@tarrin4ever:
I'm curious, is this a new account or did you go by another name before? I'm just trying to figure out if you were around when Greg wrote up his piece of FF13.
Nah. I've always gone by Zero Phoenix. I use this name on other forums too so it's a way for people to recognize me. But I do get banned quite a bit and even when I'm not I rarely come to Arlongpark. Only reason I'm here this week is because most of the sites I usually go to are pretty much dead.
Want to switch gears here and do something less controversial and more fun. I could school some of your fake ass Cloud haters but getting banned from three sites in three days isn't something I have planned so let's switch it up. [Of course if the fakes still want me to explain why Cloud is the best I'll do that. After you humble yourself before me.]
I want everyone to take a Final Fantasy, anyone and you can even pick more than one. Pick out one thing that you liked the best out of that game. Pick another thing that you didn't particularly care for, and pick something that you would change if you had the opportunity to do so. Do this for story, characterization, gameplay, or all the above. Sorry to be so anal but I see so many Final Fantasy threads go dead and seeing as how this board has been quite active I want to keep it that way.
Also, it's rare when Zero Phoenix gets to interact with people whose views he respects and since we are all fans here I want to know what you all think about your Final Fantasy. I'll go first so you can see how I set this up.
I'm going with what I feel is the best game in the entire series, Final Fantasy VII. The game was just perfect in nearly every conceivable way. I can't pick out just one moment in particular because the game kept giving you more and more. If you were going to twist my arm I would say leaving Midgar and appearing on the overworld map. I was used to RPG's on a much smaller scale. At the time Super Mario RPG was the "biggest" RPG I played in terms of scope. After wrecking shop at Shinra HQ I figured that the game would say insert Disc 2. I didn't know it at the time but I just scratched the surface of this huge adventure.
One thing that I didn't care for was how hard it was to raise rare chocobo. Yes I understood the basics of catching chocobo, getting the best ones in certain areas, feeding them, racing them over, and over, and over, and over again, breeding them, and then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best but sometimes it seemed more like a game of chance. I remember one time I had a Class A Great chocobo and a Class A Great chocobo and still couldn't breed the type I was looking for. _Of course that was years ago and by 98 I was a master breeder. You might have seen me at a couple of the shows that were going on inside my head.
Joking aside, looking back that took a lot of work and it was frustrating as hell. I kid you not. I didn't even buy a strategy guide for the bosses or the quest itself, I bought it for the damn chocobos. I was on Disc 3 and I already had a save at the very last save point in Northern Crater. Shit I beat Sephiroth without even getting the Knights of the Round. So yeah, I needed the guide for the chocobo breeding because it was that damn hard.
If I could change something about FFVII though it wouldn't be the chocobo breeding because we're more than a decade out and breeding is easy as pie for me now. Has been since 98. But I would like to see FFVII with PS3 level graphics. Give me FFVII on the PS3 and I'll never need another game.
Since I had so much fun with this I'll do VIII as well.
It's a tie between the opening CG and the storming of Dollet Dukedom for your SeeD exam. Both were bad to the ass! Back in the day I followed every juicy detail about any new Final Fantasy game. If a magazine had a two inch picture of VIII I bought it. I will never forget seeing that copy of OPM with the ugly ass Tarzan cover but it had a demo of VIII. I got it, popped it in and was blown away. Even more so when I got the actual game a couple months later. Interesting fact, I popped in the game and was like, what the hell is this? We're not storming Dollet Dukedom. Any criticism I might have had faded away as soon as I saw the breathtaking CG and epic fight between Squall and Seifer.
Nowadays any game can do this even during gameplay but guess what? None of them have. It's not about the hardware it's about what the developers can do with it and to this day there isn't a single game whose opening blew me away like FFVIII. And of course you can't beat the mood of the Dollet Dukedom battle. Soldiers were getting slaughtered left and right and the army puts in a call for back from a team of high school students? Were this any other game I would shake my head at the silliness. Were this any other team I wouldn't buy it. But Squall, Zell, and even that prick Seifer. I didn't know what I would be up against (actually I did cause of the demo). I didn't know how strong my enemies would be.
All I knew was that someone was going to get their asses kicked.
There were two things I didn't like about VIII. First and foremost the GF's were overpowered. You can actually spam your summons and make it all the way to the last disc. At least I did. Unfortunately that came back to bite me in the ass which brings me to the second issue. Level grinding in FFVIII may as well be a death sentence because your enemies level up as you do and it doesn't matter what weapons you have if you don't junction the right spells to your elemental attack and status attack attributes. You don't have the right load out and prepare to spend minutes beating the hell out of goblins that should really die in one hit. I like the feeling of power that VII and other titles gave you by level grinding. Hit level 50 and that dragon you encountered ten hours into the game doesn't really seem like much does it? Now in FFVIII on the other hand, if that dragon gave you trouble ten hours in, it will probably be a bitch 30 hours in as well. So while Squaresoft might have considered it challenging to make your enemies level up as you do, it was actually quite vexing.
If I could add something it would be a Persona-esque dating/character interaction sim. Don't get me wrong, Rinoa was a great choice to balance out Squall's personality but Quistis and Squall would be interesting to see. And even the dating aside it would be nice to see the characters interact with each other outside of battle and a few scenes needed for story progression. For crying out loud you may be soldiers but you're teenagers too. Go to the movies, the malls. I'd love to see how Squall and Zell would spend an afternoon just walking around town. That has comedy written all over it.
Was that over the top? I can never tell._
