Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

@nessisonett The two characters they used from Dirge in INTERmission would be a bit weird in a Kojima game, let alone FF.

@LtSarge I know you asked about the games, but when it comes to Advent Children make sure you watch the complete version, not the original release. It has about 20-25 minutes of extra content but it turns a below average movie into a pretty good one, in my opinion.

@Thrillho Ah yeah that would be cool. But if not, hopefully they'll re-release those games as I'm sure a lot of people would want to experience more of the FF7 story.

@nessisonett Didn't know that, that's too bad. One can always hope that they'll find some workaround.

@kyleforrester87 I decided to double check now that you mentioned it and yeah, I have the complete version, so it's all good! Appreciate you mentioning this, I had no idea there were different versions.

I've been meaning to ask about this and considering there's a rumour now that the first game is getting a remaster, I was wondering if I should play the Final Fantasy Tactics games. I'm not the best at strategy RPGs (I'm still fairly new to the Fire Emblem series for example) but I'd like to give FFT a try and the games that I have the option to buy are War of the Lions on Vita (which is a remake of the PS1 game I think?) and FFT Advance on Wii U. If possible, I'd like to start with the easiest game because I've heard that these can be rather difficult games. So which one is the "least difficult" so to speak?

@LtSarge Advance is a much, much easier game. My favourite one too.

@nessisonett Good to hear, I think when I finally get around to the spinoffs that I'll start with Advance and hopefully I'll get good at SRPGs in general by the time I get to WotL. I've heard so many great things about the Tactics games that I definitely don't want to miss out on them.

@LtSarge I’d be happy for a remaster of Tactics mostly due to the fact both the PS1 and PSP versions have their own advantages. There’s slowdown in the PSP version that gets really annoying after a while!

@nessisonett I think the primary advantage of the PSP version for me is that it's on a portable device. I genuinely can't imagine playing an SRPG on the TV because you spend so much time thinking and strategising, not to mention being able to take breaks due to how long battles can last. That's why I like that most Fire Emblem games have come out on portable systems, like the 3DS games. Even Tactics Advance is on Wii U, which I can play on my Gamepad.

I'm curious to see what the remaster of Tactics will be like.

@LtSarge Yeah, I play a lot more tactical games on handheld consoles. I don’t find the Switch that comfortable though for that sorta game so haven’t played as much of Three Houses as I played of Awakening.

@nessisonett That's actually one of the reasons why I like the Vita so much because it's so small compared to the Switch.

So I just finished that awful tower defence mini-game in FF7 that you have to do at Fort Condor in order to get one of the Huge Materia. At first I thought it was only optional since the start of the game but you actually have to play it in order to progress through the story. I just didn't feel like sitting down and learn how to play it, not to mention that I didn't even realise that you could purchase more soldiers after the game had started. I almost lost because of that, but I managed to beat it in the end. I wasted all my money though, lol. But at least that's over and done with now.

I just finished disc 2 of FF7 and I'm getting very close to the end of the game now. Before that, I've been speculating in my head how the next FF7 remakes are going to be like now that I've experienced the majority of the original game.

For starters, I think that FF7 Remake 2 is going to cover the section where the group leaves Midgar all the way to when they confront Sephiroth for the first time in the northern area of the game and they lose Cloud. Because the thing is that Remake 1 was 30-40 hours based on the 5 hour section that was Midgar in the original game and they can't be constantly making these remakes based on 5 hour sections from the original. And let's be honest, Midgar is pretty much the largest city in the entire game and all other towns are fairly small so they can't be focusing too much on expanding each and every town. Furthermore, I think it's obvious they're going to make Remake 2 fully open world like FF15 and the open world aspect is what's going to make the sequel stand out in comparison to the first remake. In other words, I think Remake 2 is going to contain content mostly from the original and not as much new stuff as in Remake 1.

I'm also thinking this is going to be a trilogy, with the third game covering the section from when the team is searching for Cloud to when you battle Sephiroth as the final boss. At this point, Remake 2 is going to be pretty much the largest game in the trilogy so Remake 3 is going to have a hard time competing in that regard. Instead, I believe Remake 3 is going to stand out as having the most amount of awesome moments because most of the coolest stuff in the original is happening now in the final section of the game. For instance, Junon being attacked by that aquatic Weapon which gets shot to death by Sister Ray, the search for the Huge Materia and in particular the underwater mission with the submarine (which I think will be expanded upon in the remake) as well as the spaceship mission, the battle against Diamond Weapon (which is going to be so epic in the remake!), the destruction of Shinra and the fight against Hojo, and while I haven't gotten there yet, I think the battle against Sephiroth is going to be absolutely fantastic.

And I think in general, Remake 2 ending on Cloud being lost would be the perfect cliffhanger for the game. Then in Remake 3, there will be nonstop action and awesome moments from beginning to end in order to give the player the most grandiose finale. It would be such a great setup I think.

@LtSarge Interesting thoughts on the potential future entries in the Remake saga. I wonder if you’ll feel the same after playing the first installment of FF7R. Do you plan to jump straight into the remake or continue with the older games like FF8, FF9, and FFX?

@Th3solution Yeah I obviously haven't played the first remake yet so I don't know if I'll still feel the same but we'll just have to see!

I think it would be for the best to play the remake a bit more down the line when I've forgotten as much as I can about FF7 so that it will feel fresh to me. Not to mention that I'd like to experience the series in order now that I'm finally getting to the good part of the franchise so to speak. But honestly, I think it will be quite a long time before I get to FF7R since I want to take a break from the games after FF7 in order to not get burned out. After all, I'm starting to reach 40 hours of playtime in the original FF7, lol. And as a bonus, the more I wait to play FF7R, the less I'll have to wait for Remake 2 to come out! I genuinely can't imagine Remake 2 coming out anytime soon if they're going to make it fully open world. I think it will come out in 2025 at the earliest, so there's definitely going to be a lot of waiting time.

I'll definitely watch Advent Children after I'm done with FF7 though. Maybe also The Spirits Within if I'm feeling masochistic.

@LtSarge Yeah, it has been several years since I played the original FF7 so a lot of Remake experience seemed completely fresh to me since my memory was foggy on it. There is some good to that and some bad — good because it felt novel and like I was experiencing it all for the first time, but bad since I didn’t have the memories and nostalgia at the ready. Some of the fun of a remake is seeing how they reimagined certain sections and for me it was all too long ago for me to remember. Either way is a fun experience, but I wouldn’t suggest waiting too long so that the memories of the story and characters are slightly fresh enough to feel the connection to the first game. Burn-out on the gameplay won’t be a big problem since the combat has been reworked quite a bit. But yeah otherwise, place some time and space between and enjoy the other FF games, as you have plenty still to come — FF8, 9, 10, and 12 are all excellent. 13 is good too.

And I’m not sure about 2025, but FF7R2 won’t be coming in 2022 or early 2023. I’m going to hope for early 2024 because I do think they have been working on it concurrent with FF16. And I think they have a lot of the groundwork of the characters, narrative, and graphical assets already done so the development time will hopefully be shorter than the average AAA game. But yes, if they do go open-world with it, then things might drag out development-wise.

And I did watch Advent Children way back when I played the original game, but I didn’t really think much of it. I’m not sure why.

Does anyone know if the iOS verions of FFT:WotL is any good?
I've never played it and it does sound like something I could do on the phone

@Voltan I remember playing it years and years ago, not sure if it’s been updated for newer versions of iOS. Worked really well back then so should hopefully work just as well now!

@nessisonett Cool. It's €15 which would be the most I ever paid for a mobile game - but I think I might get it.

@Voltan Yeah, I’m loathe to pay that much on a mobile game too but then you realise that it’s the full unadulterated experience that you’d get on a console.

It took me five years but I've finally played through a Final Fantasy game that's actually really good. I managed to beat Final Fantasy 7 after around 40 hours of playtime and I enjoyed every minute of it. I can absolutely see why people love this game so much and that it's regarded as one of the best JRPGs ever made. It streamlined so many things while still retaining the classic FF experience. I think the most important thing to stress about FF7 compared to previous FF games is that it doesn't follow a strict formula, it does whatever it wants in order to heighten the experience. For instance; solving satisfying puzzles in the Shinra Tower; having all these kinds of mini-games like the motorcycle chase scene at the end of the Midgar section, snowboarding, tower defense and submarine missions; listening to extensive and interesting backstories to all the main characters; having a huge emphasis on an extremely memorable villain who gives you a huge incentive to keep playing through the game; crafting wonderful dungeons that are short but sweet (i.e. not frustratingly long!); giving you a simple but very in-depth and addicting customisation system with Materia and so on. This game has drastically improved upon so many aspects compared to its predecessors. The story was just so engrossing and it holds up really well even today due to the topic of global warming and the analogy of us not taking care of our planet.

I can go on and on praising this game but I think most people already know how phenomenal FF7 is and now I know too. This is the best Final Fantasy game I've played so far and it's one of the best JRPGs I've ever experienced. Like holy crap man, that final boss fight against Sephiroth was so intense. Not only did it take a long time to get to him and I couldn't save right before him, but he kept using attacks that took away almost all the health of my team and it made me so scared to lose lol. Definitely one of the most intense boss fights in a JRPG I've experienced.

That's actually one thing I want to bring up about this game that it did so well with and that is the difficulty level. For the most part, the boss fights were never challenging in a frustrating way. Like when I fought Sephiroth, I didn't think "well this is so unfair", I thought that I could genuinely defeat him if I just used all the tools in my arsenal. That's not what I was thinking at all during the final boss in FF4, he just straight up mopped the floor with me and I couldn't finish that game because of that. FF7 on the other hand kept a good difficulty level from start to finish and I love that. I'm so glad that I finally got to experience this masterpiece.

@LtSarge Nice. So FF8 next? It’s not my favorite but it’s not bad. 9 is possibly my favorite mainline FF though.