f13.net

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/ff4a/

About time. I'd rather see FF6 myself but the third best FF title in the series is good enough for me, and a sign that FF6 will eventually be rereleased...probably with all the same bugs the SNES version had (i.e. crash bugs, stats that do absolutely nothing, etc), but hey.

FF6 was objectively a better game, but FF4 is just a classic in every sense.  It was the first time I ever played a game primarily because I cared about the story.

Edit:  When FF6 came out, I ran out to grab it on the very first day, and not a goddamn moment too soon.  I had sat around waiting on it ever since I finished the previous game.  When Secret of Mana came out, sure I played it, but I remember being livid that Square had wasted it's time making a game that wasn't the next Final Fantasy.  As the girl rang it up, she remarked that this was the third or fourth copy of this game she'd seen go by, and she'd only been on the register for an hour.  I didn't have the internet back then, or know any other RPG fans, and that was when I realized that... hmm... maybe I wasn't the only one digging this.

I preordered Final Fantasy IV at Best Products. Best Products doesn't exist anymore. Final Fantasy does. Sometimes I wish the reverse were true. Final Fantasy IV was one of the first SNES games I laid down my own cash for, I couldn't wait for a rep copy.

Here's my question: This going to be hard-type or easy-type? I believe the PSX re-release was hardtype.

FFIV is probably the best FF game, with FFV close behind. Those two were leaps and bounds above 6 and 7.

As much as I would love a complete remake of FF4 with the latest bells and whistles, I'm not going to fork out the money for something I could play on an emulator.  The couple of FMVs they had in the PS remake were nice and all for the 3 minutes they actually played, but my days as a Square whore are over.  I'm not getting milked on this one unless it's got a shitload of added content.

I thought FF6 lived up to FF4 quite well.  It didn't grab me quite the way 4 did, but then FF4 was one of those rare pieces of work that expanded my notion of what a "video game" could do.  I thought FF7 was where it jumped the shark.

I thought FF5 kinda sucked myself. FF4 was awesome, but even now I still find FF6 the better in pretty much every conceivable way outside of difficulty. FF6 was incredibly easy.

And notice how no one mentions the PSX/PS2 FF titles. Heh. I liked 7 up to a point, 8 remains the only FF title I've never finished, and 9 was great ignoring the last boss.

FF6 (the kefka one, right? Damn japanese and their different numbering) was the best game ever made.  Anyone saying FFIV or FFV was better is a gay communist who hates freedom.

I still think Deus Ex is better than any of the Final Fantasies. Then Planescape: Torment. Then some sort of clusterfucked tie between FFIV, VI, Simcity 2000, Bloodlines, God of War, Zelda 1, Super Metroid/Metroid Zero Mission/Metroid Fusion, Castlevania 3, Ironsword, Katamari Damacy, and Resident Evil 4.

(http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/4151/shittygame1ro.jpg)

You're just gay for Fabio.

Everything Squaresoft does (did) is a masterpiece.

I'm currently playing Einhander on the PSX emu. It's a space shooter in 3D and another masterpiece of gameplay in its genre.

Ikaruga and a host of other games are better than Einhander. Squeenix does not make masterpieces anymore. But then, you're still fawning over this generation of MMORPGs, so I don't know why I'm responding.

Only great game Square made post-SNES was Bushido Blade.

Yea, Final Fantasy Tactics was pure shit. You're being nothing but irrational again.

I didn't say it sucked ass, but it's not the pure glory that is Bushido Blade.

Just like Serenity isn't the pure glory of the Star Wars Prequels? Shutup intarweb, you don't matter. I don't know how you can make one argument in one forum and the exact oppisite in another. It's like some sort of internet voodoo magic.

See, here's the problem, you're wrong. Period. I haven't even seen Serenity and I know it's better than Star Wars Episode III, II and I no matter how much money they made. And I don't even like Joss Whedon. And having played both FFT and Bushido Blade ad nauseum, I can flat out tell you that FFT is the superior title. FFT is what entire genres are birthed from while Bushido Blade was trying to do something new and interesting in a genre that Squaresoft shouldn't putz around with... as proven by Ergheiz, Bushido Blade 2, and the Bouncer.

I have the Ironsword theme in my car. I fucking loved that game. It was probably one of the few Nintendo games I beat 10 or 15 times.

Final Fantasy Tactics was just a worse Tactics Ogre.

Castlevania 3 was awesome.

FF6 was cool but the whole Esper thing made it kind of lame. FF6 was the first FF game that overloaded on BS systems that has become the series' trademark. The characters in FF6 don't have much personality when you an equip Espers onto them and make them super-magicians regardless of what they are supposed to be. But, it's still a great game, just not as good as 4 and 5. Also some of the characters were really under-developed.

Ummm, how the hell did you guys miss Chrono Trigger?

If by "worse" you mean "better in every way that counts". Heh.

The esper system in FF6 was indeed broken as hell. And as for undeveloped characters, uh...hello? Kain? FF6 went into the back stories of nearly every single character outside of Mog/Umaro/Gogo. For fuck's sake, Shadow alone got more character development than everyone in FF4 combined.

So wait...  Bushido Blade was the recipient of a really obnoxious "grassroots" marketing campaign, catered to a tiny cult following of weirdos?  And then had it's ass kicked by Jodie Foster?

With these new revelations in mind, I stand corrected.  Bushido Blade now sucks.   :cry:

Damn you, Jodie Foster...

Yes, because all that is pertinent. And yes, Bushido Blade only catered to a tiny cult following of weirdos. And all game campaigns back then had what could only be considered "grassroots" marketing campaigns. Mentioning Jodie Foster doesn't make you any less of an insane douchebaggy troll. You know exactly what I meant here and pull some Hyu-level shit out. Not on my time, pal.

I already have the "good" FFIV for PS and don't feel compelled to buy it again in handheld form.  But since we are bickering, it is my favorite.  Also, I consider Bushido Blade to be the best vs fighting game by a wide margin... but I would not claim it is one of the best games period.  Games are too different for that sort of talk to progress in a logical fashion.

You're the one who started jabbering about Serenity in a Square thread, because of some imagined similarity in their marketing campaigns.  Pertinence is not your strong point.

I think Something Awful summarized my thoughts on Final Fantasy quite nicely:
------------------------------------------------
Dr. Thorpe: But now people who were raised on nothing but Nintendo think the Final Fantasy games had objectively great plots and great music because they're never actually read a book or bought a record.

Zack: If someone tells me how moving the opera music was in Final Fantasy VI then I pretty much instantly discount their opinion on everything. It's like finding out a guy secretly believes the holocaust was a lie. Their horrible judgment in one area taints everything else they say and do.

Dr. Thorpe: Yeah, and the people who cry when Final Fantasy characters die? Imagine sitting them down in front of a Keats poem or something, it would probably kill them.

Zack: Only if it was being read by a girl with giant hair and they had to push the X button at the end of each stanza.
------------------------------------------------------
-From their Fashion SWAT article on videogame characters.

Square has NEVER released a single game that could be considered a masterpiece.  Have they released some really good games? 
Sure, no question of that.
Do they deserve the level of fanwankery worship they get?
NO FUCKING WAY.

You fail instantly for copying anything from Something Awful.

Nice. Way to refute what I said.

For all my days I shall wear a haunted look of defeat for failing to refute whatever esoteric point you were trying to make in equating Bushido Blade with the Firefly movie.  /weep

Wow, what an incredible non-point Jain Zar. So games can't be great unless they have better music than an album? (In the 16-bit era no less) That makes perfect sense!

Square has a number of masterpieces. FF1, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF6, Secret of Mana, Chrono-Trigger, among others. Let me put it this way, I'd much rather play those that read an average book or listen to an average album, that's for sure.

It wasn't esoteric, you blithering dipshit. You were making the exact same argument here that you were railing against in the other thread.

I think it matters how old you were and what you had played previously in a determination of which FF game is better.  People my little brother's age think FF7 is far and away the best.  I'm 22, and I remember playing FF6 in middle school, maybe 6th grade, I can't remember.  I'm not sure I played RPG's before FF6 per se.  I mean, I was like 13.  The game never had the hype (from my perspective) of SMB3 and SNES Zelda, my older brother just brought it home one day after having borrowed it from a friend, and there it was.  I couldn't stop playing.  I still think it's the greatest game ever made, and I can't really explain why anyone else wouldn't feel the same way, except for my aforesaid hypo.  I'm too afraid to go back into on an emulator, for fear of ruining this ideal of perfection I have in my head, but I fire it up sometimes just to watch the intro with the mechs walking in the snow and the crazy music.

So let's see...

1 - Before games got really big, every game was marketed in a way you consider to be grassroots.
2 - I thought it was funny when the attempted grassroots marketing campaign for Serenity failed.
3 - Therefore I... should think Bushido Blade is funny?

Or did you fail to adequately read the other thread, causing you to base your rambling on the strawman notion that I must think profit and quality are the same thing?

Bushido Blade never got big.

The internet wasn't big when Bushido Blade came out. Efficient marketing like we see today didn't exist in any comparative form.

Marketing existed in Magazines, a few tv commercials and demo disks that bushido blade was put on, possibly Brave Fencer Musashi. So really, the only people that could have gotten super hyped up about it were Square fanbois.

Final Fantasy Tactics is the better game, period. Oranges, apples, whatever. It's just better. There were Square masterpieces made after the Super Nintendo. Bushido Blade, much as I love it, wasn't one of them.

Don't try to think right now, this is obviously too complicated for you. Long sentences must confuse you or something.

That said, you're still insane for thinking Star Wars - any of the prequels - are even remotely palatable sci-fi movies. I don't even need to see Serenity to agree with the other folks in that thread. Episodes 1 through 3 were shit and near nobody puts Bushido Blade on their best Playstation games lists. Einhander, maybe. Final Fantasy Tactics, almost always. Final Fantasy VII, always. Bushido Blade? Only you.

Also, strawman?


Nigga, please. The only reason Episode III has an 82% ranking is that Every Single Critic compared it to Episode I and II. When you compare less soupy shit to explosive diarrhea it's still shit.

That was pretty funny. 

Did I mention that I  :heart: Jodie Foster?

I do, y'know.

Schild, I swear I'd have you pegged as borderline illiterate if you weren't so prone to spewing terabytes of pointless text about how much Ninja Gaiden rules.  Let's see if I can finally recap the situation, and what you've somehow managed to take from it.

1 - I come into the Serenity thread and laugh at it's financial failure, because it's marketing campaign annoyed the shit out of me.  At no point do I address the quality of the movie itself, since I've never seen it.  The trailers obviously did nothing for me, but whatever.

2 - Some of those offended decide to rebut by making a "Serenity versus that last Star Wars movie" slapfight of it.  This is logical only when compared to their other rebuttal, namely that Serenity is better than UO as well.

3 - Praying that nobody else turns up Roger Ebert's scathing review of Mondain's Legacy, I check the Rotten Tomatoes score for Episode 3 and find out that it's actually a little higher than that of Serenity.  I go ahead and post both the scores and opening grosses for each, figuring that it's hard to defend a well-reviewed failure by trashing a well-reviewed success.

Are you still with me so far?  Haven't run off yet to play with your virtual puppy or fulfill your journalistic imperative by writing two-sentence reviews of every Game Boy title coming out for the next 4000 years?  Good.

4 - You somehow decide that #3 must mean I hate everything that isn't hugely profitable, and decide that you're going to show me what for in a thread about Final Fantasy.

5 - You make the world that much dumber a place by claiming that I have somehow contradicted myself in liking a game which was only a modest success.  Meanwhile, in Heaven, a single tear rolls silently down the cheek of Baby Jesus.

6 - I remind you that you're a retard.  You jerk off to furry porn and cry yourself to sleep.  The end.

You came into the Serenity thread Strazos style with his "I don't have a PS2" comments. Strike 1.
You came into a thread about Squaresoft proclaiming the only good post-SNES Square game was Bushido Blade. Strike 2.

As for your third point, Titanic. The most profitable, well reviewed, piece of utter shit I've ever seen. Most people with penises most likely agree, except the critics. I still and always will stand by the fact that Episode III is only good when compared to I and II. Which were bad like in the case of Garfield: The Movie bad. Also, I didn't see Serenity advertised any differently than Any Other movie. I'm not sure how you could be so annoyed by it. Especially when compared to Star Wars. What were there? Three fast food restaraunts doing shit? More action figures than every other action figure type in any given store. Legos, slurpees, half-baked video games, terrible movie posters, and invasive ads on any movie related website. Seriously, man. Whedon must have touched you in a bad place.

Final Fantasy Tactics: 83% (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/197339.asp?q=Final%20Fantasy%20Tactics)
Bushido Blade: 81% (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/196844.asp?q=bushido%20blade)

Tactics got a greatest hits version. Far as I can tell, Bushido Blade didn't. Which is testament to how much more and in your world "better" FFT was, without interjecting my opinion.

I mean, if you want me to use the exact same argument as in the Serenity thread, there it is. Because really, your douchebaggery was taken a little too far in your last post. I didn't think I'd have to actually post that stuff. You should really take a couple days off. I don't know why you're still here anyway. Your taste in cinema bites ass and your taste in games is suspect. You should really be posting at the Vault.

Hooray, I made a bad topic!

Nah, the topic was fine until WUA entered it. That is until he decided FFVII was where the series jumped the shark when really it was VIII. Final Fantasy VII gave hope to a bright future that VIII swiftly crushed.

And I thought Bruce's banning left a gaping hole where every thread was turned to be about him.  Forum therapy ftw.

Bruce was more dimensional. .5 dimensions too many that is.

For the record, I was a C64 snob during the NES days, and a nongamer during SNES. So not quite all of us.
(http://www.whatawaytodie.com/jfa/jfa-2.jpg)

Seriously, WHAT THE HOLY MONKEY FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

(http://www.trolls-online.com/images/troll_declaration_200x268.jpg)

(http://www.whatawaytodie.com/jfa/jfa-2.jpg)

 :rock:

My first skateboard was a JFA (think I mentioned that somewhere).

I was going to post a pic of the board, but I love the venue in that shot. Brings back memories of utter dives that were so much cooler than anything that tried to be cool. Wtf with that chained-up monitor, heh.

The DS version of FF is going to be completely in 3d. Heh.

Speaker.

/end_quibble ;)

You aint the only one.  C64, Genesis, Amiga, and then DOS PC.  Ive never been a SNES worshipper.
I only bought one to play Street Fighter 2, since it was the reason most folks bought one.

My real problem with the FF series?  The mouth breathing otaku worship of it.  Its a B grade by the numbers
console RPG with A list production values.  But it popped most RPG players' cherries, so its magically the best
game ever, even though the gameplay isn't cutting edge, and the so called reason to play it, the story, is
about the level of a literate fanfic writer who has delusions of deepness while they write their tales listening
to Linkin Park and maybe Jewel.

To listen to many FF fans, its the greatest game series ever made with such deepness, even though the gameplay
is about as innovative as your average FPS title is, and pretty much created the RPG genre, ignoring far more
cutting edge computer titles, and other console RPGs that actually strived for greatness instead of being pretensious anime fodder.

Most of the FF games are pretty decent for what they are, don't get me wrong.  But when you compare FF Tactics to X Com, FF7 to
Fallout, FF8 to Fallout 2, FFX to KOTOR, FF1 to Dragon Warrior, FF4 to Phantasy Star 2, the Final Fantasy games are found wanting to
their fellow RPGs of the same rough time period.

It would just be nice if the cosplaying otaku fanfic yaoi tentacle worshipping scumbags and NES/SNES only childhood game writers
would get their mouth's off Squaresoft's dick for a while and play some other games for a while.  Or at least shut the fuck up about
Final Fantasy for a while..

Only a musician would have looked at that and called it a monitor... Had me looking around the picture trying to find a screen. Having had to recently learn our PA/sound system, I will admit he is right though.

And the original C64 was... wait for it...

$595  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64)

In 1982 dollars.  Which were already cheapened by the demigod Reagan but why fight that again :roll:

Waah Waah 360 is less Waah Waah

Like proprietary single-use "consoles" (what an abortion of the original meaning) mean shit.

What cost $595 in 1982 would cost $1207.04 in 2005.

You're goddamn right the 360 is less. What cost $399.99 in 2005 would cost $197.17 in 1982.

Oh no, it wasn't the television advertising.  It was the way they actively and systematically recruited a cult of crazy fanboys and sent them out to evangelize the internet.  Being the sort of nerd who hangs around sci-fi boards, their months of intermittent yammering was much more irksome to me than whatever Taco Bell and Slurpee commercials I was ignoring that week.


Except you seem to have missed what said argument is supposed to mean, which is "The thing I like has both the critics and public on it's side.  So if you want to trash it, you have only your own opinion as ammo, and I don't care about that."  At no point does it logically forbid one from liking things that didn't make piles of money.

If I had gone off on a "FFT sucks cock, everyone hates it!!!" diatribe, the above would be appropriate.  As it is, employing it against a mild "Eh, it didn't suck, but I like Bushido Blade better" comment just makes it look like you were hell-bent on using it to prove some sort of point.


This is like Mike Tyson spitting out a chunk of ear to express his shock at what an insensitive brute one is.  And by that I mean, it's pretty cool.


Because Arcadian Del Sol quit updating, and Corpnews is boring.


Here's a dirty little secret of mine:  As much as I've heard the Vault referred to badly over the years, I've never been there and barely know what it is.

First off, the C 64 was available and had software released for it till around 93, 94 in the UK.
Do we really think the X Box 360 will have a 10 year shelf life?  Considering the X Box effectively has
4 full years before the 360, and will probably have 1 more year with any new releases, maybe 2, one
could say the C 64 cost half what it did, since it was supported about twice as long.

Not to mention the price of the 64 dropped to around 200 for most of its life.  When I got mine in 87,
it was 125 for the CPU, and about the same for the disk drive and printer.  Ironically, the NES deluxe system
I got the year before cost 139, more than the C64 core.  In 89 I got a Genesis for 189, and it was for all
intents and purposes an Amiga 500 with slightly better graphics and only played games.  In 92 when I got
said Amiga 500, it was around 500-600 bucks. 

Oh yeah.  AND THE C64 WAS A FUCKING COMPUTER NOT A GAME SYSTEM.  Computers tend to do more.

So what is the point here?

Other than that Joss Whedon shows suck, Final Fantasy is overrated, and buying an X Box 360 is idiotic?

Final Fantasy is underrated, they don't have a single game at top 10 on gamerankings, heck not even top 20. However if you order by user ratings instead of site ratings suddenly 2 final fantasy games pop up. In my opinion Final Fantasy 7 is the greatest game ever created, and a lot of my mates thinks the same.

My Ford will kick your Chevy's ass.

Well, I seen this thing where Calvin, he's peein on a Ford logo.

I started out with Final Fantasy on the NES. I sure did love the sequels that we actually got in the states.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

OMG I have to get one of these!

Its pretty awesome.  Got one last year.  Haven't hacked it or did any of the easter egg bits, but hell.  Its got IMPOSSIBLE MISSION on it.

"Come stay a while.  Stay... FOREVER!!!"

Blah, I knew I should've gotten some pics of my C64 emu running on my hdtv :) That was bizzare.

That's half the fun dude!

Just because technology keeps advancing and making our older stuff "obsolete", doesn't mean it actually is.

And its nice and rebellious to use high tech to enjoy old school, especially since old school can be better, or at least have a "soul" to it.

My inner child jumped out and patted me on the back, saying "Good job, man!"

It then saw my new Gibson and ran away with it. Little bastard.

None of them particularly deserve to be in the top 10.  Chrono Trigger and Phantasy Star 2 and 4 were arguably superior to any of the 16-bit FFs.  FF7 was quite innovative but in hindsight had a horribly overdone character development system and a completely incomprehensible plot. It was a trail blazer certainly for 3d rpgs and introduced rpgs to a large market, but it was hardly the best RPG ever or anything.  FF8 and FF9 were mediocre.  FF10 was ok but better JRPGs are out there for contemporary systems.  FF11 was poor for its genre.

FF games are like steven spielberg movies.  Generally well liked and financially successful but not particularly technically or artistically outstanding for the time they were created in.

I beg to differ, as far as artistically astounding goes, FF7 was one of the best looking reasonably early PSX games and FFVI was barnone the best looking SNES game. They've always been a leader of the pack as far as CGI goes - even outdoing teamninja.

It is REALLY hard to see how FF games are not both technically and artistically outstanding.

FFVI was a huge game, had some of the best graphics on the SNES with huge spell effects, giant enemies, etc. Just the fact they could cram so much game into a cartridge is pretty astounding. FFIV had some of the best music for any SNES game, both technically and artistically. And the 3D FFs have always been the leader of the pack as far as production value, character models, etc etc.

The graphics in FFVI were like an entire new generation somehow done on the SNES. It makes a lot of SNES games look close to NES quality.

Even FFXI is technically and artistically far stronger than other games of the same era. (Gameplay wise, yeah not so good...)

I'm no FF fanboy. PS2 and PS4 are also great games. (PS3 - we'll pretend you never existed!) But FFIV was really an amazing game. It had great characterization, which is something you rarely see in any game. (Or movie or book for that matter) And the game was loaded with unforgettable events - when the box opens and destroys the village, fighting the dolls with their creepy music, landing on the moon...

Chrono Trigger was a good game but it isn't even close to FFIV.

As far as 3D RPGs are concerned, I can take them or leave them, including FF. I thought FF7 was just boring, especially with only 3 characters in a party. That's one thing the new RPGs often lack - in FFIV you had 5 characters in a party. From what I remember FFX still has only 3 on-screen party members at once - weak.

Im going to have to disagree with you on that one.  Have you ever downloaded the roms of some of the RPG's by square and other houses that were put out on SNES after FFVI?  There are a few that are argueably better graphically looking then FFVI.  Its a shame that we never got ports of them over here, and the only way to play them is through emulator (and praying someone did a text translation patch for them)

Oh there's some better stuff, but it's still by Square. So the point still stands, as far as looks go though the best WE got was FFVI (on the SNES). Simply put anyone who wasn't giddy when they saw the colors of the opening town with Locke is just lying to themselves. They know their heart jumped when they saw the color usage. FFVI looked better than most of the stuff on the saturn and some of the early early PSX stuff. The color usage was just spectacular. Unfortunately now they use those colors for girl bands evil.

the plot isn't completely incomprehensible in FF7, they did however not reveal everything just by following the main story arc, some information had to be hunted down yourself. For example the very important sequence where Zack and cloud is trying to escape to Midgar. The very complex story is one of the strongest points for me liking FF7, it adds a lot of replay value as well. I also loved the character development system in FF7, there were a lot of crazy combinations and a lot to toy around with. For example finding a weapon with grouped materia slots and equiping Add Effect of whatever it was called togheter with Hades, to inflict status effects on your attacks. There were LOADS of combinations which was viable. Also I think FF7 had some of the absolutely best side quests and mini games. Breeding chocobos was a lot of fun, even though I know all doesn't agree. And all the mini games at gold saucer. It had some of the best and hardest super bosses as well, emerald weapon was undefeated for a fairly long time after the game was released iirc.

Funy thing is some people dislike FF7 and love FF8, which is one of the worst games in the series imo. And then there's another camp which loves FF9, which was only a decent game when it comes to the FF series imo. Also, when you buy a FF game you always get extremly good value. They are always MANY times larger than normal games, we're not talking games which you finnish in a day, especialy not if you want to do everything.

Pretty much the only RPG released after FF6 that was on par in terms of graphics and music was Star Ocean by Enix.

My heart aint EVER jumped at ANYTHING in a Square game. 

Ive never been impressed by FF game graphics, though some of Amano's artwork outside the game was really impressive.

Sorry I don't really see it.  They're good graphics yes, but look at seiken densetsu, chrono trigger, or getting away from rpgs super metroid, mega man x3, etc.  On the whole it looks about the same as other top end contemporary stuff. 

There were loads of good looking snes games in the final days of the system, that's what snes was built for.

Yeah, me either.  I don't deny that Square's games looked good in some ways, but depending on what you think of as "important" in a game, there were a lot of areas that could have used improvement.  The character sprites in FF1-6, if I recall, had something like a grand total of twelve frames of animation, for example (plus a few emotion poses).  Enemy monster sprites had, I believe, one.  Each.

Back in the SNES day, yeah, I'll concede that they had better storylines than their competition.  But their competition was stuff like "Sonic the Hedgehog" and "Super Mario World."  Nowadays, though, just about EVERY game has something of a story, and Final Fantasy doesn't look so special anymore.  If you don't like melodrama, I can't think of a reason why you'd even look at the series anymore.

Having said that, though, I do find the games a lot more palatable on the GBA than I do on the consoles.  I generally use the GBA to kill time when I'm waiting for a bus or something, and being able to just play for five or six minutes, fight a few monsters, get a handful of gold, and then save my game after having made some measurable (if small) progress is nice.

Speaking of FF, do you think they'll ever go back to the medival theme?  I don't like these worlds of guns and swords.  I like guns and lasers.  I like swords.  I don't like guns, lasers, and swords.

Heh, now that you mention it, I was kind of hopeing they would properly complete a cycle with the whole FF franchise.
If you count ALL released FF games, they had a theme kind of thing going.
NES - 1 - 3 were very fantasy, with a bit of tech showing up as being rather rare and whatnot
Snes - 4 - 6  Still mostly fantasy, with a good swing to Tech/MagiTech by the end
PS1
7 - fairly hefty blending of tech and magic, probably evenly balanced
8 - has now swung more towards emphasis on tech then magic
9 - they smack you in the face with a switch back to FF 5-6 level balance of fantasy and tech.

I was really hopeing that FF9 would be a nearly complete tech game, with only hints of magic (as an ancient/lost art or whatever).  Then they could have started the cycle all over again with 10 and the PS2 games.