• Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:

    1. The CAPTCHA key's answer is "Percy"
    2. Once you've completed the registration process please email us from the email you used for registration at percyreghelper@gmail.com and include the username you used for registration

    Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.

The Ultimate Final Fantasy Thread: This Guy Are Knock You All Down

WisteriaHysteria

WisteriaHysteria

FFXV was revelatory when I played it. It's easily a top 5 FF for me, maybe even top 3. Combat takes some time to get used to, but I had much the same approach but right off the bat Lokii, where I was just like damn, this is how I always imagined it. In fact, FFXV was really just how I imagined my perfect FF from decades ago. Getting into the Regalia and hangin' with your bros is exactly how I imagined FFVIII was *really* like through that game's layers of abstraction when riding around in its cars.

I don't mind FFXV's combat system, and there is certainly more to it than holding attack to win, the further you get into it. But I can't help but still look at the combat of that game as something disappointing, despite generally being a gigantic apologist for the game and still ultimately enjoying the game's combat system. And that's because playing the Duscae Demo back before the game's launch made it clear just how slap-dash and by-the-seat-of-their-pants the development of this game was. Because the Duscae Demo has completely different battle mechanics.

Instead of just holding an attack button to have Noctis carry out an unending attack combo, the combat is a lot more like FF7R - where the different face buttons are different types of attacks and your ability to chain them depends not just on hitting the right button combos in the right timing, but on both the context of what is happening, as well as being able to successfully dodge/parry enemy attacks to keep the combo alive. It was actually incredibly deep, and really interesting and rewarding to play once you got a hang of how the mechanics worked. It just had a very steep initial learning curve. But the feedback they must have gotten from the Duscae Demo must have been awful, because in just a few months, they'd completely scrapped that combat system in favor of what we ended up with in the final game. FF7R's battle mechanics feels like they took that unfinished, unrefined battle system and spent three and a half years polishing it until it was perfect. But I still had a lot of fun with that first combat system in FFXV and wish we'd gotten to see that game instead of what we ended up with. It's still though insanely impressive that what they did come up with at the last second, still managed to largely work well despite, you know, it being thrown together at the very last second.
 
MetManMas

MetManMas

Me and My Bestie
(He, him)
Thanks for all these FFXV write-ups. It's interesting how the game interprets its "towns" within the game world.

Speaking of towns, on the lower budget side there's SaGa Frontier's own approach to a (mostly) to-scale world.
MetManMas said:
Been playing some SaGa Frontier Remastered again. Little bit of Red and Blue. One big thing that continues to impress me on replay is how the game does a lot with a little.

A few observations.

1) Towns and cities are not specifically tailor made for you, the player. Manhattan is a futuristic sky city with a shopping mall. In any other game, said mall would have loads of stores to buy all the adventuring essentials; in SaGa Frontier, the only points of interest are a jewelry shop selling accessories and a restaurant that only serves as a meet-up place.

Devin is where you'll go to buy your Arcane and Rune magic and where you'll initiate two of the longest sidequests in the game. It also has an extremely diverse range of fortune telling scams presumably designed to make money off of tourists (not that you pay them).

Baccarat has an enormous casino and floors upon floors of hotel rooms. You are not here to play gambling mini games, you are here to pursue a gnome in the catacombs.

Owmi is a port town that has a mansion with a monster-infested basement, an inn, and the one port that goes to Nelson. Nelson is a port that has a gold ingot seller at its pub and a shop that sells one sword and one suit of armor and nothing else.

Yorkland has no shops at all, it's just a place where people live and brew sake. Outside of recruiting an ogre and drunkenly staggering through the kraken-infested swamp searching for a card there is nothing to do. Don't bother visiting Lute's mom, she'll just glare at you and throw you out. You are a mysterious stranger invading her privacy.

These and other locations may be more or less relevant depending on whose quest you're playing but having locations not just have the requisite weapons/armor/item/magic shops does an effective job of making SaGa Frontier feel a little more like a living world than a game's interpretation of one.

On the subject of shops...

2) Shops have very specific specialties. You don't just go to the weapons or armor store in SaGa Frontier; Koorong is the prime example of how shops work in the game. One person sells helmets, another sells boots, yet another sells armor, and one buys leather. Dive down the manhole out of the sight of any authorities for the robots that sell swords and guns. If you want the really good stuff, you're gonna have to dive deeper into the back alleys.

Repair kits? No, the medicine guy does not sell those, you want Nakajima Robotics over in Shrike. Or maybe try your luck with the junk shop in Scrap.

Speaking of junk...

3) You can only sell things to a dedicated buyer for them and they only accept a specific list of things. The junk shop in Scrap only accepts repair kits for fixing junk and some of the rarest pieces of heavy equipment. Nakajima Robotics accepts low tier swords, probably to melt down for the metal to build parts with. Koorong has a leather buyer and a gold ingot buyer.

There are loads and loads of different items in the game but you can only ever sell a select few of them. People won't just buy whatever junk you're carrying, the world doesn't work that way.

4) There is a sense of distance for locations even though there is no world map. Koorong serves as a main hub for most of the game world. It has two pages worth of locations.

The first page is generally locations that can be travelled to or from one another at their ports, presumably 'cuz they're all close to one another. In contrast, the second page is specialty locations, ones that generally only go to or from Koorong with the notable exception of Owmi connecting to Nelson.

And Junk isn't even an option, which likely says a lot about its position in the world. That trip to Scrap is one-way.

Anyway, I find this kinda stuff really fascinating.
Click to expand...
Game already says a lot just by not allowing you to buy everything everywhere and limiting your selling options, but it says even more by what its shops sell.

Koorong's your main hub 'cuz it sells almost anything of course, but what's interesting is how its shops are set up. The standard armor dealer? Mainly army surplus goods. The healing item dealer with no repair kits? Of course he doesn't have robot fixing stuff, he specializes in herbal remedies. The headgear shop? More army surplus type stuff like actual dang helmets and infrared scopes. The armor buyer? Exclusively wants goods for their leather. The weapons shops? Right down a manhole for the swords and guns, deep through the back alleys and sewers for the heavy artillery.

And this extends to other places as well. Nakajima Robotics over in Shrike buys swords, presumably to melt down for the metal to build their robots and weapons with. Kyo's one non-magic shop deals in what basically amounts to souvenirs to tourists. That one guy in Nelson who sells a high-end sword and armor? Likely got them from one of the many ships that dock there.
 
chady

chady

(He/him/his)
I really really loved FFXV, until I didn't.

The end of my first playthrough soured me enough that I haven't gone back and played any of the DLC, or even the some of the stuff in the later chapters that they ... fixed? Supposedly? Maybe I'll give it another shot with the extra episodes, see how I feel about it.
 
YangusKhan

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Honestly that trailer wasn't as Eyerollingly Bad I was led to believe. It was more just kinda boring to me, tbh. I mean, I'm probably gonna pick it up at some point because I enjoyed the last demo pretty well. But it's not a terribly high priority for me this year.
 
Bongo

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
I figured it out. I know how sincere this game is. It's simply Kingdom Hearts, but instead of "Darkness" they say "Chaos"
 
Purple

Purple

(She/Her)
Literally everything about this feels like someone sitting around with a friend hearing that this was something they were working on and just riffing back and forth with every absurd "well knowing the sort of games they make THESE days..." joke trying to one-up each other. And then no, someone took the result of that and actually made it.


... also how long before it has full rando support?
 
Kazin

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster comes out February 23rd, according to an email I just got from Square Enix.
 
Alixsar

Alixsar

The Shogun of Harlem
(He/him)

My reaction:
"This looks so coo- *gets to the opera scene part of the trailer* *stares off into the middle distance* why am I alive? Just to suffer? Haven't you done ENOUGH ALREADY, universe?!!?"
 
Purple

Purple

(She/Her)
monkeys-paw-paw.gif
 
Octopus Prime

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Well, there goes my headcanon that everyone in FF6 talks like Star Fox, and the text boxes were just translations for the audiences benefit
 
Bongo

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
I'm going to switch it to Italian just to make it even more operatic.
 
Exposition Owl

Exposition Owl

more posts about buildings and food
(he/him/his)
This will never happen, but I’d love to see a Street Fighter game in which Sakura is an honest-to-Pete grownup who is recognized as Ryu’s successor. Give her an actual gi and everything.

Also, an outfit for Cammy that includes actual pants.
 
Octopus Prime

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
One of their alt costumes in SF4 put them in an Easter bunny and Bumblebee suit, which I think is the only instance of Sakura or Cammy wearing pants
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top