Final Fantasy?

[Shashakiro]

Originally Posted by ShAiOnEi

Star Ocean Till the end of time.

dear god no. unless you like "OMG IT WAS ALL A DREAM" plot twists and having normal wandering mosters be more difficult than bosses

[MrRubix]

Shash: What would you recommend and why?

[Shashakiro]

TotA. It seems to match what you'd want pretty damn well, except for:

-Battle system doesn't exactly take brains, but definitely takes some skill to master. The fact that my friend tried around 15 times to beat a boss, failed, and I picked it up and beat it easily for him can tell you something about how much skill can be involved.

-I don't really know if TotA's story "keeps you on your toes" but it's certainly not at all predictable from the outset, although by a certain point in the game you have a pretty clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish and who exactly the "bad guys" are. It definitely does take a while to get there, though.

-Soundtrack is subjective, but I love TotA's and the God-General battle theme is one of my single favorite battle tracks ever.

-Graphics are ok, nothing special but nothing to detract from the rest of the game. And in battle they're really good IMO, especially for Mystic Artes.

The only REALLY annoyingly bad thing about this game is the load times, and that's only if you're impatient as hell like me. They're not THAT bad, but compared to Symphonia which has practically none, it's a little disappointing, and for me personally it (and a couple small other things) bothers me enough that I wind up enjoying Symphonia more. But that's just me, and honestly if I was recommending to someone else (like you) I'd recommend TotA first.

But yeah, the story is ****ing terrific and the characters are the most believable and well-developed I've ever seen in a game. Even the "villians" are developed quite well, and you can really understand and empathize with their motives, something that's lacking from a LOT of games but is absolutely present in both Tales games I've played. And although the game is linear (if you want pure nonlinear, play Morrowind or Oblvion), there are a ton of sidequests/minigames to do, and they all contribute towards the very clear "100% completion" goal of getting all the titles, which will require multiple playthroughs and hundreds of hours. Although for that you really will need a guide, since some of them are not only unintuitive, but missable.

Give it a try if you're looking for a great RPG to spend a lot of time on (Longest RPG I've ever played, clocking in at over 50 hours for just the main story).

[MrRubix]

Forgive my ignorance but what does TotA stand for?

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

-Battle system doesn't exactly take brains, but definitely takes some skill to master. The fact that my friend tried around 15 times to beat a boss, failed, and I picked it up and beat it easily for him can tell you something about how much skill can be involved.

This is what I like to hear

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

-I don't really know if TotA's story "keeps you on your toes" but it's certainly not at all predictable from the outset, although by a certain point in the game you have a pretty clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish and who exactly the "bad guys" are. It definitely does take a while to get there, though.

That's totally fine. I mean coming out with a random plot element last minute can be a bad thing. In FFIX, the final enemy, Necron, literally just comes out of nowhere.

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

The only REALLY annoyingly bad thing about this game is the load times, and that's only if you're impatient as hell like me. They're not THAT bad, but compared to Symphonia which has practically none, it's a little disappointing, and for me personally it (and a couple small other things) bothers me enough that I wind up enjoying Symphonia more. But that's just me, and honestly if I was recommending to someone else (like you) I'd recommend TotA first.

Hmmm, load times do bother me. I might look into both TotA and Symphonia though.

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

But yeah, the story is ****ing terrific and the characters are the most believable and well-developed I've ever seen in a game. Even the "villians" are developed quite well, and you can really understand and empathize with their motives, something that's lacking from a LOT of games but is absolutely present in both Tales games I've played.

I love it when villains are developed... that is also pretty huge for me.

[Sir_Thomas]

Originally Posted by ShAiOnEi

Star Ocean Till the end of time.

Star Ocean for the SNES (Get a translated rom..):
Really cool skill system (Alchemy, music, etc..)
They like to throw in puzzles that if you cant figure em out, you either use a strat. guide or quit playing (I have a NO STRAT. GUIDE policy. I get pissed off if someone tells me which door to go through non the less reading a book that plays the game for me.)

Star Ocean 2: The game is amazing. Incorporated a more in depth skill system like the first. The story is somewhat generic, but the premise is cool. Oh yeah, bad ass battle system too (Like the first.).


Grandia II: AWESOME story but anime styled art... The battle system is quite amazing on top of that. Strategy + ATB system.

Oh yeah, and the spells are AMAZING. Cutscenes for most of the high level spells .

[MrRubix]

Ah yeah, that reminds me. Can cutscene spells be turned off? One thing that annoyed me about FFVII was when it came to summons like Knights of the Round. It was cool to see all those Knights RAPE THE ENEMY OF THEIR HP IN AN ULTIMATE PWNAGE FASHION, but after using it like 10 times, I just wanted them to get it over with.

[Shashakiro]

Symphonia has a somewhat weaker story/characters, but definitely has better sidequest stuff and the load times are amazing (it takes about a quarter of a second, quite literally, to save in that game, and around ten seconds to save in TotA). Aside from that they're about the same amazingly high quality IMO.

Rubix: There are no cutscene spells except for Mystic Artes, which are AWESOME but not particularly long. Cutscenes themselves can't really be skipped, unfortunately, but I can't really see why you'd want to unless you're majorly underleveled and understocked for a boss.

Here, Squeek posted this earlier. You can get an idea of what the battle system looks like late-game (and this is a very optional boss in the arena, so no spoiler really). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXGA-fmrQ7Q That Fortune's Arc spell towards the beginning, which is by far the best move in the entire game, is also probably the longest spell animation.

[COTMFreak]

Rubix: I'm quite certain that you can't turn off spell effects, you just got to sit through them. Which doesn't pose too much of a problem since they are not too long. It pretty much makes up in terms of story, battle system, and definitely music (it's composed by Noriyuki Iwadare <3).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITF20x4QkG8

It's a normal battle so it doesn't contain much spoilers except for party members, lol.

(lol sup people decided to pop in randomly)

[ShAiOnEi]

For some reason I hated tales of the abyss for the story and the battle system. It really didn't appeal to me that much. After about 10 hours of the game I immediately stopped playing.

[Shashakiro]

To be fair, what you actually mean is that you hate the first ten hours of the story. Which is fine, but let's just put it this way...if you didn't get to Akzeriuth, you didn't *really* get to much of what the story is like IMO >_>

[devonin]

You might try Baten Kaitos for the Gamecube, Rubix. The story was actually pretty interesting, even if it did seem like they ripped off most of the characters from FF10, the soundtrack was fantastic, and the battle system, I found anyway, was a lot more compelling than most.

It runs off a card system. You'll have a large card pool, and a fixed deck size for each of the characters. You find such cards as loot, as rewards for questing, and best of all, you can make new cards by playing cards you have in a certain order.

The basic level of deck construction centres around planning the deck so you have a nice balance of damaging attacks, heals, and status effect cause/cures, there are 6 kinds of 'elements' of damage you can deal, and the power of your attack is additive of your whole play of cards (If you deal 50 fire damage and 30 water damage, you actually only deal 20 damage, they fire and water cancel out, so you have to plan both your deck and your individual plays well)

There's additionally numbers on some number of the faces/corners of the cards (higher level cards have numbers in more places) and playing cards by certain numerical sequences can also increase your damage output. So playing three 3's in a row increases your damage some, 4 3's in a row by more and so on, playing a sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4 increases it more.

You need some luck to get the right numbers on the right cards at the right time, but the more skilled you are in deck design and thinking on the fly as to which number on which card to use, you can dish out some pretty significant damage.

[Squeek]

Baten Kaitos had the most amazing variation of turn-based combat that I've played so far. But DEAR GOD was the voice acting dreadful. And that second fight with the trio... Ugh. That was my four-hour battle I mentioned somewhere else among this Final Fantasy madness we've been going through.

That's one thing Tales does very well, though. Voice acting. Never once have I noticed a flubbed line or even a wrong pitch in a sentence. It's phenomenal. There must be well over 10,000 lines in the game over 50 different voices and they're all great. Abyss is really a step up from Symphonia, which is saying something because Symphonia was solid as well.

Rubix: He's referring to Tales of the Abyss, if you haven't been told yet. And no, you can't disable spell animations, but they're never boring. I played the game three times through non-stop and I never once wanted the spell animations to hurry along. I put well over 200 hours into the game. It takes about 60-100 to beat it the first time, it takes 40-100 the second time depending on whether you do all the side-quests or not and if you decide to get 2x exp or not. It takes no time at all the third time if all you want to do is grind levels on 10x exp so you can beat the game on Unknown difficulty.

In Tales, the difficulty doesn't do much other than unlock certain titles for beating bosses on that difficulty. What it does is just boost enemy stats. Hard mode makes enemies twice as good. That means it's four times harder to win. They have double the HP, double the attack, double the defense, etc. In Very Hard, they have triple the stats. That means it's nine times harder to win. Triple HP, triple atk, triple def, etc. In Unknown, they have quadruple the stats. That means it's sixteen times harder to win. Quadruple HP, quadruple atk and def, etc. Not only that, but when you ramp up the difficulty in boss fights, they get better. They'll use stronger attacks more often. In team battles, they'll revive their partners, as you can see in that video which is on Very Hard difficulty. In Unknown you have to kill them about four times each before they stay down.

Shash: I watch that video all the time. I have the game sitting right next to me, but for some reason I just love listening to how a battle progresses in Tales of the Abyss. It never gets old. There's a comment from the author of that video that says Kratos will be one of the Cameos in Vesperia. Swweeeet. Once the 360 drops under 100 dollars I'll get it and Vesperia.

And I'm sure you've seen this guy's videos. He's a machine. He maxed out everyone's stats with herbs using Search Points over and over and over again. http://www.youtube.com/user/Shinryu74 . Yeah, he's the one who soloed the hardest boss on Unknown without taking any damage.

Shaionei: Well, I can understand if you think Abyss is bad, but not in your case since you think Star Ocean 3 is good.

Here's the main flaw of Star Ocean 3 aside from the huge lack of a real plot: the game is called Star Ocean. That means space. Why am I only allowed onto ONE PLANET for most of the game? The entire time I was playing it, I was just so irritated with the first planet. I figured we'd be doing like a backwater planet, then a super-futuristic planet, maybe a prehistoric planet, you know, fun stuff. Think Kingdom Hearts here. Then a friend tells me while playing it that the first disc takes place entirely on that planet. I very nearly quit playing the game when he told me that. Oh, and another thing. Why don't party members outside of battle get exp? I mean, I understand it in a game like Persona 3 where you pick your three party members and the four of you go off exploring while the rest stay behind but in Star Ocean the rest of your party is always with you. And it really, really isn't fair that some party members start at level 1 when you get them despite getting them 40 hours into the game. That's just retarded. And finally, there should not be skills that take HP to use, and there should not be dying from running out of MP.

Oh that reminds me Kingdom Hearts is another game Square-Enix made. It was actually really damn good. Until they made the second one. Convoluted story, horrible battle system, and fanservice the entire time. And then there's the fanbase that makes you want to hate everything there is to like about the game. Just like another Square-Enix fanbase...

[tsugomaru]

Although I highly doubt a TWEWY sequel, I hope it doesn't turn into a fan service game. The battle system was so damn amazing. I suggest you try it out if you have a DS MrRubix.

Story: It wasn't the most amazing story and it definitely had its flaws, but if you're running it your first time through, you're going to find the story amazing. If you play it a second time, you'll just find that the story gets more in the way than anything else, but even after you reach end game of the story, you'll find yourself playing for countless hours just battling.

Battle System: This will either make or break the game for you. This is TWEWY strong point, its battle system. It makes perfect use of the d-pad, stylus, and both screens to make a very real-time and active battle. On the top screen, it's like a fighting game, you have to press keys to make attacks and do blacks and depending on the character, you can build up combo points which are used to unleash an even more furious attack. The bottom screen, you use a variety of pins with different ability and depending on the pin, there's a different drawing you need to make with the stylus to use that pin. The major complaint about this is that you have to focus with two different screens, but I secretly think they just need more practice.

Music: The soundtrack will be different than your typical DS RPG. All the songs are good and in style with the game. Unless you absolutely hate J-pop, you'll enjoy the music.

Art: The style is consistent throughout the game and the images are crisp. None of this bad imitation 3D crap.

~Tsugomaru

[speeddemon]

I've only played 5 FF's (VII, VIII, X, X-2, and XII), and in my opinion FFX is the best.

1. FFX had my favorite battle system. I honestly don't understand what it is about just a standard turn-based system that makes people hate it so much. Only thing i disliked about it was the random encounter portion. I hate the systems they used for VII, VIII, and X-2. I do however, like the system in FFXII, setting up all the gambits and such make it much less tedious when you plan on doing nothing but leveling for a few hours.

2. I loved the leveling system. Honestly the Sphere Grid has been my favorite system of all time, in any game.

3. The story was great. I would say more... but I don't really know how to describe it. I just loved it more than most stories I see or hear.

4. The music was amazing. It always went with the story, if it was used during pieces of it. Other than that, I loved the background music so much i would turn on the game, go somewhere and just leave Tidus standing there, just so i could hear the music uninterrupted.

5. Blitzball. I admit it loses its appeal after a while, but blitzball is my favorite side game of any of the FF's I've played.

Next favorite is FFXII.

Now for anyone who has only played about half of the storyline(about 20 hours, depending on how much time you take to level your people go out for hunts, etc.), play further into it. The story is pretty boring for a long time. When you hit nearer to the end it's much better. I won't say it's amazing, because i know very well it isn't. The battle system wasn't as bad as most of you keep saying. It is annoying having to buy gambits, or find them, but once you have the necessary ones, the battle system is really much less of a hassle than the others. There isn't that annoying random encounter bull that could stop you a footstep away from the next area, and you don't have to select everything you want to do all the time. And the ability to flee across entire areas you really don't want to be in is pretty nice. I can't say the music is nearly as good as FFX, but it does have its moments/areas.

I can't really say much about FFVII, because in all honesty i only got about halfway through before I got stuck(i was a bit young and didn't understand the necessity of leveling and setting up materia right and such), and then shortly thereafter my brother lost the game.

I didn't really like FFVIII too much...it never really drew me in, and the GF's were really cheap. It was also pretty annoying not being able to control my summoned things, like i could in FFX.

As far as FFX-2 goes...just don't even bother with it. The only purpose behind even touching it is to see a little bit of story that's connected to FFX a little...but it's barely worth the game.


I would try to contribute to whatever conversation you guys have going on...but I'm way too tired to read it.

[Shashakiro]

Originally Posted by Squeek

Never once have I noticed a flubbed line or even a wrong pitch in a sentence.

I noticed a few in Symphonia. In Abyss it's pretty much gone, although there's at least one actual grammar error (lmao), as well as some kind of funny word choices--in one Select-skit, Jade says "you guys", and I really, really can't picture him ever saying that >_> But I'd agree that the VA is overall very solid in both games.

And I actually managed to get 3k grade for 10x exp on my first playthrough, so I've never done a 2x...just 1x and 10x XD

There's a comment from the author of that video that says Kratos will be one of the Cameos in Vesperia. Swweeeet.

I'd actually have prefered a different character from ToS. Sure, Kratos is badass, but I've already fought him three times in ToS, so it's not as much of a novelty. I wanted to fight someone like Lloyd, Colette, Genis, Raine, Presea, etc--someone who is NEVER fighting against you, because that's just so WTF. It's still great to have Kratos, though...although I was REALLY hoping for Jade as a cameo >_<

And yea I saw that no damage Unknown Nebilim vid. But then again, I recently saw a no damage solo Abyssion Mania vid...USING RAINE WTF. Definitely the most impressive Tales vid I've ever watched, I'd recommend finding it.

Oh that reminds me Kingdom Hearts is another game Square-Enix made. It was actually really damn good. Until they made the second one. Convoluted story, horrible battle system, and fanservice the entire time. And then there's the fanbase that makes you want to hate everything there is to like about the game. Just like another Square-Enix fanbase...

I'd agree that the first was MUCH better, but I don't think the second is THAT bad...as long as you spend some time grinding Drive forms. If you never use those then the game is boring as hell, you can't dodge anything, and every battle is mash X mash X mash X mash X. That was my first playthrough...and that sucked. Once you can highjump, doublejump, quick dodge, and glide, KH2 becomes a lot more playable.

[zidart]

Originally Posted by tsugomaru

Although I highly doubt a TWEWY sequel, I hope it doesn't turn into a fan service game. The battle system was so damn amazing. I suggest you try it out if you have a DS MrRubix.

Story: It wasn't the most amazing story and it definitely had its flaws, but if you're running it your first time through, you're going to find the story amazing. If you play it a second time, you'll just find that the story gets more in the way than anything else, but even after you reach end game of the story, you'll find yourself playing for countless hours just battling.

Battle System: This will either make or break the game for you. This is TWEWY strong point, its battle system. It makes perfect use of the d-pad, stylus, and both screens to make a very real-time and active battle. On the top screen, it's like a fighting game, you have to press keys to make attacks and do blacks and depending on the character, you can build up combo points which are used to unleash an even more furious attack. The bottom screen, you use a variety of pins with different ability and depending on the pin, there's a different drawing you need to make with the stylus to use that pin. The major complaint about this is that you have to focus with two different screens, but I secretly think they just need more practice.

Music: The soundtrack will be different than your typical DS RPG. All the songs are good and in style with the game. Unless you absolutely hate J-pop, you'll enjoy the music.

Art: The style is consistent throughout the game and the images are crisp. None of this bad imitation 3D crap.

~Tsugomaru

beat the ultimate enemy.... it will give you a hint of a sequel.

and i think FFX-2 is actually fun because of the battle system used in it, the story is not as good as FFX but it does what i always want a sequel to do which is to see what happened to the characters in the aftermath (reason why i'm very exited for ToS2)

[tsugomaru]

One of the problem that some people have with a turn based game is that you can do nothing against an oncoming attack. The problem I have with the Final Fantasy games is that it takes too long to do anything because after you make all your moves, you have to wait almost 5 seconds before making another one. Not only that, you don't know when the enemy will attack so you can't even prepare for it. At least some turn base games tell you who is up next so you can better plan your attack strategy to drop the enemy before it's his turn to attack or to reduce the damage dealt to you. Otherwise, you spend a great deal of boss battles fearing the bosses turn because you don't know when it will happen.

~Tsugomaru

[BBoyGNF]

Originally Posted by Shashakiro

I wanted to fight someone like Lloyd, Colette, Genis, Raine, Presea, etc--someone who is NEVER fighting against you, because that's just so WTF.

It appears so far that Symphonia 2's main antagonist will be Lloyd himself; a battle I honestly can't wait another month for. Should be fun as long as the main characters are good.

[zidart]

Originally Posted by tsugomaru

One of the problem that some people have with a turn based game is that you can do nothing against an oncoming attack. The problem I have with the Final Fantasy games is that it takes too long to do anything because after you make all your moves, you have to wait almost 5 seconds before making another one. Not only that, you don't know when the enemy will attack so you can't even prepare for it. At least some turn base games tell you who is up next so you can better plan your attack strategy to drop the enemy before it's his turn to attack or to reduce the damage dealt to you. Otherwise, you spend a great deal of boss battles fearing the bosses turn because you don't know when it will happen.

~Tsugomaru

well nowadays FF games give the option to speed up the ATB, and the fact that you don't know when the boss is going to attack actually is a thrill sometimes because it makes you be prepared for everything at any time and FFIVDS just proves this even more.

[tsugomaru]

It's all opinion on how much thrill there is, you find it thrilling, I'm sitting in fear because I don't want to die and have to sit through the same cut scene multiple times. When I do FFIV boss fights, you have no idea how extremely cautious I am. At most, I use only two of my characters every single move and have everyone else on standby just in case bad shit happens and as a result, the battle pace moves extremely slow. It's not that I absolutely hate it, it just could have been designed better.

~Tsugomaru