i love the cutscenes...the first time around. once i know the story, i just want to play. hate sitting there watching EVERYTHING again.
You know, to me, the responses in this thread are proof of what a special game FF7 was. Here's why: No matter who you are, if you're a fan of traditional-style RPGs, FF7 is probably in your top 5 somewhere (if it's not #1). There's tons of disagreement over which one is actually the best. For me it's Chrono Cross, for others it's FF6. But there are people who don't like FF6 at all, and there are people who don't like Chrono Cross at all. Damn near no one doesn't like FF7. Even a lot of people who don't like RPGs in general like FF7. It has near-universal appeal. ...which is why it's so stupid there's no re-make yet.
Yes, because you'll get a lot of the vague references they put in there. Of course, having to watch the text move so slowly all over again made things annoying though. I never remember having to purposely level in XG. You do have to level the deathblows though, but nothing you have to go out of your way for. The only problem I ran into was the boss at the end of disk 1. The gear battles have almost nothing to do with levels, and were generally easy as long as you remember to upgrade the gears. The fact that magic in the game gets ridiculously overpowered also really toned down the difficulty. Really? You had to watch for fuels? I remember maybe doing that for one or two battles. Maybe I was just abusing magic too much? Because the characters that use magic... Elly and some other people... does a lot more damage than normal gears. Bosses were going down real quickly. Yeah, it's amazing they could manage to use so few tracks for such a long game, and still not have me get bored of the music.
It certainly made a big difference for me. Of course, I think I played it when I was around 10 or 11 originally. So when I played it again a few years later, it probably made more sense given that I could actually understand the subject matter a lot better (mostly the philosophical and religious aspects of the story). I played it again after that (think I've played it 3 times total), and understood even more, so it would still help to replay the game IMO. As for the battle system, I really enjoyed it (both the regular and gear battles). I don't really recall having any issues watching fuel (always upgraded my characters and gears), nor did I really have an unusual amount of difficulty with bosses for the most part (relative to other RPGs anyway). I love leveling up my characters in RPGs though, so I can understand how others who don't like doing this might feel otherwise. My only major issue (if you could call it that) would probably be the high random encounter rate, which wasn't as big of a deal back then since several games had this problem IIRC. And yes, the soundtrack was definitely amazing. I actually didn't even think about the fact that they reused so much of it until meh just mentioned it in this thread, which I guess illustrates his point.
I never buy game soundtracks and I bought the original soundtrack and the piano arrangements CD for Xenogears. Why cant we have one great next gen RPG to compare with what the SNES & PS1 did? Is it really that much to ask? And Im sorry, Final Fantasy X is not even in these games universe.
Ok, I'm gonna come out of lurk mode just for this. How the hell has there not been any mention of FF Tactics? It's easily one of my favorite games of all time. The battle system is really fun. I think the story's better than Xenogears. I feel Xenogears' plot is a bit too close to Evangelion. Anyway, that was my 0.02
not sure if you know, but a full remake of FFT just came out for the PSP, with a totally new translation and new cutscenes and everything
See, a couple of my friends had a lot of problems with the difficulty, but that's probably because their only prior RPG experience was FF7 & Chrono Cross, and those were both easy. It's wasn't really hard for me per se, but here's the thing: I always level up a pretty good amount just because, usually to the point where whatever game it is just ain't that challenging battle-wise by mid-game. Xenogears' difficulty, on the other hand, actually managed to keep pace with my leveling. Xenogears' soundtrack was great... but Chrono Cross's soundtrack is the greatest game soundtrack ever in my mind. I love everything about that game. To this day the opening theme randomly pops into my head. I feel ya on the wanting a great new RPG. I feel like after CT, CC, FF7, and XG... how can those be topped? Seriously. I did really like FFX, but it sure doesn't touch those four for me. Great game. Great battle system, great story. Extremely political; lots of back-stabbing. It's my twin brother's favorite RPG (other than King's Field, but that's a first-person RPG). It just didn't do it for me like CC or FF7, though. Speaking of King's Field... has anyone else ever played any of the three of them? Or even HEARD of them? I don't know why they're so fun, because objectively they don't really seem to have much going for them. But I like them all the same. Maybe it's the ridiculously staggering number of secret passages and secret compartments. Or maybe it's the fact that you spent the entire first game killing off the good dragon (the black one you thought was evil), and so have to spend the whole second game killing off the bad dragon (the white one that looks like some kinda angel). Crazy Japanese and their irony...
Believe it or not, as much as I played all of these, I never played Tactics. I know that is probaly blasphemy to some. At the time, I believed it was just another Mystic Quest style game. By the way, Congratulations on coming out of Lurktirement
You picked a good time my friend. I like all the recommendations here, I'm going to try playing through FF6 again (never finished, had a problem w/ the emulator). Also Xenogears (just decided to switch games for a change of pace, never went back). But FFT is tied for my favorite game of all time (w/ MvC2). I figured maybe it doesn't play like a conventional rpg so people didn't mention it here. Great story, very strategic game play, and I like the job system. I'm replaying it on the PSP now, and it's got some nice additions. Animated cut scenes, some new characters, new battles, and new job classes. This thing will get replayed to death.
I wish I had a PSP so I could play the updated Tactics. Awesome game. For those who want an excellent PS2 RPG, I can't recommend Suikoden V enough...I thought it was awesome. Tales of Symphonia for Gamecube is awesome too. I agree with everyone else in that the PS1 RPGs were both plentiful and amazing. I can't believe we're already at the next generation of gaming consoles and never got that generation defining RPG.
Amazing that this thread is still going. RPG geeks unite! I busted out the SNES last night and started a new game of FF6. Played all the way to where you meet King Edgar. The game is just good stuff...
I've read some glowing reviews about the PSP remake. Do you think it's worth buying a PSP for? My current portable console is a GBA, and I've been meaning to upgrade to either a DS or PSP for a while. I just love Tactics' story. I think it's the most realistic FF plot (if you can consider fighting angels and demons realistic, but anyway...), and everyone loves a good conspiracy theory involving the Church (e.g. Da Vinci Code). I haven't played FF XII though, and I've heard good things about the plot.
Just nitpicking, but you wouldn't really call that a full remake, would you? It is more like a port with some new content. Basically like FFIV for the GBA as opposed to FFIV for the DS. I know I'd probably be disappointed if Square-Enix did a remake of FF7 using those as examples of what a remake is. Yeah, that's pretty much why I didn't mention it here. FFT is definitely one of my favorite games of all-time. Its not quite on par with Xenogears IMO, although I'll admit that I wasn't aware of Evangelion until after I played the game. I later watched the anime series just so I could get a story similar to Xenogears. FFXII was similar in a lot of ways to FFT...which makes sense given that the same designer made both games, and both games are set in the same universe. It definitely has one of the more "realistic" stories for a FF game (along with FFT), discounting the usual things of course.
I wish they would release Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System here in the States...from the looks of it, it's even more job-system based. Overall, regarding FXII, it's probably the best FF since FF7, IMHO. The story was quite cinematic/epic and the voice acting is the best I've seen in a video game.
Yeah...it'll hook you soon after that...but you'll leave the game feeling incredibly underwhelmed... I felt like despite the hours I had put into the game at that point, plot wise it should've been only half way through when it ended. I know everyone was rejoicing with the political plotline or whatever...but I was bored by it. Final Fantasy Tactics it was not. And outside of Balthier & Ashe, there was no character development to speak of whatsoever. Vaan is the most pointless/useless main character in FF history. (Not counting the faceless characters of the early NES games) He's like Tidus in terms of annoyingness not to mention his presence in the game is unnecessary.
I'll respectfully disagree with Apollo. But I won't go in to too great of detail. Although, there wasn't a truly centered focus main character (i.e. Cloud), the historical-like story and plot twists were more than enough keep me satisfied.
