Be Excellent To Each Other

I've started playing FFVII again on my PSP (now that I have it working again). It's bringing back a lot of good memories, and graphically, it still holds up today - at least on the PSP.

So... Best JRPG ever ever? It's certainly the only one I've ever felt compelled to play through on multiple occasions. Something about the story, the setting, materia; it all comes together really well. Er, that's it really. Talk about Final Fantasy VII? Tell me you hate it and think it's shit?

I think it should be re-graphic-ed to improve the res, but keep everything the same.

It's well good. I think there was one of them I liked better - possibly 11? The one with the underwater american football.

I loved it when I played it back in the day. I didn't quite finish it though, not sure why.

I'd love to see that as well, but it'd take a lot of work to HD those delicious pre-rendered backgrounds. Same story with Resi 1 and 2 - although I suppose they did it with Resi 1 for Gamecube. It has been rumoured for years, and if I were at Square's helm I'd have it commissioned immediately. I mean, it's the best selling Final Fantasy game ever, demand is huge. Surely it'd sell a lot more than the shite excuses for Final Fantasy games they're pumping out these days?

Final Fantasy 10! The first one on the PS2. I didn't get into that one at all. As Dimrill was saying the other day, they moved away from the cartoon-y style of VII and IX, and it just didn't seem attractive to me so I never bothered.

Except the "You know everything that's happened so far? Well we're going to make you 'remember' it all now. And it'll be interactive so you can't even go off and have a shit" section in Kalm.

7 was a mild obsession of mine back in the day, but I struggle to replay it now due to the blocky graphics. A re-rendering (even to the standard of FF8) would be an immense improvement. And to switch out midi-rendered music with mp3s (or whatever the game-based format is).

I wonder what my final fantasy will be.

It'd most likely involve struggling to breathe, and a distinct tang of citrus fruit on your tongue.

Ha! You've just made me remember watching the video of Cloud in the hospital and remembering, and then wondering if it had crashed as the video stopped.

Nope, turns out it was needing my input!

That's why I loved Dragon Quest 8. Beautiful visuals.
...never finished that either.

I'm much more stubborn these days.

Funnily enough, 1UP wrote this only yesterday: http://www.1up.com/previews/reasons-nev ... -hd-remake

And I think they're quite right. Square, basically, are out of money, and they're certainly out of time.

I would probably buy a PS3 to play FFVII HD and then get the SotC and Ico HD remake.

I'd include the newer staples of the series, like letting you skip and pause cutscenes.

I enjoyed VII back in the day, but haven't replayed it since. I played through IX again recently on my PSP, and that's a better game. XII or VI is my favourite main game of the series, I think.

They are apparently remaking X, so they're not adverse to remakes it would seem:

http://www.gamesradar.com/final-fantasy ... ase-board/

I didn't mind X, but I loathed having to play that stupid "sport" even once. I've started X-2 but have yet to get into it, never mind complete it. It seems very much aimed at female gamers.

I liked it. It was as fun as most sports games I've played.



Because of the 'dress spheres'? I think that was the best equipment/levelling system they've done in all of them.

Not just the dresses, but the whole concert dancing thing at the beginning, and that your party consists of all women (at least at first?).

The skirt is on the other foot, it seems. Not so nice being a girl, is it? Racist!

It was certainly a marked change of tone. I was disappointed.

The big problem with VII is definitely the visuals. VI has aged much better due to lovely 2Dness, apart from the awful SNES hardware shearing or whatever it's called aka F-Zero bits.

They've slowly got worse and worse over the years for me. Hated X, skipped XI, bought XII thinking the end of random battles was a good thing (played it for about a hour), tried, really tried to like XIII and I think I must have been around half way through but I just hated it. It's so laboured and souless it's just horrible.

In retrospect, Dragon Quest 8 is the best thing ever- even better than FF VI and VII.

Overall, I think I enjoy the DQ series more than FF. I haven't played IX, but I really enjoyed VII and loved VIII. I spent over a hundred hours playing that game.

Final Fantasy 6 is the only one I like really. FF7 has good things about it, but it's ever so full of bullshit too.

Chrono Trigger is where it's really at though.

I liked them all until xii, where the plot was so lacking in the character, and, xiii which was just linear and had crap combat.

Only dq I played was 8. I mainly remember how much grinding I had to do. That and cockney accents

The best Final Fantasy stuff for me has been the Tactics series on the GBA & DS.

I liked XII, especially the combat, (though Balthier should have been the lead character, Vaan is a floppy haired ponce.) X is largely a waste due to the crappy blitzball subgame and unsympathetic characters. Auron was the only one that was really fleshed out.

If you like FF7 then Crisis core for PSP is pretty good, though it is a prequel and is more of an Action RPG than a straight JRPG like FF7 was.

Yeah I'm gonna do Crisis Core after I finish this! Then I think I'll do IX again - although I never actually finished that first time round.

I had the PC version of VII, which at least made the 3D parts nice(r) to look at.

The road racing bit of the port was ballsed up though, running impossibly quickly rather than having a time-lock added.

I've played IX but never finished it - always got to the end of disc 3 and ran out of patience. Looked amazing, though the FMV was cheating. The bit with Vivi discovering his real origin was pretty heartbreaking, I thought. Loved the mix of steampunk and cartoon.

Bought X but then I realised the flaws in the game (genre?) were just too much - repeatedly fighting the same boss? 20 hours in and there are still tutorials to go through?

The music was shit, though.

It had different music on the PS1 version and the PC version?

The tunes were the same, but I think the PC used rubbish MIDI sampling, whereas the PlayStation was digital. Or something.

Someone made a port of the PSX version to the PC.

http://q-gears.sourceforge.net/

Well, it's a new engine for the game that can load the original playstation assets on a PC.

President Shinra has been moidered. Six hours played.

Omg spoilers.

Seriously though, I managed to not learn the main twist between it being released and when I played it in 2006.
that was rather good, I thought.

Barratt kills Dumbledore.

She's the ghost!

Tifa sees dead people and is also dead and a vampire shitting werewolf.

Red X111 is two pixies in a suit.

Their goal: To get the London look.

*ahem* Dark Souls.

I'm interested in all the The Classics especially since the ending is mentioned in Retro Gamer every month as one of the greats, I just don't like RPG's that much. I wouldn't mind playing this if it'll change my mind but i get the impression you've got to enjoy the genre to get anything out of it.

Similarly the Pokemon games are supposed to be great and I'd like to see what the fuss is about.

I know, I know! This is on my PSP, though. I have to get TV time to play Dark Souls.

VII and X are my favourites. I never got the hang of the Blitzball in X, but at least you didn't have to play that too much. I keep meaning to revisit them both, but it's a case of being willing to put the time in again.

Annnnnd onto the world map. 7 hours played.

I'd rather look at women than men, even if they are polygonal.

I loved FFVII, but it was weak and watered down compared to the majestic FFVI (or FFIII as most of us knew it). FFVIII I only played for the card game. Got it the same day as Mario 64, so it was always onto a loser.

Fucking hipsters.

Hell yes. What's walking into a high street store compared to stumbling into Gameplay's 'office' and paying insane amounts for a blocky cartridge to stick into the Gamesmaster adapter you bought the year before for Secret of Mana?

I kid, but the ritual actually had some cultural value for me. I don't know what the cool import games are now. Are there any, apart from Dreamcast indie shooters?

There aren't really many cool import games these days. Partly because a lot of stuff that in previous generations would've been restricted to import-only status has been released over here. I guess publishers have finally realised the potential to make money on games that previously people were willing to pay extortionate amounts for import copies of. For example, Deathsmiles and various other Japanese shmups on the 360. Second, is that there don't seem to be many Japanese developers making shitloads of games any more.

Apparently the Japanese developers have really struggled to come to terms with "HD" development, which is why a lot of them focus their attention on portable consoles. Also relevant I suppose is the massive popularity of portable consoles in Japan.

So I suppose, crazy Japanese PSP and DS games are the cool import games to have now...

Jesus wept. I've just saw the advert for Final Fantasy XIII-2. "NOT ACTUAL GAME FOOTAGE!" montage while a Disney song that wouldn't be out of place on Beauty and the Beast wailed away in the background. Jesus wept.