Hey guys, the reason for this thread is to discuss my personal opinion of what would help create a damn near perfect Final Fantasy. I have been thinking for a while about the 2 or 3 things wrong in almost every Final Fantasy title to date. This got me wondering what every game had in difference other than story. I came up with a rather disturbing but easy to understand conclusion. Basically from around FF7 onward ( not including FFXIII from lack of me playing it yet) the things that have never really stayed the same were these: 1. Element system, including weakness and resistance. and most important 2. The Series "Class system" or "Alignment system" for lack of better terminology. FF7~ Starting with FF7 when things started to change dramatically, the more "open-ended" Materia system, allowed for making any character a specific stereotypical class. If I wanted Cloud the giant sword weilding dragon ball haired main character to be a white mage then by god he shall be. PROBLEM with that idea is the downsides of Materia to keep things from getting overpowered, almost all Materia in FF7 had a negative side effect, thus if I were to use status buff, heal, revive, MP Dmg+ Materia to fill up all of Cloud his HP would pretty much drop to a near 1hit kill. THE SOLUTION to that matter would be to even out every character to leave nobody really open to death and make sure you always have heals and revive on hand. PROBLEM with that SOLUTION is that takes away the whole meaning of making it the users choice, you end up with 3 characters with rather even stats and usages, with the exclusion of elements and personal interest. basically by end game you will have all your character slightly different but with the same basic needed stuff, no real different than any other FF game, BUT they were on the right track. Good Game none the less. ~ ~FF8 had less of a customizable system but more of a stable one by my personal opinion, characters had more of a feel to them as a "Class". Good Game for what I can remember like 10 years ago it seems. ~ ~FF9 I sadly skipped this game from the weird reason of FFX coming out like 2 months later (It seemed?) I didnt even hear of FF9's release then X came out and I was like "wait wheres 9" went and got X. From what I was told it was more of a Final Fantasy Tactics based class system, sounds like great fun but again 180degree spin from previous title. Heard it was a Good Game. ~FF10 Had what I considered one of the most unstable alignment systems to date, was like a skill tree system mixed with a guessing game, Loved the game for the story line to death though. ~ ~FF12 Had another different alignment system, along with a completely different fighting style to it, nothing too wrong about the alignment system but again extremely different from the others. ~ As you can see they seem to be shooting in the dark and hoping to get one that they can keep, sort of scary to think about but I would think if they found one that was semi-perfect they would stick with it and add on from their sort of like they are doing with the battle system. Slowly evolving it with every game and trying new things but not really going completely 180 with it. The element system they simply need to stick with a base set of elements and slowly add on to them as games come out, almost exactly like the pokemon series has done, but now there is so many damn elements and duel elemental pokemon that remembering such facts hurts my head. So maybe not that far ^^. My idea for a decent alignment system in theory would be most likely a fusion of several of their ideas starting with FF7. The system used in FF7 could be expanded and turned into a great system that all of the series could use, let me try and get this onto the keyboard as to its all confusingly in my head. 1. I like the idea of every character being able to be anything or slightly everything aka "hybrid", but I want to feel like I am actually that "class" as well. 2. armor, clothing, accessories and weapons should be 100% equipable to any character, and there should be literally a piece for every body part like some games (pants, boots, gloves, shirt, headgear, necklace, rings?) something like that to give a idea. 3. the above items should have specific uses, but all stick to the basic raising characters stats to keep the limitations down. 4. Every armor piece has a different look to it, if I wore a "white robe" it could possibly say "INT+5" and once equipped appear as a literal white robe sort of like the white mages use. 5. Make a costume slot for those that want to go as far as mix matching their armor sets for a hybrid stat effect, would cause the same side effect as all hybrids in all games but wont have to look like a freak. As far as a skill system it could be any multiple things as long as its flexible and customizable. the equipment could have a basic slot system like Materia but more balanced, like a white mages coat would have a side effect of adding a 10% boost to any aid-type Materia slotted inside, there would not be any need for negative Materia side effects because all armor/clothing pieces would have its own stat+ and say wearing a full "White mage" set would end up giving extreme healing power+ and decent magic attack power+ but not as much as a set without aid-type stat+ would have which would be used for more of a attack type magic user. Obviously seeing as you are going for aid-type your STR or physical atk wouldn't really raise all that much from the armor/clothing. ~ I don't really have to much of a grasp on it but I can see that a nice flexible skill system would be really nice. I mean, you could do almost anything really, you could have yourself a dark-knight type class that deals itself damage when using its epic attacks but also has a few powered up buff spells like regin or protect to make your own self-damage go down as much as possible at the cost of slots that could be used to make your attacks that much more stronger but have you die a lot faster. Get my drift?
There's only one problem with games today: -Better graphics -Better gameplay -Bad history -Bad event handling Personally I would say that Square/Enix almost sunk the ship when they released FFX and FFX-II. After that, people where a little afraid of FFXI being a shitty game, and it was.
Are you saying they need better graphics? maybe I did not understand you but if so I think FFXIII did that but from the lack of "ooo's" and "aaaah's" I have yet to hear about it im guessing the gameplay and alignment system was sort of weird. I heard it was the story but thats more under gameplay, I find most of the gameplay in FF games pretty good but yeah in some games it could use a nice boost. I am not sure what you mean by history and event handling, I am guessing you mean because FF has had such a successful gaming history none of the newer games are coming out the way we want? I would not exactly say they have a bad history but several different flawed class or alignment systems. Story set aside I would care less if they went back to FF8 graphics and kept it there, hell if it was a 300 hour game with an epic system that used FF6 graphics I could also care less as long as the gameplay and alignment system rocked.
i couldnt agree more i beat FFX just so i could say i beat the first 12 final fantasy games... then X2 came out and i just gave that up haha
It seems they are at a downfall, they seem to be trying to create a new great system and just failing at each try. They don't got many more tries left until people just stop buying their games. It really all started changing with FF7 but yes personal opinions of the games always vary but that's not really the point.
One thing: -CG cutscenes doesn't count in game graphic analysis. They're pre-rendered on a render farm and played as video. -HDR in everything doesn't count as better graphics. As soon as even leather glover are glossy(like in Half Life 2), there's something wrong happening. -The so-called "new system" they're trying to create is a more turn based version of what every zelda game used since it's first version. Same with Kingdom Hearts. -Using FF characters in other games made in conjuction with other company(Kingdom Hearts) is not original and not revolutionary. Disney only needed a few bucks to survive. Take a look at Super Mario RPG. How many FF characters it has? Not a single one and it's a great game.
People complaining pokemon hasn't changed, people complaining final fantasy has changed too much... If I was a game dev I'd just give up, you people don't have a clue what you want! Comparing the combat systems of Zelda and Final Fantasy is quite frankly rediculous, they are not comparable... no matter which way you look at it.
ive played every final fantasy except crisis core and they are all good (in their own way) up to xiii, this no longer feels like a final fantasy and ive given up with it.
Lol.. Yeah anyway. The point isn't that it has changed, at all. It is that after a certain point in FF's Life they started going wild with specific parts of the system used to allocate skills to characters, unlike every other aspect that stayed decently the same. The games ALL rock in their own way, thats not being contested here nor is which game is better or "they are changing too much" nor "they are getting worse".
FF XIII is not even an RPG in my humble opinion.No real exploration,not until the last parts.The battle system is very spectacular but that does not make it good or deep.It is fast but i think XII has a deeper more strategic system. The graphics is nothing but for show.Why make beautiful scenery when you don't allow for players to explore?There is no sense of immensity at all.Also the Crysantium system is a rehash of the Sphere grid system from FFX-which is shallow.
Of course they are. A ridiculous comparison would be comparing a FPS to a RPG based on combat system. Remember that there's no real time rpg system, even though it looks like so. Zelda is turn based as much as FF is turn based, just the mechanincs are different. and when I say that both mecahnics are similar, take a look at Kingdom Hearts(whole series) and FFXII. If you take of the card stuff and numbers popping off in the thin air, you have the zelda system, just with more bells and whistles.
thats the only game that HDR does that in.. i prefer HDR to Bloom on a "look" basis alone... performance is all Bloom depending on the graphics card, etc.. Bloom can give you 60 fps on a machine and HDR can give you 12 fps on the same machine.. HDR makes a huge difference in how well a game looks in my opinion *edit HDR totally counts as better graphics/visuals
