FFXIV

I like to play an MMORPG along side a few ARPG's (Currently PoE, D3, and Marvel Heroes).

With that said, has anyone tried the new FFXIV that was remade from the ground up? Is it a lot better than before? Worth checking out?

I've been in beta since really early on, for both FFXIV and FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. A Realm Reborn is much more improved compared to it's predecessor. It looks and sounds amazing which is enough to just keep me looking around, and the combat has been slightly increased to give it more of an action-combat type feel.

If I had the energy to play another MMO, I'd probably pick this one - but alas, I do not.

I played FF14 for a while with a friend.

The itemization is purely terrible (everyone has the same gear with extremely little variance). The combat is fairly dull, just hit your hotkeys as the cooldowns come off and la di da. The class system is nowhere near as interesting as it was in FF11.

The story is amazing (by MMO standards) and the setting is somewhat amazing -- the towns are extremely well made, the overworld has lots of copy+pasted fields to nowhere. The music is quite good.

I've heard rumors that FF14:ARR has improved a few of the crappy things, but not enough has changed to make me want to bother with it again. Also, MMOs... blegh.

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pneuma wrote:

The story is amazing (by MMO standards) and the setting is somewhat amazing -- the towns are extremely well made, the overworld has lots of copy+pasted fields to nowhere. The music is quite good.

This is what I play FF for, the story and towns. I can live with average combat, but I can't live with paying a subscription. Pity.

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BerMalBerIst1 wrote:

I haven't owned a Playstation ever, so the last good FF games I played were 7 and 8.

God damnit. :(

Are any of the ones on Playstation (I think like 9-12 or whatever were on it) any good? I might have to buy a PS just to check out some of the older ones.

IX, X and XII are all incredible, although I seem to be in the minority regarding XII. Have never played XI, it's an MMO though, not single player.

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BerMalBerIst1 wrote:

I haven't owned a Playstation ever, so the last good FF games I played were 7 and 8.

God damnit. :(

Are any of the ones on Playstation (I think like 9-12 or whatever were on it) any good? I might have to buy a PS just to check out some of the older ones.

7 and 8 were on playstation, I didn't really care for 9 - but I know some people who think it was one of the best ones. 10 was good, 10-2 sucked. 11 was an MMO. 12 was horse shit.

At any rate, you don't really need a playstation to play these, you could download the ROMs and an emulator and play it on your computer.

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Jarchan wrote:

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BerMalBerIst1 wrote:

I haven't owned a Playstation ever, so the last good FF games I played were 7 and 8.

God damnit. :(

Are any of the ones on Playstation (I think like 9-12 or whatever were on it) any good? I might have to buy a PS just to check out some of the older ones.

IX, X and XII are all incredible, although I seem to be in the minority regarding XII. Have never played XI, it's an MMO though, not single player.

7-9 were PS1, 10-12 on PS2, and 13 PS3, I think.

Series started losing me with 8. Was okay, but the story was kinda muddled, the setting didn't catch me, and the characters weren't too memorable. 9 I would have enjoyed more without a monkey for a main character, and it seemed to just drag on and on without much happening. 10-11 I never bothered with, since I didn't have a PS2, nor a real desire to play; 10 with the seemingly Hawaiian surfer dude theme, or 11, a sub based mmo. 12 I played on an emulator, and it was kinda cool, as I loved Tactics, so seeing more of Ivalice was welcome, but the overt Star Wars story seemed phoned in, and it just didn't interest me very much mechanically. 13 was just so... so bad.

I'd say 6>7>Tactics>4>1>12>8. If you liked 8, 10 might be worth checking out. I've had good luck with PCSX2.

I'll grant that 9 was a great technical display of the beauty PS1 could deliver.

If you haven't tried it, Xenogears was also a pretty amazing rpg from around that era.

This is now an FF thread.


FF1 is still probably the most fun to replay due to no limitations on party and being incredibly short when compared to the rest.

FF2 was the first attempt at making more memorable player characters and it was a fun but overly forgettable romp with little character development or twists.

FF3 had the first malleable job system and was the first FF to introduce side quests, but I have very few good things to say about it other than that. Crystals, magic crystals everywhere.

FF4 was the first FF with a really solid, really interesting story and cast. Lots of character development, quite a few varied areas to explore as well. The combat system was the first "conditional" ATB (some actions take longer or shorter than others, in addition to waiting down the ATB timer). Sadly the gameplay reverted to FF2's static character system, but the cast was large enough (and changed often enough) to keep it interesting.

FF5 was all about the job system. It took a decade for other RPGs to compete with the job system it introduced. I tend to think of it as FF3-but-better, and I think of both as showing off a gameplay system more than making something much more memorable.

FF6 introduced limit breaks and classless spell learning/casting, and had a top notch story. Was the first to really start to put emphasis on places and fleshing out the world, the politics, and making you give a shit about whether characters live or die. Cyan's story is probably the best example of this -- he loses his wife and son in a tragic attack then is forced to meet their ghosts later on aboard the Phantom Train.

FF7 had the best side questing and area exploration of any of the FF games, a completely unique (classless) combat system in materia, introduced FMVs, and probably the best characterization of any FF. On top of that, pre-rendered backgrounds are the best thing since sliced bread and allow game makers to put in some amazingly cinematic shots.

FF8 is my favorite FF game, so it's hard to talk about it without jerking it too hard. Another completely unique (and classless) battle system, triple triad, and also Squall Dies makes the story extremely interesting. The locations in the game go from extremely peaceful to bewildering.

FF9 revived the pseudo-medieval setting found in the S/NES era and also revived the role-based combat from FF4. Humongous throwback to the older games and it went over extremely well. In keeping with 6/7/8's focus on locations in the world (and 7/8's amazing pre-rendered backgrounds), it's a very memorable game.

FF10 was where things... started to go wrong. I love that it re-used FF4's conditional ATB (with an awesome UI, to boot) and introduced a novel "level up" system in the form of the Sphere Grid. The locations were quite beautiful as well. As for the downsides, the camera was no longer fixed at all times and some of the areas both looked terrible and looked terrible with a moving camera. The loss of an explorable world was likewise a gigantic hit to the series.

Up until here I haven't even mentioned music because it's easy to sum up as "pure excellence". That is... until FF10. In 10, Uematsu was not the sole composer which resulted in occasional masturbatory orchestral music and dogshit.

FF10-2 was a game that I actually really enjoyed in spite of its completely horrid story and even more horrid characters/girl power sections. This game has by far and away the best combat system of any of the final fantasies -- a job system as wide as FF5's that allows you to change job during combat and throw in a conditional ATB system on top of that. The music was completely different than every other FF, and not too terrible. It fit the game, for what its worth.

FF11 was an MMO. It had an amazing job system and quite complex combat. Now it's mostly dead, which is a damn shame. It also has a learning curve like a brick wall (example: summoners).

FF12 was the second FF after 10 that really bothered me. Completely free camera meant the death of all storytelling camera work. The combat was extremely well done in the sense that it was classless and had conditional ATB and included character positions in battle, but had two fatal flaws. The gambit system actively encouraged players to not play the game and it introduced AI-controlled combat. The latter has plagued RPGs ever since. The music continued a downward trend of masturbatory orchestral.

FF13 was a fucking travesty.
FF14... my thoughts are given previously.
Here's to hoping for FF15? Oh wait, it's an ARPG with AI-controlled characters. Pass.

Agree with largely Pneuma with some thoughts:

SNES FF 2 & 3 (dont know the japan versions) are easily in my top 5 favorite SNES games (that is a fucking good list)

FF8 was so different from FF7 it really put me off of the game. I also was not crazy about the tactical card game prevalent throughout the entire game (including boss battles consisting of playing someone in the card game), but it was very unique, and I could see how people could get excited about it. The game as a whole was really well done with the timing elements in the turn based combat, looked amazing, was deep and probing story, and had a whole collection/stratgy mini game with the card game. Just was not my cup of tea after FF7 changed my life


FF12 was hard for me to get into at first. I had just been through that story and delivery method for so many times by then.

I tried several times to care before finally getting out of the first town. The Action/turn base mash up of the combat system to me was excellently done. I really got into the combat and leveling up my characters. The monster hunts were also pretty great (because they featured primarily combat i suppose). I agree that the gambit system was so tempting to just put certain characters on auto pilot (berserker?!), but I think that really spoke to the mastery of the system given to the players. You could literally set up totally reactive combat bots and was in itself it's own game. My only gripe was how powerful your characters became relatively early in the game, turning what are really challenging battles in some cases into botted faceroll story train.
Like it got to the point where you literally had to challenge yourself to not make the game faceroll, like seriously could not avoid rofl stomping the game if you did not plan for it.
So boring as all hell at the start, and boring as all hell by the end, sandwiched around a very very awesome combat and gambit system that was fun only briefly due to character power going off teh charts/


Kingdom Hearts 1 is an epic game

Final Fantasy Tactics and even FFT:war of the lions version is one of the best games of all time.

oh and the FF7: Dirge of Cerberus, third person shooter, featuring Vincent was pretty good as well.