Squeenix FF7 Enhanced Edition coming to Steam?

[aris]

Perhaps it's the 90's PC port (which had some interesting mods, btw)

Still has an active mod community. Hopefully the Steam Version will wake up enough interest to finish the graphical mods and retranslation faster. There's currently a project going updating the very first part of the game.

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=9688.0

Damn! That looks so much better! A shame I can't get the PC version to run.

Thanks IronicNeurotic and Hobo Elf, I will definitely get around to playing it then! Damn, so many games to play, so little time!

 

[Snerf]

While being waaay worse than 6, it still manages to be the second best ff game. Not a terrible choice if you didn't play it the first time around but I can't imagine it aging well. The ending parts were rushed and horrible though.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

To make the most of your new PSX emulator...

Suikoden 1 & 2
Vagrant Story
Legend of Dragoon
Final Fantasy 9
Xenogears (fucked over by FF8)
Chrono Cross (fuck the haters)

Some questionable character design, and horrible random encounter rates all around, but those were part for the course back in the day.

Add Final Fantasy Tactics to that list.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Thinking back on it, the combat systems of 8 and 9 weren't that bad in and of themselves, but the character building surrounding them made me rage. Drawing magic was grindy and metagamey as fuck, and equipment was all but none existent for both games.

There's a couple things I liked about FF8, I enjoyed being able to turn enemies into cards for your deck, and then being able to convert higher-end cards you won through duels into items, key components and all kinds of cool swag.


Now the character building system was screwed all to hell, yeah. Junctioned magic couldn't be used in combat, and the system itself seemed to be geared towards avoiding leveling. Enemies not only scaled with you, so did the difficulty of drawing magic from them. So a new character to a leveled party could become useless because even with higher spells junctioned to them they're outclassed, and they can't even draw magic from enemies to stockpile. Just dead weight.





Edit: Anyway, I second the votes for Xenogears, Chrono Cross and Suikoden II (never played I).

But also the Growlanser series. I loved II. Fight for the good guys, join the misguided 'bad guy', or tell them both to get bent and join up with the mercs if you're awesome enough and help carve out a whole new country.

 

[sea]

It's my favourite and generally seen as the best one. It's breakable as fuck though, but so are pretty much all FF games.

I have tried playing Final Fantasy 3/6 on a number of occasions. I have never been able to get that far in it (due to boredom/frustration), and to be honest I don't think it's (at least when played these days) a very good game.

My biggest issue by far - it's a directionless mess, with unclear objectives and many, many situations where the game is artificially extended by making you wander all the way across the world map to get to some location that may or may not advance the plot if you talk to a particular NPC at a particular time, but only after doing a side-quest for another NPC, etc. This happens even very early on, with characters telling you "go to this place" but not explaining, you know, where it actually is, and as I said, many things only trigger if you meet the requisite "wandered around aimlessly enough" quota, or have talked to every single character and then returned to a previous location with no prompting provided, etc.

A lot of the individual locations suck. Many of them are designed to be as pointlessly maze-like as possible... there's that one city where you have to climb those apartment buildings, for instance, which is pointlessly maze-like and has a lot of obscure crap that you won't figure out by basically mashing the A button on every single tile. I guess you'd call that "eleventh hour mechanics", i.e. stuff the designers decide to introduce at certain points of the game but not actually tell you about, making you rely on these obscure tricks to proceed even though you're never told what they are, how to use them, and you never see them in the game ever again.

The combat is extremely easy and requires very little strategy in party composition, item management, etc. Most of it can be finished by mashing the A button, even bosses. Good turn-based combat will make you think a lot about who's attacking and when... I never, ever had to think about this during the game. Even its puzzle bosses are pretty weak compared to later games like Chrono Trigger, which wasn't very hard either but at least made you figure out the right attack patterns and combos to win.

I guess maybe I have too high expectations, and you do have to give it some credit for being one of the first mainstream JRPGs that cemented so many of the genre's staples, but... that game just did nothing for me. As one of the JRPG genre's finest, apparently, I just do not understand the hype outside of nostalgia appeal.

 

[Infinitron]

The combat is extremely easy and requires very little strategy in party composition, item management, etc. Most of it can be finished by mashing the A button, even bosses. Good turn-based combat will make you think a lot about who's attacking and when... I never, ever had to think about this during the game. Even its puzzle bosses are pretty weak compared to later games like Chrono Trigger, which wasn't very hard either but at least made you figure out the right attack patterns and combos to win.

You didn't play long enough. It gets harder, trust me.

 

[sea]

The combat is extremely easy and requires very little strategy in party composition, item management, etc. Most of it can be finished by mashing the A button, even bosses. Good turn-based combat will make you think a lot about who's attacking and when... I never, ever had to think about this during the game. Even its puzzle bosses are pretty weak compared to later games like Chrono Trigger, which wasn't very hard either but at least made you figure out the right attack patterns and combos to win.

You didn't play long enough. It gets harder, trust me.

I got to the Dark World(TM) and I certainly didn't notice much of an improvement. Maybe you're right, but combat through the first half of the game would have been unbearable if I hadn't been able to turbo button through it, and I do not think "it gets better 30 hours in!" is an argument for a game's quality (case in point, NWN2, FFXIII).

 

[Infinitron]

The combat is extremely easy and requires very little strategy in party composition, item management, etc. Most of it can be finished by mashing the A button, even bosses. Good turn-based combat will make you think a lot about who's attacking and when... I never, ever had to think about this during the game. Even its puzzle bosses are pretty weak compared to later games like Chrono Trigger, which wasn't very hard either but at least made you figure out the right attack patterns and combos to win.

You didn't play long enough. It gets harder, trust me.

I got to the Dark World(TM) and I certainly didn't notice much of an improvement. Maybe you're right, but combat through the first half of the game would have been unbearable if I hadn't been able to turbo button through it.

Hmm, Dark World is pretty far in. Anyway, yeah, some of the dungeons in it are pretty difficult. Remember that much of it is optional content, as you can make a beeline for the endgame with a minimum of party members.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I was my first jrpg (and one of my first games, period) so I've got a lot of nostalgia for it, but I recognize that objectively FF6 is nothing special. It has a big world with lots of little secrets, which I like (shit like finding the Offering or Gem Box feels pretty fucking awesome) but there were very few battles that offered much difficulty. It's loot was fucking awesome though. Tons of unique and powerful pieces of equipment throughout the game. Early on stuff like a gauntlet or genji glove is a huge fucking deal, and later you get crap like the stuff I just mentioned, or the aegis/force/elemental shields. Not to mention hunting for espers.

The story never grabbed me, even back then, and I don't think I had much trouble with most bosses, but holy fuck it was fun exploring new areas and finding a unique piece of loot you could have easily missed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hmm, Dark World is pretty far in. Anyway, yeah, some of the dungeons in it are pretty difficult. Remember that much of it is optional content, as you can make a beeline for the endgame with a minimum of party members.

I think you can actually do it with just 3. Though that would be difficult as fuck.

 

[Grimlorn]

FF3/6 isn't tough at all. I think I only had trouble with the end dungeon and that's because I somehow beat the entire game up to that point underleveled. I think I read later that there is a way to do it so your characters aren't so underleveled because they somehow all follow a certain character's level when you get to the Dark World. So you can become under leveled really easy.

I'll probably lose my KKK, but I liked FF7. FF8 was just kind of crappy. It seemed to try and follow 7 too much and seemed to copy a lot from it and tried to tweak and improve it. I can't remember too much, but I thought Squall and Cloud were pretty close to being same type. Both quiet, loner types. I never got the whole emo thing about Cloud. He just seemed like he had a bad attitude and was more of a dick. Rinoa and Tifa/Aeris. Seifer and Sephiroth. The Sorceress and maybe Jehova but not sure about that one. Even Squall had the same kind of ultimate move as Cloud. You go into space in both games. They had these sort of mini cinematics in FF7 for summons, so in FF8 they decided to make each summon spell like a minute long or something and in the middle of it you would hit a button as fast as you could to increase the power of the summon. Although I think you could skip all of it but you'd miss the opportunity to pound a button repeatedly to increase the spells power. They decided to focus more on the romance in 8 too. And that's all I can actually remember from 10+ years ago. I'm sure there is more similarities.

I remember kind of liking FF9 more than 8 but I can't even remember what that was about. It was really cartoony if I remember right and more for kids or younger kids anyway. They did go kind of back to FF6 with specialized characters and there was a similar way to increase stats and learn abilities by equipping something like Espers in 6.

Didn't like 10 only played a handful of hours. Didn't get a chance to try 12 and 13 was crap. It was like as soon as the technology was there, they just focused on cinematics and creating anime styled characters and cutscenes. I don't know maybe I just grew out of it as I played a lot of those games as a kid and you don't have a lot to choose from as a kid. You just get to play what your parents buy you.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think you had to pound buttons during FF8's summons, nor could you skip them.

It's true that Cloud was not really emo. Squall was a caricature of what teenaged fanboys thought Cloud was like.

 

[Surf Solar]

ITT we learn sea needs a quest compass in jRPGs.

 

[SerratedBiz]

I don't think you had to pound buttons during FF8's summons, nor could you skip them.

They're not skippable but you could use the Boost ability to mash your Square button for Max Damage.

 

[Hobo Elf]

The Cloud being emo came later from the people who were exposed to the shitty Advent Children movie and other FF7 spinoffs first instead of playing the original game. In reality he was just a goofy and shy guy trying to act like he's tough shit.

 

[Grimlorn]

The Cloud being emo came later from the people who were exposed to the shitty Advent Children movie and other FF7 spinoffs first instead of playing the original game. In reality he was just a goofy and shy guy trying to act like he's tough shit.

Yeah and it's also revealed later that Sephiroth (his hero and maybe friend can't remember) burned down his hometown and murdered all his friends except one. I think it's implied that his Mother was murdered too but never stated. So it's not like it doesn't make sense that he has a bad attitude towards people. Plus he did think he was a badass Soldier 1st class.

 

[Andyman Messiah]

Huh. Might even try this out and see what all the hype back then was about.

The Horse might have to replay it, too! We want HD pix and not pixellated mess!

I'm actually playing the modded PC version right now so maybe I'll do a remake just for shits and giggles.

The playground sure could use it.

 

[sea]

ITT we learn sea needs a quest compass in jRPGs.

It's not a huge deal, but early in the game there are a lot of situations where someone says "go to X" and there's no indication where that is. When they provide directions sometimes they aren't clear. There's that whole section where you're looking for Saban early on that is almost completely directionless, in a bad way. Oh, he's... at some mountain? Through some cave? With ninjas in it? I guess? And it's not really even clear you're supposed to be finding him in the first place? Quite a few more parts in the game like that later on, where you have to return to previous locations etc. because something changed (i.e. new NPC shows up) without any indication that is the case.

It just strikes me as straight-up bad design, though to be fair a lot of it could be mitigated if there was a better map with locations actually labeled (dunno, maybe the manual had one?).

 

[Hobo Elf]

That was the norm with NES and SNES era jRPGs. Incredibly vague when it came to giving the player proper directions as to where their next destination lies. Final Fantasy was about as coherent as it got.
Of course the plus side to this was that you sometimes would wander off into towns with shops that sold powerful equipment than you weren't intended to use at that point in the game yet.

 

[Surf Solar]

I dont want to badmouth or troll someone ( sea ), but I really never had problems finding the next location I was supposed to go in FF6, even when I was a kid (and I screwed up lots of (j)RPGs in my childhood, I played through secret of mana without knowing I can equip armors etc ;D ). So I really can't understand why you have so big problems finding the next place you are supposed to go.. And the mazes you mentionend felt nice, I like the feeling in games when I feel totally lost..

 

[FrancoTAU]

I loved 6 and 7 when they came out because of the open ended nature of 6 and the crazy graphics of 7. I still think 6 holds up assuming you have any tolerance for JRPGs. There's a ton of shit to do and places to go, and you're not bogged down by the story during the second half. I agree that it's not hard to figure out where to go next. There are a couple optional dungeons that you're never directly told about but it's usually for some extra stuff or getting those last 2 extra characters into your party.

7 is just an okay game now that the graphics are dated. I thought the plot was interesting, but the english translation is so awkward that once the story really got rolling it was confusing. I'm still not sure why my group is perfectly willing to murder innocent people by the thousands blowing up power plants and than become real sissy later on with people who deserve to get their throat slit.

 

[laclongquan]

Why you FF8-denier idiots!!! I should give ya'all a piece of my mind.

FF8 is not FF7. Get it straight. It does not copy 7 and it does not attempt to be a sequel of 7. It's a separate game, innovative from all before and all after. You want more stuffs for your Sephiroth fanboyism, you wait for other, much later games.

FF8 is an experiment toward school theme game. Orphanage, even. Mercenary theme, god there's no other like it because JA2 at that time is still considered Strategy or tactic game, not RPG. Compared with other FF games, it's the first to use adolescent heroes/heroines (FF7's Cloud is 20 at the very least) with none of them over 18, not even Quistis.

FF8 is innovative because it doesnt concentrate on equipments. A bare list of things to fill out, but equipment collection like FF7 backward is not its intent. You want better defense/offense capabilities you do the following thing

Element system is the most innovative subsystem of all game, bar none. You collect magic, and with the help of GF you can customize your defense/offense to the minute detail. You want your sword to petrify/silence/curse/blind... target you can do it. YOu want your armor to defense against certain element you can also do it. Freely customization, games never see its like since.

Its mini game Triple Triad is the most fun card game too. FF9's version is not very good.

I am too hungry and rage to write more. Get satisfied with this!

 

[Grimlorn]

FF8 copies quite a bit from 7. You'd have to be crazy to not see it. It's more about the formula than simply copying things like age of characters, which isn't even a good point. And FF8 isn't the first FF game to have adolescents. I'm not even sure why that would be a positive point you're trying to make. Hell in FF6 you had a couple adolescents. I think Terra was 16 or 17 and Gau was 12 or 13. Don't remember how old the girl painter was. I'm sure that wasn't even the first FF game to do it. I think in FF1 your characters may have been adolescent and evolve into adults later when their classes change, but can't remember for sure.

Also FF7 went pretty minimal on the eq too. You just had a armlet and a weapon to equip. Can't remember FF8's system too well. I know they had gunblades.

 

[Cassidy]

Remaking the 16-bit era ones would be somewhat less of a waste than this.

 

[Malpercio]

Freely customization, games never see its like since.

Thank god for that. Only FFVIII die-hard fanboys liked the shit that was the Junction System.

Also, you should play more jrpg. Or read more stories, really. You speak like FFVIII is the first and only jrpg featuring teenagers in a coming-of-age story. It isn't.

It's also just a shitty, poorly written romance between an emo and retard with no personality.