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Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
The double XP gains in IVPR concern me. In part because they break a perfectly paced game (if anything they just needed to lower reflect and float on Rosa's spell list). But also because they're going to take the wrong lesson from that if they change V in the same way, when what it actually needs is double/triple/quadruple JP gain in worlds 2/3/the rift and no other changes.

The ATB ticks didn't bother me, they're nowhere near as damning as the petrify targeting bug, but some of that is ATB always has and always will be janky IMHO and part of it is years or FFRK's abhorrent ATB implementation desensitizing me to these things. At least non-attack commands complete pretty fast instead of taking 2 1/3 years like in the 3D versions.
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
In 1/2/3 at least (did not test in 4) if you're petrified you can still be targeted by single target attacks (Also still gain XP).

Most abusive in 1 because of the row-targeting (would be broken in half in 2 if they had kept the classic front/back row restrictions there), but pretty great in all of them if you want to just nullify a ton of attacks.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
Oh my god


I mean, on the one hand, this is the trailer they should have shown before, unless the unintended hilarity of the original was actually intended. I love the environments, the enemies, the combat engine, and that the "four young warriors arrive, each holding an ORB Kinder Surprise".

On the other, I still very much dislike the super-gritty characters, character design, and character banter, and there's something just.... off about the voice acting and the cutscene animation. Exploding a cute mascot character into a shower of crystallized blood is always a winner, I guess.

On the other, other hand

That last line

Oh my god that last line

This is going to be such a magnificent trainwreck and I'm all here for it. As in, watching from afar, because I ain't buying this mess :p

Lords of Shadow is gonna suuuuueee!
 

fanboymaster

(He/Him)
Demo was good, game clearly is keenly aware of how silly its tone is and I respect it for not winking too much about it. Looking forward to it.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
I was really critical of the first demo for Strangers of Paradise, but I beat the new one yesterday and it finally won me over on the gameplay. It's just... too bad about the everything else attached to it.

game clearly is keenly aware of how silly its tone is
I'm not convinced this is true.
 

fanboymaster

(He/Him)
I'm not convinced this is true.
I'm not convinced that they had a character listen to another character's backstory say bullshit turn on his iphone and listen to 02 era rap rock without having any idea what they'd done. Game seems quite careful to undercut its own grimdarkness when it would be amusing to do so, it just doesn't seem interested in winking while it does so. I got the same feeling from the cactuars, the things make looney tunes sound effects while your party runs around in circles trying to catch up long enough to hit them. It's in the eye of the beholder but this game reads to me as 100% aware of how silly it is.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
I can’t offer any insight as to whether I’m laughing with the game, or at it, but I’m absolutely laughing and the game is the cause of that.
 

madhair60

Video games
I tried the second demo having not played the first and oh my god this game is so fun!!? You can switch Jobs with a button press and fully customise your entire combo string. I love this and I'm not even memeing. I can see myself pouring hours into it.
 

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
Yeah, odds are the game will be good mechanically. The problem is everything else. I just wish that if it sells the attitude (and most of the fashion) won't cross to the main series.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
The way they're selling both Stranger and XVI and what kind of characters are allowed to star in them does resonate strongly with the video game industry's aesthetic and tonal trends circa 2008 or so, for whatever that's worth.
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Circa 2008 releases would've begun development around 2005-2006, and 2005-2006 is when the Final Fantasy series started being plagued with development issues. Perhaps they're taking a mulligan on that whole decade, drawing from pitches that they weren't structurally able to begin due to the quagmire of Final Fantasy Versus XIII and the all-hands-on-deck do-over of Final Fantasy XIV.

I feel like audiences these days tend to doubt their own abilities of interpretation. If you notice something in the art, it's there for you: you don't need to wait for the script to give you permission to read it. It's not a mistake, and you have options other than politely pretending it didn't happen or criticizing their carelessness in allowing it in. Have confidence in your own literacy.

For myself, I see a joke in Stranger of Paradise as well. It depicts an angry edgy white dude, but I'm not detecting it telegraphing a vindication of the angry edgy white dude worldview.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
It doesn't need to be one or the other, especially when all the messaging around the game is as incoherent as it is. On one hand, the benefit of the doubt in the text telling the joke it appears to be and the seeming confidence in letting it land without spelling it out. On the other, backpedaling marketing decisions and localization choices this late in development, built expressly on keen concern with audience reactions, where people finding the game funny apparently bothered the developers to a degree they had to right ship immediately according to that overlooked intent. I'm sure some of the humour people see in the game is working as intended, and some of it appears to be operating on a level unanticipated by the cultural or language gap's game of telephone inbetween. Whatever these nuances eventually congeal to, it's still the story of an angry guy, belabouring retrograde kidnapping thematics from the very old source material, and with a token woman in the dude party whose memetic role as of now is only as the forgotten butt end of a joke people are trying to figure out how they feel about. It's perpetuating a lot of bullshit in just the fundamentals that I don't think it's even going to attempt to acknowledge or comment on.
 

Positronic Brain

Out Of Warranty
(He/him)
I'm just glad this in production in a moment where the development in the next title in the main series is progressing as expected so it doesn't end up rebranded as Final Fantasy XVI.
 

Zef

Find Your Reason
(He/Him)
I'm just glad this in production in a moment where the development in the next title in the main series is progressing as expected so it doesn't end up rebranded as Final Fantasy XVI.

Nah, it's too dead-set on Lords of Shadow'ing the original FF to try to become the next numbered installment. But I'd be more worried with this game connecting to the Dissidia storyline (such as it is) by retroactively justifying that series' Garland visual design/characterization. And the "Origins" bit also makes me queasy. Reaaaalllly wouldn't want this to be the first step in trying to connect all the games together.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
Imagine Lenna snarling “I’m looking for X-Death. I’m going to kill him” looking like the angriest dog in the world.
 
There's a little trailer, too.


I want to see some battle stuff, but I have thought from the beginning that the general style for this project looks best for FFV, and I still think that's true. Also, I don't think the spell animations in this game are as strong, so I won't mind them becoming more generic.

This might end up being the one of these I actually play instead of just watching a few YouTube videos and reading about balance adjustments...
 

Juno

The DRKest Roe
(He, Him)
I only just cleared the Wind Shrine and got the first few jobs, but it feels good so far. Graphics look nice, and the music is great!
 

4-So

Spicy
I played it for about 10 minutes or so. Got Bartz, Lenna, and Galuf and really just started. Still have Boko. Hard to tell, especially since I'm not nearly as familiar with FF5 as I am with the other games, but it seems fine so far.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Just got to Walse. Final Fantasy V is a pretty great game, and so far I really like the Pixel Remaster of it.
 
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