Squeenix Spoony plays Final Fantasy XIII

[Grunker]

The Sphere Grid is easily the best character system in any Final Fantasy game.

I haven't played many RPGs except one Shin Megami Tensei game beyond FF, so Persona I have no clue about.

 

[Jasede]

I really can't see how you can say that.

So let's investigate:

Why do you like it better than the job system in Final Fantasy 5?
What does it have over it?

In 5, I felt that each time I got a new job level it opened up cool new combinations I could make a katana-wielding dancer. Or a white mage who can cast black magic. Or maybe I wanted to go nuts and have a weird berserker/monk combo. Or how about a Knight who can heal? I could customize my party the way I wanted to, while still having limitations that forced me to weigh my options.

Later in the game the system opened up more and I could combine traits of 2-3 different classes in one, creating things like a Chemist who can dance and sing bard songs or a geomancer dual-wielding swords.


In contrast, in 10 I felt forced to go down certain paths the game had pre-set for me. I couldn't pick the skills I wanted- I had to advance towards them and get abilities that didn't even suit the character I wanted to make. Also, it took forever to get anywhere nice. I felt it was unrewarding and slow-paced and thus never captured my interest. I enjoyed the idea of making a party of certain classes far more than this kind of "bit by bit" organic learning.

 

[felipepepe]

Persona 4 has the opposite problem, fantastic storytelling and characters, horribly boring dungeon-crawl and boring battles you must bear to unlock the story...

 

[Jasede]

I... really don't agree. I thought the battles were a blast. Did you play on Expert? I was always biting my fingernails (so to speak) because the game was very difficult, especially at the start. After playing more SMT games it turned out to be one of the easier ones, but that's besides the point. I really liked the press-turn system and the different strategies and personas that the bosses and mini-bosses required. Honestly, I thought the battle system is excellent, as were the encounters.

You'd think after 4 I'd be bored of this but no, I played 3 after and it was even harder, with every boss requiring a great deal of strategy. You really couldn't just power through that game without making a plan and dipping heavily into your consumables. That's something that you simply don't get in Final Fantasy, ever- short of optional bosses.

 

[evdk]

Persona 4 has the opposite problem, fantastic storytelling and characters, horribly boring dungeon-crawl and boring battles you must bear to unlock the story...

ATM I am trying to play ths game (after unsuccessfully attempting P3) and this is pretty much my opinion (I'd tone down the praise for the story, but it's still miles above the incredibly tedious grinding in boring, corridor-like "dungeons")

 

[Fat Dragon]

Grunker Blitzball is laughably easy to cheese. Score a single point, then take the ball and hide behind your goalie the rest of the game, opposing team can't do anything to you. Victory achieved

 

[Grunker]

Grunker Blitzball is laughably easy to cheese. Score a single point, then take the ball and hide behind your goalie the rest of the game, opposing team can't do anything to you. Victory achieved

Even scoring a single point is frustrating. Even Tidus can't score even though I secure him point blank range on the goal.

 

[Jasede]

LOL! I never thought of that, Fat Dragon. Brilliant.

evdk: The dungeons don't bore me because I consider them kind of like the rogue-like DS game dungeons: Shiren the Wanderer, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and so on. I think it was intentional that they are like this.

 

[Grunker]

I really can't see how you can say that.

So let's investigate:

Why do you like it better than the job system in Final Fantasy 5?
What does it have over it?

In 5, I felt that each time I got a new job level it opened up cool new combinations I could make a katana-wielding dancer. Or a white mage who can cast black magic. Or maybe I wanted to go nuts and have a weird berserker/monk combo. Or how about a Knight who can heal? I could customize my party the way I wanted to, while still having limitations that forced me to weigh my options.

Later in the game the system opened up more and I could combine traits of 2-3 different classes in one, creating things like a Chemist who can dance and sing bard songs or a geomancer dual-wielding swords.


In contrast, in 10 I felt forced to go down certain paths the game had pre-set for me. I couldn't pick the skills I wanted- I had to advance towards them and get abilities that didn't even suit the character I wanted to make. Also, it took forever to get anywhere nice. I felt it was unrewarding and slow-paced and thus never captured my interest. I enjoyed the idea of making a party of certain classes far more than this kind of "bit by bit" organic learning.

I'll give you that 5 wasn't too bad, but the Sphere Grid also allowed you to customize your party almost freely - you just had to be smarter about how you were going about it. The sphere grid encouraged long thinking and playing around with different paths. The only thing that was wrong with it was that paths could be too linear sometimes, but that was fixed on the "expert" grid.

 

[Jasede]

Fair enough, now I can see why you can tolerate it, at least.

 

[evdk]

LOL! I never thought of that, Fat Dragon. Brilliant.

evdk: The dungeons don't bore me because I consider them kind of like the rogue-like DS game dungeons: Shiren the Wanderer, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and so on. I think it was intentional that they are like this.

Intentional or not I cannot stand it. SO far I'm hanging on, because the boss fights are interesting and an unlucky combination of enemies can hand you your ass in one round, but still...
My favourite SMT so far is still Strange Journey - invisible teleporters, poison and sleep floor, pit traps and secret doors? Sign me right up for an Antarctica expedition!

 

[Fat Dragon]

Grunker Blitzball is laughably easy to cheese. Score a single point, then take the ball and hide behind your goalie the rest of the game, opposing team can't do anything to you. Victory achieved

Even scoring a single point is frustrating. Even Tidus can't score even though I secure him point blank range on the goal.

Are you doing that mandatory game against the Luca Goes in the beginning? You don't even have to win that to advance the game. It's not worth the time to win anyway, all you get is like a strength sphere or something. The characters don't even acknowledge it if you win or lose.

 

[Jasede]

Yeah, it's not that kind of game. I wouldn't force myself. I had a roommate who played every single jRPG he could get his hands on- I think Suikoden was his favorite series. But he could not for the life of his tolerate Persona 3, so even hard-bitten jRPG fans sometimes have a problem with the way it handles its "dungeons". If you like Strange Journey, there's a new one coming out soon: SMT 4. We heard some mixed things about it, but it may be good. It'll be a classic dungeon crawler in the vein of Strange Journey or the Super Nintendo SMT games.

 

[Grunker]

LOL! I never thought of that, Fat Dragon. Brilliant.

evdk: The dungeons don't bore me because I consider them kind of like the rogue-like DS game dungeons: Shiren the Wanderer, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, and so on. I think it was intentional that they are like this.

Intentional or not I cannot stand it. SO far I'm hanging on, because the boss fights are interesting and an unlucky combination of enemies can hand you your ass in one round, but still...
My favourite SMT so far is still Strange Journey - invisible teleporters, poison and sleep floor, pit traps and secret doors? Sign me right up for an Antarctica expedition!

Yeah. The best thing Black Cat ever did was recommending Strange Journey to me. If more jRPGs were like that, perhaps I'd be hooked.

 

[felipepepe]

Bro, playing P4 after having played Nocturne is just revolting, the level of dumbing they they did, especially on map design is outrageous. There is NOTHING to do on the dungeons but find the stairs and go up, half-way through the game they introduce... keys, and that's it. Not to mention that you're party menbers are fixed and you can't change their personas...

Yeah. The best thing Black Cat ever did was recommending Strange Journey to me. If more jRPGs were like that, perhaps I'd be hooked.

My favourite SMT so far is still Strange Journey - invisible teleporters, poison and sleep floor, pit traps and secret doors? Sign me right up for an Antarctica expedition!

You guys should really play Generation XTH, it has some quality dungeon crawl with great maps full of rotating walls, warps, no-map zones, dispels, shock tiles...

 

[Jasede]

They're not supposed to be like Nocturne dungeons. They're a completely different animal. Think of them as rogue-like light dungeons. Have you ever played a DS rogue-like? Izuna the ninja? Shiren the wanderer? PMD? That's what these dungeons are. That's what they're trying to be. It's not dumbing down- it's just different.

They're really just a backdrop to fight battles on. With that said... if you don't love the battle system you're probably gonna hate the P3/4 dungeons faster than you can blink.


But what I am trying to say is: they're not trying to be classical Nocturne or SMT dungeons. It's a spin off and its doing its own thing: weird rogue-like light random dungeons where the point is mostly to just get to the next level. You can try taking them in small doses- the game encourages this. But don't fault the game for failing to imitate a classic SMT game when the whole point to begin with was to be different and have a completely different style.

You can't blame Grimrock for not having turn-based combat because that's just not the kind of style of game they were trying to make- you get what I'm saying?

 

[evdk]

You guys should really play Generation XTH, it has some quality dungeon crawl with great maps full of rotating walls, warps, no-map zones, dispels, shock tiles...

I have the translated demo installed and got my ass hilariously handed to me in almost every fight so far. I am suspecting some fatal char gen error :D

 

[Jasede]

What's this XTH business? Never heard of it.

 

[evdk]

What's this XTH business? Never heard of it.

Code Hazard XTH - a jap dungeon crawler in the vein of old Wizardries (in fact it's based on one of the Japan made Wizardry games).
The translation project is located here. Ulminati is doing a LP of the Beta translation of the full game in the Playground.

 

[felipepepe]

But Jasede, most roguelikes are fully turn-based, with only one character, battles are on the same map-screen, there's tons of loot and ironman/permadeath... so the only roguelike thing I got was shitty randomly generated maps, possible the weakest part of roguelikes...

What's this XTH business? Never heard of it.

Wonderful game, Bee and I are testing out the translation patch, is working very well and I've beated the game with no issues. And it's part of a trilogy, and you can import your party to the sequels, that we're hoping to convince the translator guy to do next.

 

[Jasede]

That's arguably true. The dungeons are the worst part of these games. But as I said, I do like the battles, though, so I still consider them great games, especially 4. I'm not expecting a Nocturne spin-off to be as challenging as Nocturne. It doesn't want to be. The dungeons are really just there to block your road to the next boss. I do think they could have been made more interesting.

I can see why they did it this way, though. You have that time-pressure of finishing the dungeon before the month is over. This arguably adds to the game. And the dungeons repopulating and newly generating each day means that the game rewards you for taking a risk and staying longer than you ought to. It's a time management component.

Still doesn't mean they couldn't have made them more interactive. Maybe use more rogue-like elements and add things like shrines and fountains and such, or rare bonus levels.

 

[Machocruz]

Dungeons in Persona have always been bland as far as I can tell. Strange Journey is awesome, with much better dungeons, but for Persona I prefer isometric viewpoint. But FFS, they need to bring Kazuma Kaneko back to Persona.

 

[sea]

I liked Dr Insano's scene, although it was much too long and Spoony is not really very good in this type of comedy. He is at his best when he analyzes the shit out of things or fakes over-the-top rage at stupid things (IMO he does that better than AVGN).

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/11/it-begins-again/

4:40 onwards. His rage at Tidus and Final Fantasy X is legendary.

 

[MicoSelva]

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/03/11/it-begins-again/

4:40 onwards. His rage at Tidus and Final Fantasy X is legendary.

Exactly what I meant.

 

[aris]

Both FFIX and FFX are both very good and solid games, and like every game, not without flaws, get over it you faggots.

Spoony is just dead wrong here, and he is mostly wrong about FFVIII too.

"nobody likes sphere grids, I want automatic levelling" pffffff