIII. Although I should note that my favourite by quite some way was X, and it's a lot like that in manhy regards.

The only FF I have ever played is FFX, and I really liked it a lot. The random battles got a bit annoying after a while though, I admit. I always meant to play it through using an action replay or something like that to remove the need for random battles and grinding and just go through the story again. Nowadays I don't think I would really want to play a story driven game that is quite such a timesink.

I didn't bother with any of the ultimate weapon sidequests, but did make sure that I could get the optional aeons.

Liked XII, though never completed it, and yes Balthier should've been the main character, over that fop Vaan.

I finally managed to beat X recently, thanks to getting Yuna and Aurons ultimate weapons and their linked abilities (1MP cost and break 10,000 damage) even then it was underwhelming. Still, it beats 8, which I hate with all my heart.

Don't own a PS3 / XBOX360 so wont be getting this.

I got some of them, and used a couple of crafted special weapons to level my characters up ridiculously, such that I could kill the final boss in one hit.

I still couldn't (legitimately) kill the dark aeons though, they killed me in one or two hits. I had to rely on paying stupid money to kill them.

I got half the dark Aeons legit, but the others were beyond me.

That's partly why I'm tempted to start again - to try and beat them all. I think I walked straight past the bit where you're supposed to get Tidus' ultimate weapon (I believe it's right after a boss, in a chest on the way out) and you can't revisit the location again so I'd buggered that up.

I couldn't beat any of the Dark Aeons legit. They were exceedingly badass.

"Oh, I'm a creature that can One Hit Kill you, and I get two turns for every one of yours. Muwahahahahaha!"

Bastards.

I killed all of them but for Dark Yojimbo (and that's only as you had to kill him 5 times in a row)

The Yojimbo Aeon has a certain chance of winning the fight for you if you give him lots of moneys (Or rather, a certain percentage of the moneys you own) along with a few other criteria which improve the chances.

It did mean reloading a few times when he failed to do your bidding, mind.

One of those Eurogamer/Digital Foundry platform face-off things. Spoiler: PS3 wins.
There's various other bits and bobs. None of them add up to much, but if you own both consoles (as I do) it looks like the PS3 is the preferable version, unless you really hate that controller.

Hmm - from reading that, I strongly suspect that there's not a damned thing in there that I'd ever notice.

I got the PS3, as typically the lead system is the best realised one.

I'm not puritanical about it, but 20% less resolution during the game ain't great, and I can see the macroblocking in the FMV snippets they posted. I share the writer's annoyance at the unecessariness of the quality drop there, too.

I don't have the faintest idea what that means, and am quite happy about that. I do take your point about the annoyance of it being a shoddy port, rather than solely down to platform differences.

I quite like Final Fantasy and play them all (apart from 11), although there's usually a point in each where I get so annoyed I just don't play them again. Sucker for punishment, me.

In VII I got to the last disc, used the free save that you get too early not realising it's meant to last you until the end, die, decide that I can't be bothered to repeat the last hour again despite having sunk 25-30 hours into it already.

VIII really annoyed me with the summon animations taking twenty seconds plus to do - really very tedious, although a chum pointed out that you're meant to use that time to boost it by button mashing which had somehow passed me by. Got bored, didn't finish.

IX is absolutely wonderful. In fact it's the only one I've completed.

X and XII both have really quite good worlds and battle systems (especially XII), but are absolutely ruined by the need to grind to get past certain bosses, to the point where life seems too short. I don't mind a bit of strategy when it comes to battling, I do very much mind following the story, getting to a boss and finding I've got no chance because I'm not strong enough - this never seemed to happen in IX.

XIII is OK so far (three hours in), but there are so... many... cut scenes, and it's practically just played itself so far, the only real decisions being when to use a potion or not. BUT, I think I'm at the point where it's going to stop holding my hands quite so much, so we'll see.

I only really started playing them because a friend from school leant me Chrono Trigger plus adaptor about fifteen years ago, which I absolutely loved. FF hasn't really matched my expectations after that, I don't think.

Funny, I found you had to grind levels rarely in those two (I only had to do so in X at the end of Mt Gagazet, althoughI did spend a lot of time between there and Zanarkand doing the various sidequests.. I don't remember having to do it at all in XII), wheras I found IX the most grindy. I remember having to level up lots for one boss near the beginning, in a way I hadn't needed to in any of the other ones I've played (from 6 onwards, excluding 11, including X-2)

There just didn't seem to be the tactical ability to get round the fights without levelling up.

Hmm..I didn't know that...assuming it's true of course.

Those random squares that appear in big areas of low contrast, like when half the screen is in shadow. Pariculalry visible in old school 700Mb AVI rips of DVDs, sometimes visible on badly mastered DVDs too. Can also appear around very thin high contrast lines. My Big Lebowski DVD has terrible artefacts on the opening credits from that.

It's a sign the compressor codec didn't have enough bits , and shouldn't happen a lot on professionally mastered stuff.

That the same thing that plagued the ropey FMV sequences from Mega CD games?

T'is true. I think it was R1 you needed to hammer.

Summon?! If you're using the summons in FF8, you're making it quite difficult for yourself. They're stupidly weak and you've got better things to use the command slot on, like Magic, Draw and Item.


I like Baten Kaitos' card system. If you're good at the card system, you can effortlessly stride your way through as many battles as you think you can get away with.

That was more a lack of colours (only 64) than anything else. And sometimes crappy video compression software too, though. Some games (Digital Pictures' later stuff, Tomcat Alley, Road Rash) had really nice looking video whereas others just looked like complete shit. Dune in particular had absolutely appalling video clips, seeing the film again after playing the game was nuts - suddenly everything was so clear and sharp and colourful!

Sometimes, as Meaty said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroblock#Macroblocking

About three hours in, and I think I've just about got to the point where it starts letting me do a bit more stuff on my own. The FMV stuff is properly incredible looking, so no complaints there. The levelling/equipment/combat is typically mental, will take me a while to get my head around it. Great fun so far.

Oh, and whiny kid is whiny. I don't know why they put characters like that in these games.

Yes, I've seen it - if you ever wondered what 'Boost' was, it was that. There was a sort of timing element as well, if you were hammering when a cross appeared then it would wipe your hard earned button mashing out.

It's not terribly well explained if I'm not the only person to completely miss out on this...

I thought I remembered that the summons were largely pointless. If I had my ps2 around, I'd load it up to check what my final party was set up like. I think I may have had one summon on, but I don't recall the reason.

Do you not have a fat PS3 to load it on?

No Memory card slots.

It's not quite that, but yes. It's more like there was a layer of pixels on top of the video. The only other way I can describe it is being like Ben-Day dots (the way cheap comics are printed with a lot of tiny dots) over the video. A lot of clever techniques were developed over the console's lifetime to cope with it. Having played both the 3D0 and Sega CD versions of Road Rash, I have to admit they did some serious work in getting the video of the Sega CD version to look almost as good! Likewise Tomcat Alley which displayed it all full screen as well (many games used windowed FMV).

Enough offtopicness, sorry.

"My.... hand.
...
...
It's some kind of...
magical device."
\

How 'final' is this one actually looking anyway Cras? They have had a few attempts at it now..

If you want that kind of thing , then go for enchanted arms



It does exactly what it says on the box.

I think they're pretty much redefining the word 'final'. The new one is spelled '$$$$'.

Who had 28 hours?

That was a test.

Ack, the dialogue has become extraordinarily cheesy.

BECOME???

Considering its starting point is:

Small Boy: "I....I.....but" *fall to knees and cry a bit*
Repeat x3

That's some feat.

OMFG SPOILZ FFS

*falls to knees and cries a bit*

*Pours "Phoenix Down", on Crasters back.*

Final Fantasy VIII is the best one. FACT. (even though that is clearly overlong, repetetive and frequently dull and I've only played half of it at most)

That's a rare view indeed, sir.

So, by 'best one', what you actually mean is 'worst one'.