Excellent time to be a FF fan

[Life]

So XV is coming out along with the VII remake being announced (which somehow, I am kinda excited about).

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

How about IX getting ported to Steam/Android/iOS? They're upgrading the graphics a bit (which is awesome because not a lot is going to be needed and the FMVs were already beautiful), adding in a couple of things like acheivments (there goes my life) and ​making the Excaliber II sidequest actually fucking possible.

God damn I'm excited.

[animeapple]

the final fantasy VII thing thats being made is not a remake, its a re-imagining but yes there is alot of great final fantasy stuff coming out soon

but i am more excited for the other square enix software coming out besides the final fantasy series

for dragon quest fans there is VII and VIII coming to the west and XI is in development and we also had the recent release of dragon quest heroes

bravely default fans are happy of the fact bravely second is coming west with special editions in europe and north america

so for square enix in its entirely its a good year for a fan

Edited January 24, 2016 by animeapple

[Espinosa]

Are the flashy new games going to be any good though?

[Elieson]

So XV is coming out along with the VII remake being announced (which somehow, I am kinda excited about).

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

How about IX getting ported to Steam/Android/iOS? They're upgrading the graphics a bit (which is awesome because not a lot is going to be needed and the FMVs were already beautiful), adding in a couple of things like acheivments (there goes my life) and ​making the Excaliber II sidequest actually fucking possible.

God damn I'm excited.

fucking

this

The only time I ever completed this was in a completionist speedrun attempt of the game and its so ridiculously stressful to micromanage your time for this as a generally casual player. Can you post the article that clarifies on Excalibur 2? Id like to see what specifically is changed on it

Edited January 24, 2016 by Elieson

[eclipse]

Actual Hype: IX

Still Hyped: XV

Want More Info: VII

Looks like this is The Year of Final Fantasy, though I doubt that VII will be released this year. XV might warrant buying a PS4. . .one day.

If they can fix the worst issues I had with VII (namely, characters being kinda lame outside of Red XIII/Vincent), then I'll be quite happy.

[Life]

fucking

this

The only time I ever completed this was in a completionist speedrun attempt of the game and its so ridiculously stressful to micromanage your time for this as a generally casual player. Can you post the article that clarifies on Excalibur 2? Id like to see what specifically is changed on it

It's more about removing the retarded lag times. Not really confirmed but since FFVI was cleaned up when it went to Android (best examples I have are Blitz and Bushido), I assume that getting the Excalibur 2 will now be possible (still hard but actually possible). The article hinted at this.

[Rothene]

FF9 indeed needs more love. Too many spinoff games featuring Cloud. Not enough gracing us with the presence of, in Steiner's words, MASTER VIVI.

[Thane]

I know nothing of Final Fantasy; for some reason I've never played a single entry in the series and I've never felt compelled to. I don't mean that in a negative way, and I didn't come to this thread to write anything negative, but I was under the impression that the Final Fantasy franchise was in a weird place after getting three games with a protagonist very few people liked and Squarenix trying to constantly renovate the battle system. That's what I've heard, anyway.

By the way, if I were to play a Final Fantasy game, which one should I start with, and where can one get a hold of said game?

[Yoshi2398]

don't forget about FF explorers that game looks pretty good as well.

I know nothing of Final Fantasy; for some reason I've never played a single entry in the series and I've never felt compelled to. I don't mean that in a negative way, and I didn't come to this thread to write anything negative, but I was under the impression that the Final Fantasy franchise was in a weird place after getting three games with a protagonist very few people liked and Squarenix trying to constantly renovate the battle system. That's what I've heard, anyway.

By the way, if I were to play a Final Fantasy game, which one should I start with, and where can one get a hold of said game?

if you want to get into FF the best game to start with would probably be 4 due to beint very accessible. it's also on a lot of things, virtual console, GBA,DS,IOS, steam,PSP and that's only the ones i know of.

[B.Leu]

I know nothing of Final Fantasy; for some reason I've never played a single entry in the series and I've never felt compelled to. I don't mean that in a negative way, and I didn't come to this thread to write anything negative, but I was under the impression that the Final Fantasy franchise was in a weird place after getting three games with a protagonist very few people liked and Squarenix trying to constantly renovate the battle system. That's what I've heard, anyway.

By the way, if I were to play a Final Fantasy game, which one should I start with, and where can one get a hold of said game?

FFXIII.

That was a joke, don't do it. I rather like you and your sanity.

I'm on the same boat as Yoshi, I personally recommend you FF4, it's the one I started the series with. It was originaly on SNES, but it got a remake on GBA, DS, PSP. I don't really like the DS one to be honest, compared to the others anyway.

Like Yoshi said, it is indeed a very accessible game.

FF1 and FF2, who was originally on NES also got a remake on GBA and PSP, it's not as accessible as FF4 though, it IS the very first games of the series.

Edited January 27, 2016 by B.Leu

[secondworld]

FFIX is also a good place to start

[Yoshi2398]

i also heard 9 is very accessible but haven't played it myself(waiting for the steam re-release) so that might be something to consider.

[Thane]

What is the main appeal of Final Fantasy though? I know very little about it aside from Cloud and Sephiroth being edgy, Lightning being devoid of personality and the object of Squarenix' fetish, someone being stabbed through the back and a Joker-esque villain supposedly being amazing.

Thanks for the suggestions, by the way! I might have a look at Final Fantasy IV after my exams if it was released on Steam.

[Yoshi2398]

I think the appeal at least for me boils down to getting invested into a fantasy world, exploring said world, seeing an interesting story progress, getting invested in the characters and using strategy to beat enemies and bosses and getting to see your characters grow stronger. oh and also good music

[secondworld]

It's difficult to think of a main appeal for the franchise that isn't very general and unspecified due to the differences between games, which have grown larger as the series has gone by. There isn't even a shared formula(not the story kind) anymore.

Now FFIV is considered a good starting point since it's basically the standard (classic)Final Fantasy, which is basically the standard jrpg(I'd consider "classic" FF to be I-VI btw). It's not very complex in either story or gameplay, but still effective in those categories which makes it easy to get into. The cast is also pretty good, impressively good considering its size and the time the game was released. It should be noted that the DS version(my favorite FF) adds more depth to both story and gameplay, but is much more difficult and brutal to new players, new to the series or not.

FFIX is a throwback to classic FF and also good to start with imo.

Edited January 27, 2016 by DavidSW

[Tamanoir]

Hironobu Sakaguchi (the FF Creator) once said that "as long as there is Blue Boxes, it's a FF". FF is about reimagining itself each time, and provides high quality original RPGs. Creating a complete world and immerse the player into it.

At least that's, the goal. It can sometimes fails lamentably (FFX, FFXIII apparently), but at least they tries.

On the FF recomandation, I'll add FFV and FFVI.

FFV is just fun. A reduced party and a pretty compelling Job System. With FFIII, it's a spiritual ancestor of BD in short.

FFVI is a classic at this point. It's a long story with a lot of characters and a looser story developpement on its second part. It also has an iconic villain.

I played FFIX in the Vita and it was slow as hell. It's still a charming game with an amazing music.

I hope this rerelease will solve this main issue I have with this game (it's not a big one but it makes things dragon...)

And if you play FFIV, plays either the GBA or DS version, but DO NOT play TAY. It's just an awfull fanfiction with some pretty grindy gameplay. There's a few interresting idea here and there, but in the end it was a huge disappointment.

I guess you can tries the original FFVII since FFVII R will be its own thing. It's a fan favorite for a reason, even if things have been blown out of proportion about it. If you can somehow makes abstraction of all this, it's a good title.

I want FFXV to be good, because I want SE to prove they can still makes AAA innovative RPGs.

Come on, Square! Save the game industry!

But seriously, my opinion about it is the same than with Splatoon :

Otherwise, I hpe Project Setsuna will be to Chrono Trigger what Bravely Default was to the classic FFs : A game that manage to take the essence of older games and modernizes it.

And I'm curious about World of FF, because damn is it the wierdest spinoff idea (mounting and chibification? This sounds like a bad Hentai...)

And if DQXI is reveealed thisyear (and a localization is announced), that would be great too. DQ Builders is also something I'm follwoing.

[secondworld]

I actually wouldn't recommend the GBA version of FFIV when the PSP one exists. If you want to play not-DS FFIV, that's the version you go with.

[Jave]

This might be a good thread to reveal that America and Europe are getting Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on Wii U Virtual Console tomorrow.

[Tamanoir]

I actually wouldn't recommend the GBA version of FFIV when the PSP one exists. If you want to play not-DS FFIV, that's the version you go with.

But the GBA Version is free!

It's basically the same thing if you exclude the TAY part (and the awkward link between the two parts.)

And I think the graphism isn't that great. It has this weird RPGMaker look that I'm not too fond of.

[eclipse]

I know nothing of Final Fantasy; for some reason I've never played a single entry in the series and I've never felt compelled to. I don't mean that in a negative way, and I didn't come to this thread to write anything negative, but I was under the impression that the Final Fantasy franchise was in a weird place after getting three games with a protagonist very few people liked and Squarenix trying to constantly renovate the battle system. That's what I've heard, anyway.

By the way, if I were to play a Final Fantasy game, which one should I start with, and where can one get a hold of said game?

I'd wait for the FF9 re-release. I'm not sure if FF6 is on Steam, but if it is, that's where I started. Problem with 6 is that it gets really confusing at points. Wouldn't start with 4, because. . .

Too many hidden passages/walls, which made things a pain in the ass. 6 has them, but I don't think it was as bad.

[omglmaowtf]

the final fantasy VII thing thats being made is not a remake, its a re-imagining but yes there is alot of great final fantasy stuff coming out soon

so for square enix in its entirely its a good year for a fan

But do the FFVII thing's first episode & 15 even have release dates yet?

[Tamanoir]

But do the FFVII thing's first episode & 15 even have release dates yet?

I think they said FFVII won't be out until 2017, because they're still developping it.

At least, it probably won't be out before the end of the year.

[Samias]

I'd wait for the FF9 re-release. I'm not sure if FF6 is on Steam, but if it is, that's where I started. Problem with 6 is that it gets really confusing at points. Wouldn't start with 4, because. . .

Too many hidden passages/walls, which made things a pain in the ass. 6 has them, but I don't think it was as bad.

6 is on Steam, but it's a port of the mobile version and they want an obscene amount of money for it. In Canada, they want over $20! Ugh. They also butchered the player character sprites by rendering them too soft and flat, and at a side angle instead of the original 3/4 bodies they used to have. The original is on the Wii eShop for 600 points and hopefully will be on the Wii U eShop soon, probably priced like any other SNES game and be a faithful port of the original.

I highly recommend the SNES and PS era of games. 4 is essentially the foundation of jRPGs as we know them today, 5 is essentially an improved version of 3, and 6 may be one of the most ambitious casts and has one of the best soundtracks of all time. Then when you get to the PS era, 7 continues the tradition of huge stories and memorable characters of 6, although the cast shrinks in favour of building up a world that truly feels like it's in despair. 8 is somewhat experimental, some may call it a mixed bag but it brought us Triple Triad, so could it really be that bad? And 9 is somewhat of a return to the ideas of the SNES era, with a bright and colourful world but a touch of foreboding and danger in its themes and villains.

Once the games moved into the PS2 era, 10 brought in voice acting and some may call it the last great Final Fantasy. Others call it the beginning of the end where things began to go wrong due to its linearity compared to its predecessors. 11 is an MMO and still runs off a subscription. However they've made strides to make most of the content soloable, but the concept of MMOs tends to drive people away, which is a shame. It's still a Final Fantasy game through and through. It's also the last Final Fantasy game to be made by Square before their merger with Enix. 12 ties the series deeper into the world of Ivalice, which was once only touched upon by the Tactics spinoff series, but has a sort of MMO-y vibe to it due to the way you set up commands and navigate through maps. There are no random encounters Like 11, it's a huge departure gameplay wise and also does not feature Nobuo Uematsu's music which had defined the series for ages due to his departure from the company. It's also Hironobu Sakaguchi's final Final Fantasy game, as he also departed Square Enix during FF12's production.

The first HD title in the series, FF13 and its direct sequels are generally considered to be hit or miss. Hyper linear, hyper fast ATB-style combat with X-2esque role switching, and a story that was nearly impossible to understand without backtracking to read the supplementary summaries and indexes that unlocked as you played the game. In the main line title, there's very little to do other than progress the main story, only opening up slightly when you're into the final stretch.

The original FF14 launch was a disaster, trying to follow in the footsteps of 11 but having some terrible quirks that were the antithesis to fun. Menus relied on server responses leading to multiple second delays to sort your inventory. Class exp potential got worse the longer you played as one class until it was functionally impossible for you to progress, forcing people to switch classes frequently. The combat was meant to be an update of 11's, but things like not restoring MP with your weapon drawn meant you saw mages just stand around doing nothing until their spells were ready to cast. And there was a ton of polygon inefficiency in the world, making the game inaccessible to people without extremely good computers. HOWEVER...

I personally think FF14's relaunch, a Realm Reborn, is a Final Fantasy essential. People missed out on 11 because its design was for the hardcore, where progress could only be made if you were on top of your social game. However, ARR made the combat easier to understand by taking inspiration from games like World of Warcraft and fixed up the interface to be far less obtuse. They stopped penalizing people for playing the classes they wanted to play. The story is top notch and progressing through the dungeons is a simple affair with a party builder that draws from all servers on one data centre. Even if you only pick up the game and its expansion to experience the story, it's worth it. It trends towards the easier side, making it a great casual title to pick up every so often, but the super hardcore may be disappointed if they consume all the end game content as soon as it comes out and burn out, as it doesn't have much in the way of horizontal progression like FF11 did.

(I may have problems keeping myself away from FF14)

Edited January 28, 2016 by Samias

[B.Leu]

Thane, stop saying the truth about something you're supposed to know almost nothing about, it's scary.

Honestly, the main appeal to me ? It's RPG's, and most of the time, good RPG's. It's as simple as that. I never thought far from that. Some of them have their own gimmicks both gameplay wise and story wise. Such as the jobs from FF5, the spells from FF6, the story being very present in battle like in FF9 and FF10. Some are more welcome than others.

Kind of like Dragon Quest then I think about it.

This might be a good thread to reveal that America and Europe are getting Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on Wii U Virtual Console tomorrow.

Speaking of FFTactics Advance, personally, I wouldn't specially recommend you this one, but did you know that the guys who worked on the original FFtactics on Playstation, were the same guy who worked on the Tactics Ogre series ? Pretty sexy huh ?

... Never played FFtactics though.

But the GBA Version is free!

It's basically the same thing if you exclude the TAY part (and the awkward link between the two parts.)

And I think the graphism isn't that great. It has this weird RPGMaker look that I'm not too fond of.

Ah, so I'm not the only one who have this awkward RPGMaker feels then looking at it ?

Oh yeah, it would be a good moment to mention that TAY have pretty mixed reviews about it, some talk about a very shitty story and gameplay. Me ? I dunno, I never played it, at the time, it was only on phone. Now ? I don't have a PSP.

Which is probably why I'm very fond of the GBA's version of FF4/5/6.

Also, there was this rule of 'Run away from FF sequel' after FFX-2, which I still haven't even played.

Edited January 28, 2016 by B.Leu

[Yoshi2398]

Thane, stop saying the truth about something you're supposed to know almost nothing about, it's scary.

Honestly, the main appeal to me ? It's RPG's, and most of the time, good RPG's. It's as simple as that. I never thought far from that. Some of them have their own gimmicks both gameplay wise and story wise. Such as the jobs from FF5, the spells from FF6, the story being very present in battle like in FF9 and FF10. Some are more welcome than others.

Kind of like Dragon Quest then I think about it.

Speaking of FFTactics Advance, personally, I wouldn't specially recommend you this one, but did you know that the guys who worked on the original FFtactics on Playstation, were the same guy who worked on the Tactics Ogre series ? Pretty sexy huh ?

... Never played FFtactics though.

Ah, so I'm not the only one who have this awkward RPGMaker feels then looking at it ?

Oh yeah, it would be a good moment to mention that TAY have pretty mixed reviews about it, some talk about a very shitty story and gameplay. Me ? I dunno, I never played it, at the time, it was only on phone. Now ? I don't have a PSP.

Which is probably why I'm very fond of the GBA's version of FF4/5/6.

Also, there was this rule of 'Run away from FF sequel' after FFX-2, which I still haven't even played.well

well now TAY is on steam and uses the graphics of the ff4 steam release. i personally enjoyed TAY. has some interesting mechanics and the story i thought was decent enough. but it has a weird structure kinda like SA1 if you've played that game. not as good as the original but enjoyable enough in it's own right.