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Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
They've always been pretty frequent, though pre-emptives aren't in short supply either, at least here.

Funny thing: Tellah hasn't lost any stats on level-ups and his tenure in the party is nearly done at this point. I'm guessing this is some kind of fallout from how II was balanced in its remaster where stat-downs also weren't allowed, but unlike there, this is a pretty significant narrative beat for the character. His stats refuse to increase either, but that's not quite as impactful of an effect, and Fusoya's thing besides. The DS game had this figured out in having a post level-up tally screen like here, where these kinds of nuances were transparently communicated--it's weird that's not preserved here despite having the tools to do so.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I didn't even realize Tellah's stats even went down originally like that lol. I knew they didn't really go up (MP especially), but not that they went down.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Here's a pretty upsetting and disappointing omission.

3FVbgoZ.png

Hard to conceive of what happened here, especially in light of other recent remasters.
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Usually in remasters like this, dev rooms/easter eggs get changed or replaced with the current dev team. I'm guessing whichever team at S-E or the contract studios they hired (I saw TOSE in the 1PR credits) didn't have permission or interest in adding a current one?
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Could the ATB formula be part of the reason? On Brickroad's stream last night he observed that it seemed like enemies were getting fewer turns on him overall which was why things felt easier, and he would know how FF4 is supposed to feel.
I had this suspicion as well. Changing the ATB to be like FF6 completely reworks how enemies and allies get turns in FF4, and I don't think they really took the extra steps to rebalance enemy agility to compensate for that difference (to be fair, it would be pretty complicated to do that for every single enemy in the game, because it's a multiplier based on Cecil's Agility value at all points in the game...)
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
Here's a pretty upsetting and disappointing omission.

3FVbgoZ.png

Hard to conceive of what happened here, especially in light of other recent remasters.

That... actually makes me sad. They should have removed that hidden passage altogether, like in the SNES version, instead of keeping it and posting an "Abandoned" notice on it :/

(I don't suppose the Dark Crystal Skip bug made it in either.)
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I think the "Abandoned" notice on the wall is kind of a nice joke, but then I don't have the nostalgia for this game that many do :/
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Usually in remasters like this, dev rooms/easter eggs get changed or replaced with the current dev team. I'm guessing whichever team at S-E or the contract studios they hired (I saw TOSE in the 1PR credits) didn't have permission or interest in adding a current one?

"In light of other recent remasters" was in specific reference to SaGa Frontier's own remaster, which not only kept the original "2nd Div" developer's room extravaganza, but added an entirely new similar area populated by the remaster's developers and their commentary on the game and about their opportunity in getting to work on porting it. It's a shame to compare the two approaches in how they preserve original material, or just... don't. The DS remake of IV having the remake and localization staff hanging about the place was also far preferable as a riff since it accomplished the same effect with an entertaining twist.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
It's the word itself. "Abandoned" conveys specific meanings that "Moved To New Location" or "Under New Management" wouldn't.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
That's why the joke works for me, though, that word specifically. "Under new management" isn't as funny to me, for example. The harshness of the word "abandoned" is why I chuckled when I saw Peklo's image.
 

conchobhar

What's Shenmue?
Sorry, I know the thread's moved on to Final Fantasy IV, but
So I think FFXIII is a game that gives back what you put into it. A common criticism of it from its detractors is that it's too reliant on autobattle and AI party members, which is not something I've ever seen a fan of the game say, and I guess I am such a fan, because it doesn't match my experience with it at all; if anything, it's too reliant on player input to make a good chill out game, which most FF games do. Even the story demands active engagement, with some important details only conveyed through datalog entries you have to choose to read. That being the case, it's just as well it doesn't make itself even more demanding by including a lot of exploration and hidden items and such.
I think this is exactly right. Final Fantasy XIII is a game that demands a lot of attention from the player, so it follows that one's enjoyment is directly proportionate to how much effort they put into it. Personally, this is why I like it! I like it when a story doesn't exposit for the player's benefit, and instead leaves them to figure out what terms mean or what the state of the world is just from context; and I like when nearly every encounter is a challenge (or at least requires a bit of thought). I'm generally less keen on RPGs that are seemingly designed to be something to zone out to and breeze through. So it's probably no surprise I've taken to this game, heh.
 
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FelixSH

(He/Him)
I really enjoyed FF XIII, when I played it for the first time, a few years ago. The story made way more sense than I expected, from how people talked about it (at least until Cid, I vaguely remember), and I loved that stuff like ressource management was a thing from the past, or that you can just repeat a battle. The characters and themes, too, were very enjoyable to me. Loved the linearity.

While there are certainly reasons for not liking the game, there were always really silly complaints everywhere. "No towns" feels like people just complained, because towns have to be in a JRPG. There are good reasons to prefer them, but it's totally viable to not have them. And the complaints about all these strange words that you have to look up were beyond silly. There are three words you need, and I think the game explains them anyway? Completely overblown, and especially this complaint showed that many people never really tried to meet the game the slightest bit in the middle.

Again, it's totally fair not to like the game, it's very different from other JRPGs. But most of these reasons are purely a matter of taste, and not in any way objective criticism. Using them to argue that FF XIII is bad was always sil
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
My only real complaint is that the game feels pretty played out at the exact moment you hit the big open Pulse areas, which is what killed my motivation to finish the thing back in the day.
 

Juno

The DRKest Roe
(He, Him)
I replayed XIII last year and one thought I had is related to the criticism of how certain parts of the story are hidden in optional datalogs that are given to you as you progress. While I think the criticism is valid, I couldn't help but wonder if the response to that would be different if the exact same information had been hidden in collectibles that you need to find across the world, as so many other games have done, for a long time.

I mean, so much of the background story to something like Dark Souls is told through item descriptions, and yet this didn't seem to get any criticism. Why is it worse to do what XIII does?
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Probably because you do get a lot of narrative up front in XIII, but the Souls games are entirely about storytelling through lore and environment.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I view the datalog entries concerning the primary narrative as a supplementary tie-in novelization adaptation of the game that's internally provided for the player's perusal and curiosity. I value them because they aren't dry and merely descriptive recaps but as subjective and concerned with the emotional stakes and contexts of the storytelling as the frontfacing cinematics are, capable of creating new interpretations through their input.
 

4-So

Spicy
For what it's worth, a not insubstantial part of my enjoyment of FF13 was due to entirely ignoring the datalogs, which I felt stopped forward momentum and worked as an annoyance for me more than anything else. The narrative worked without them; even after finishing, I still didn't go back and read them.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
One thing I like about Final Fantasy IV immediately after playing III is what it does with the Sage and Ninja characters - in III, those jobs are ridiculously powerful and are the last jobs you get, so when you get Tellah it's like "holy crap I have a Sage already! ...why does he only have 90 MP and why isn't he getting more at level up?" Later, he dies and doesn't ever come back. Then you get Edge and it's like "oh yeah, a Ninja, time to do some big damage" and he sucks!

I think that's a great meta joke. We really missed out on the original context of these games in the west, didn't we?
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Is he? He's always seemed like dead weight in my party... Maybe I don't load up on enough Fuma Shurikens lol
 

ThricebornPhoenix

target for faraway laughter
(he/him)
Don't overlook Edge's best weapons: claws! Sure, they have 0 attack, but sometimes the damage multiplier or status effect more than offsets that. In the case of Cat Claws, the +5 strength and agility may give you an attack/defense/m.def multiplier, which is worth consideration. Especially the defensive ones, Edge is... a pretty frail dude for a front-liner.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
It's been so long since I last played IV that I don't even remember if I ever equipped claws on Edge, so I'll have to give that a try this time around, thanks.

(I'll be sad if Edge actually is good, because I really do like the meta joke of "you remember those ultimate classes from III? you can't rely on them here" in IV lol)
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
Finished IV.

As far as game balance, the big player advantage that manifests, common to all of these remasters, are the massively inflated gil gains/reduced experience requirements per level. It's probably part of a overarching modernization effort in presenting vintage material like this to modern audiences, even for a game like IV that in so many ways is the blueprint for what is often considered the genre in its idealized form. I don't remember which one of these it was but at least in one the gil counter got maxed through regular play, and in others it was always in the millions by the end. It's not that huge a deal as currency either doesn't get you the strongest equipment or ceases to matter after a point, but it's noticeable. The EXP pacing is another issue as IV especially is so directed for its entire duration that adjusting much at all either requires a complete reworking like on DS, lest it all unravel. In here, you increase in strength maybe twice as fast compared to other 2D versions, and since the game's most notable "checks" are level-based--does Rosa know Float and Reflect yet, does everyone have enough HP yet to survive Big Bang--it's something that becomes pretty practically apparent. IV was never designed for idle grinding, but this version rockets you up to completely frictionless play much sooner than any other through completely ordinary approach to it.

The prediction I made about Rosa panned out and then some: through luck with drops, the first opportunities to procure Artemis Arrows and a Minerva Bustier resulted in just that, and from then on nothing could touch her. Most of the end-game is populated by technically dangerous dragons, but that equipment allowed her to deal 7000+ damage at a point when other characters were clearing maybe a third of that on their best day. I'm so completely unaccustomed to the pace and approach to battles in the non-DS versions at this point, where you really have to take everything seriously or prepare very specifically--in here, auto-battle took care of many of the optional bosses on its own.

Small quirk that's maybe not readily evident if you're conditioned to manually play "optimally" since prior versions: characters departing the party now automatically leave their equipment in the inventory. No more stripping people of their valuables and clothing in anticipation of dramatic exits!
 

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
I did read every datalog in XIII, so I was OK with the history. Way too many non-sensical nouns but, OK, it was tolerable. But there were small things here and there that keep straining my disbelief and what finally broke it and made me finally flip my desk happened at the final villain monologue - but it was the end, so I just soldiered through the final 20 minutes and finished the story. If it had happened any earlier I would have left the story uncomplete and just go back and finish the optional bosses at Pulse and declare it "finished".

For the record, what to this day makes me groan is "We know you want us to kill you and we won't play along, we will defeat you... by killing you!" and I was like, hey maybe don't give the villain what you know they want without a way to keep your home from, you know, collapsing? And the game didn't even acknnowledge it somehow by, dunno, wondering if he's bluffing or not.
 

Torzelbaum

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292
(he, him, his)
Don't overlook Edge's best weapons: claws! Sure, they have 0 attack, but sometimes the damage multiplier or status effect more than offsets that. In the case of Cat Claws, the +5 strength and agility may give you an attack/defense/m.def multiplier, which is worth consideration. Especially the defensive ones, Edge is... a pretty frail dude for a front-liner.
Which is why you need to back row glitch him!
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I don't think logical causality as far as the technical aspects of the plotting is a good approach to take with XIII's storytelling because it's not about that kind of emphasis at all. It's full of people in impossible situations with no ways out of them, constantly making terrible decisions and bickering amongst themselves and making things worse for each other because of the unending stress and pressure they're all under, so the late-game developments in the story aren't so much about anyone figuring out an escape from their circumstances because materially there isn't one to be found--it's just about the emotional reconciliation between the cast and acceptance of the impossible hand they've been dealt while completely rejecting the machinations they're playing into through simply overpowering them through force of will and making those last moments personally matter. I think this is one of the biggest division points in who gels with the game's writing or doesn't, because for some this kind of thing isn't acceptable on any level--I eat it up because I basically only care about overwrought emotionality in fiction, and am thus completely in sync with the interpersonal disasters XIII's cast is composed of and their reflexive tendencies to punch a hole where god is.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Edge was pretty decent in the DS remake, where he could get Augments that either gave him access to Edwards (much improved) Bard Magic, or else not get a damage penalty from being in the back row.
 

Lokii

(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
The main cast also has very little room to operate, they're put in an impossible situation. All the way up to and including the final battle they're still confined by the machinations of the Fal'cie. In a lot of ways the game is about how these people react to this impossible situation. That their able to grow as people and find hope when there's no way out is what defines them as heroes. In turn, their ultimate success comes because of the bonds they formed over the course of the game and through that they're able to manifest the force of conviction that allows Ragnarock to be a mindful force of salvation rather than a mindless destructive one. That this moment of success comes in a non-interactive cutscene following the final boss rather than during the fight itself is out of step with JRPG conventions and might account for some of the frustration people have with the plot. But it works for me because the narrative interest of the game is focused more on the growth of the cast as people rather than the mechanical growth of their ability to hit a monster. It's an odd shape for a JRPG to take for sure, but clearly SE wasn't trying to make a typical JRPG.

And yet, ultimately, aren't all JRPGs about the friends we made along the way?
 
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