f13.net

1. Dragon Quest IX is a DS Game.
2. The 360 gets some shitty DQ thing.
3. Arcades get some shitty DQ thing.
4. The Wii gets some shitty DQ thing.
5. The PS3 gets every flavor of Final Fantasy XIII, exclusively.
6. The PSP gets nothing - or rather - nothing new was announced.

This means 3 things:
1. Nintendo courted Squeenix again - maybe because they knew Phantom Hourglass would get delayed. Let's call this move a "froth generator."
2. Squeenix is hemmorhaging money making FFXIII/Versus/Agito/Whatever for the PS3, MUST MAKE CHEAP DS GAME FAST.
3. Last - and possibly most importantly - they now view Sakaguchi as an enemy not to be fucked with. I certainly wouldn't fuck with someone who can triple the install base of a console in one week (50,000 360s or so were in Japanese homes 2 weeks ago, when Blue Dragon came out, it sold more than 150,000 copies). Rushing FFXIII out in 2007 obviously means they're aiming for Mistwalker. Sure, Square could have done the same thing (triple install base), but Mistwalker is New. Mistwalker is Fresh. And Mistwalker has Takehiko Inoue and Nobuo Uematsu by the balls. Not to mention they nabbed Akira Toriyama for Blue Dragon. Microsoft has deep pockets. They are buying Japan with Mistwalker. Squeenix needs to watch what they do - and not make any more movies.

As boring and stale as the DQ playstyle is - this should be a fun year.

After Xenosaga and watching Brownie Brown pop out mediocre game after mediocre game I don't really have a lot of faith in any Square peeloffs to produce anything with lasting interest.

Assuming DQ = Dragon Quest, if this is a next gen version of DQVIII or whichever it was on the gamecube I am so buying it for the 360. That game was probably the most fun I had on a console RPG in 2006. And I played a ton of console RPGs this year.

Point 5 is interesting.  I thought the plan was to spread the FF installments across multiple platforms, like with FFXII having that PSP-only thing... or so I heard.

There was a big gap between FFVII and FFXII, so maybe FFXVII will be super-awesome.

For the record, Final Fantasy Agito XIII is a mobile phone game.

IIRC two different teams work on FF games at the same time. FFXII was delayed for so long it wouldn't surprise me if XIII was pretty far along. It may be they are rushing it out the door but it may also be tat it is simply on schedule vs XII which was way behind. Or it may turn into another XII where it ships a year+ late...

What will be interesting to see is which format (or formats) FFXIV is released on.

I predict one or two things:

1) A gaming system that does not exist today.  Maybe something from Panasonic or Hamilton Beach.
2) A three-screened handheld unit with a touch-screen, mic, tilt/accel sensors, and backward compatibility with Lynx games from Nintendo.

FFT is being re-released and slightly enhanced for the PSP. Also, there's a new FFT title in the works called "FFT: Ivalice Alliance" or something like that. Hopefully it'll also be for the PSP.

(http://img154.imageshack.us/img154/9737/ffta8323kv8.jpg)

The other FFT is Ivalice Alliance A2. Meaning Advance 2. Meaning Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2.

Aw, but FFTA sucked!

Yes, it did.

For the love of god, I hope they learned something from FFTA. That game could have been great. Instead, I had to Force myself to finish the damn thing.

I'm not sure what I liked less, the fact that the abilities you wanted to learn were tied to weapons, or the fucking stupid law system.

"No blades for you this battle."

WTFBBQARRRRH

I liked the laws.

Can't say I had to force myself to finish it either. My main character just walked around entire levels 1 hitting everything by the end. Including the final boss.

Well, I didn't like the laws because I felt they were too intrusive. It just seemed to add a very cheap degree of difficulty to some battles.

Also, my party practically slept through the final quarter of the game. It was boring.

I thought FFTA was decent.  It didn't come close to comparing to FFT, but I love Tactics games and there are only so many options out there.  I enjoyed the Front Mission games for the same reason, even though their stories bored me to tears.

Meh, the portables are brimming with tactics games.  Not like they are in short supply.

I'll buy the port of FFT regardless, but I'd really like a true sequel to it over FFTa.

Ahoy. The PSP doesn't have a single good tactics game. And now it's getting the two best ones ever made - Disgaea and FFT: Appreciate. It doesn't really get better than that.

Do you guys differentiate between tactical/SRPGs and TBS games? Or are they the same deal?

When is it getting Disgaea for NA?

Edit: whoa typo

Without getting into the turnbased thing again... I don't know what the hell is the difference in tactical and strategic when it comes to games.  Unit size?  Number of units?  So, not really.  I move pieces around on a board and they fight.

So it doesn't get any better than getting ports of games that are 4-9 years old?  I love FFT and all, but damn Square is really milking the re-releases lately.  As long as they're re-releasing games from back in the days when they still made good shit, couldn't they at least put out more stuff like FFIII that didn't make it to the States before, like Bahamut Lagoon or the early Front Mission games (which I guess would be unlikely given that they didn't even feel it was worth bringing the recent Front Mission 5 here).

Never said they weren't milking it.

But - no - it hasn't gotten better than them... yet. Soul Cradle is looking good. As is a few... other things.

But tactics games are a genre that I felt were great but lacking on portables. This is an important step forward. I definately want AND NEED Culdcept portable and SNK vs. Capcom card battle. The first doesn't exist, the latter comes out in like March. I demand both NOW.

Yugioh for the PSP isn't doing it for me. The card game itself is just too watered down. But I'm trudging through it.

Bushido Blade needs a redo.

Aw, shit, I bet that will run like a mofo in the PS3.

Yeah, I can pretty much agree with you. I've just seen the two terms bandied about, but I was never quite sure if they were interchangeable or not. I guess they are.

And yes, those kinds of games HAVE to have hard-locked turns. I can't imagine playing something like Advance Wars in real time.

I've always hated the distinction as well because it is mostly a difference of scale where tactics are just zoomed-in strategy. But say in Romance of the Three Kingdoms the fighting parts are tactics and figuring out what cities to to conquer and such is the strategy. Tactics are usually closer to the ground and involved with invidual troops decisions.

Fuck Square.

There, I said it.  Square made some fantastic games back in the day, but lately they've just been shoveling rehash after sequel after spinoff out the door as fast as they can code shitty games.  It amazes me that people are still following Square around like they'd battle for the opportunity to eat their shit when Square hasn't managed to make a game better than 'pretty good' for the past five or so years.

Square peaked during the PS1 years, everything since has been post-shark-jumping, with no sign that they'll manage to dig themselves out of that hole.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to say "Fuck Square" just because they're pretty good these days rather than really good, but then a large part of my problem with them is that nothing they do gets much of a reaction out of me these days.  Their stuff is too bland for me to hate them, and like I said, I'd be fine with rehashes if they were rehashing more games that didn't make it outside of Japan the first time around.  I also kinda wish that they wouldn't throw new stuff into old games (like the new classes they put in FFV).  It's like going back and throwing some new paragraphs into a classic novel without even getting the original author to write it.  It feels out of place more than it feels like some exciting new addition to the game.

Seriously! Nothing beats breaking your buddies leg and taunting him as your run around while all he can do is hobble.

You also gotta love how each fighter actually fights Differently with each of the weapons. Big swing with that large katana with one of the smaller characters? You goin' down, nub. Also loved the battles when me and whoever I was playing would just sit and try to feint eachother into screwing up, or charge eachother at the start and possible KO eachother.

FF12 is better than FF7. Thanks for playing.

Any company that has been around as long as Square has will have its ups and downs over the years, right now I think Square is on the rebound.  Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Quest VIII have been two of the best Square games I have ever played and judging by the trailers and press coming out for their next titles it's only going to get better.

FF12 is the worst in the series since the Playstation era started (well, maybe I liked IX less), with piss-poor characterization, gameplay ripped from MMO's, probably the smallest ratio of story to gameplay in the entire series (other than 1-3) making it easier to forget many of the minor details between story sequences, and an ending that mostly sets up the DS spin-off title.

What?

Sounds like someone hasn't played X-2.

I'll be the first to admit that the FF series needed change, and in many ways FFXII targeted the correct problems (random battles for instance).  Their solutions though made FFXII the most flawed FF game in recent memory. 

Gameplay-wise it was MMO auto-attack all the way with the exception of the majority of the bosses which I could take out with quickenings.  The only gambits I needed were for attacking the leader's target, and healing when characters got below a certain hp level.  Espers were useless, as was magic other than healing and buffs.  If you bother to do the extra work to get some of the more powerful weapons you will have leveled so much in the process that the game becomes pointlessly easy.  As it was there was very little challenge in the game, most of it coming from the first couple of bosses you face, and even less strategy than earlier FF games (which is saying a lot since the extent of strategy up until this point was cast spells of the element monsters are weak to).

Story-wise the game only had 6 characters to focus on, which is much less than just about every other FF in the past, but the characters end up less fleshed-out than the characters in previous games.  The plot spends most of the time keeping the Empire and the Resistance in a deadlock so your characters have time to roam around through dungeon after dungeon picking up important objects.  That the main villains get little characterization is sadly a standard in the series, but FFXII unfortunately doesn't break the trend.  Having done most of the monster hunts and some of the optional espers, my game time was up to around 90 hours when I finished.  Out of 90 hours, I'd be surprised if even 2% of that was time dedicated to cut-scenes advancing the story.  You can't pace a story like that and have it be compelling in any sort of way.

If you're going to make a Japanese-style RPG (in other words a completely linear RPG that focuses on telling a story) that story needs to be damn good to cover up the shallow gameplay.  I could get a more compelling story out of playing fucking Dig Dug than I got out of FFXII.

Nope, I haven't played any FF games other than the main series and FFT/FFTA.  Oh and Mystic Quest but I was too young to know better at the time.

Sorry, but gambits are more involved than any MMOG has offered me in the history of the sub-genre. I'm simply not buying your brand of bullshit on that one. If I could explore a fleshed out world with that kind of autoattack instead of the boring bullshit given to me by current MMOGs, things would be a lot more fun. Also, it was the best way to control a party in real time that I could think of. It's nice to be self-sufficient every once in a while also.

There were six main characters because the story wasn't really about them...


Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Final Fantasy XII was a huge step away from JRPGs and quite obviously a step toward western design. The control was cleaner than a baldur's gate title and more streamlined. The story - of what there was - was sharp and comparing it to a arcade game is just stupid. There was more story in the first 15 minute cutscene than 90% of the games on the market give you from beginning to end.

I'm not hoisting Final Fantasy on a pedestal here, I just think you're being overly dramatic and need to step back. After the horrible boredom that was Dragon Quest - I'm glad they did everything they did in FFXII. Want to talk about a boring JRPG with a shitty story. Yeesh.

I don't think the story, on its own, was shitty, but the gameplay in Star Ocean 3 was sleep-inducingly boring. And some of THE worst pacing, ever.

I mean, come on. They give you a level 1 character during the final 25% of the game.

It's not bullshit.  I literally never bought a single gambit, and only found a handful of them.  The only ones I ever used were "attack leader's target"  and cure gambits for <30 and <70 (for some boss fights).  Sure the Gambit system is great in theory, but the point is I never needed to use them because I could get through the majority of battles with auto-attack with gambits only being used for healing.  I could see the Gambit system being great if they upped the difficulty, made magic more powerful and upgraded the spells more often, made Espers actually useful, and got rid of Quickenings.


Haven't played any of the Dragon Quest games since the Dragon Warrior stuff on the NES.  Even back then they were pretty generic and I never understood why the series was so popular in Japan.  I don't think FFXII was a step toward Western design at all other than the obvious swipe of MMO gameplay.  It's still completely linear gameplay focusing on a story that will turn out exactly the same regardless of how you play.  It's not a matter of me being overly dramatic.  I thought it was a decent enough game, and I appreciate that they tried to make some changes since the JRPG genre is long overdue for them (I haven't really enjoyed playing one since Shadow Hearts: Covenant).  This was mostly a reaction to Fabricated trying to pass this game off as being better than FFVII like it was fact, when in my opinion the only FF game it might be better than is IX.

Funny sentence. It's even funnier considering you've gone anti-fanboi rabid in both threads where anyone has dared mention they like the game.

IMO, it's the best one since 6. Obviously there's some sentiment for that here.  But feel free to continue talking to us like we're a bunch of retarded children for thinking that.

Sweet Jesus, does your pussy always hurt anytime someone doesn't like the same game you do?  Like I said the game has a lot of flaws, moreso to me than any FF I've played previously.  That said, I don't lay down my opinion as fact like Fabricated did.  It great if people enjoyed it, but 'best FF evar, end of discussion' shit I find annoying.

What's the point in even arguing over which is "best"? That's not only extremely subjective, but the debate also has no real bearing on the game itself. Does FF7 being better or worse than XII in any way make XII a different game?

Nope.

X-2 is clearly the best, followed by 2. Those were two gems.

FF Legends 3 was da-bomb.

Two words:


Mystic. Quest.

The worst part was that it was called Final Fantasy USA in Japan if I'm not mistaken.  It's like they were flat out saying "look at this dumbed down piece of shit we had to develop for those guys".  That said, I actually bought it and played it through to completion when it came out.

I completed it on a rental. Twice.

The game actually isn't That bad when you're like...10. Also, elemental weaknesses in that game were sweet.

FF7 is mediocre compared to FF6, but it sold a million zillion copies and provided the story that has had the most staying power in the gamers' consciousness, so I still consider it to be the pinnacle of the series.

(I would stomp my disks for 7 into plastic slivers if it'd make them remake 6 with modern graphics.  In a heartbeat.)

FF6 > FF7 > All later FFs.  Especially 8, 10-2, and 11, which should be thrown into a very deep pit with nuclear waste.
Secret of Mana > All the later Seiken Densetsu games.
Chrono Trigger > Chrono Cross
Xenogears > Xenosaga

I can't speak to the Dragon Quest series, but I still don't consider that line to really belong to Square.

Opinions!  Yay!

4, 12, 6, 7, etc.

I am having a lot of fun with XII, but I'm one of those people that has always concentrated more on the combat than the story.  I also like collecting things.

I'm confused. I can get not digging the role of FF12's protagonists ("Okay, everyone else is busy advancing the plot...let's go plunder another one of my ancestors tombs!"), but complaining about the use of an optional, free form system makes...no sense really.

FF8 annoyed me since you could pretty much break the game 20 minutes into it thanks to the awful junction system. Get the item->healing spell skill, buy a bunch of tents, convert to Curaga, junction to HP, and boom, level nothing characters with like 5000HP. Thing is though, I don't HAVE to do that. It's a dumb system because I can, but if I want more difficulty I can just not bend the game over.

If Gambits are dumb, turn them off. FF12 is still the best post 16-bit entry in the series as far as I'm concerned (FF6 ranks higher just due to pure fanboyism on my part), but I hated the plots of 7 and 8. Why everyone despised 9 I have no clue.

Gambits aren't dumb.  I wish MMO's would have something like that set up when I don't feel like grouping.  If they add it into FFXI there would be a 2% chance that I might actually get up the desire to try it again.  The problem is that the game was rarely challenging enough for me to need to do anything other than auto-attack, cure, and use quickenings (and I didn't even get the Zodiac spear or anything).  I thought that first boss fight against the flaming horse was one of the most challenging fights I'd ever been through in an FF game, and I wished the challenge had stayed that consistent throughout the rest of the game.  Then I probably would have needed to take full advantage of the gambit system.  The game just never put me in a position where I felt like I'd benifit from using it much.

This is just a point of curiosity, but did you do all of the clan hunts and optional boss fights (without hyper leveled characters)?  Some of those could be challenging.  If you didn't set up some good gambits, you'd be pausing it every single turn (and possibly not reacting fast enough to alpha strikes/debilitating status effects).

I don't have good gambits set up, but I like pausing to give orders and swapping people out and switching weapons and the midget and the broom and whatnot.  I also have run into one or two irritating hunts and mostly just stick to advancing the story.  Things are getting easy but I am just going to advance the plot instead of start working my way down Zertinan caverns or something.

That optional earth dragon was pretty challenging, and I had to work to take down the forest dragon, but yeah, that first boss was tougher than any of them.

The forest dragon had me stumped for a couple weeks (I only play a few hours a week though).  So I went around and did hunts.  I'm enjoying it so far.

Since the system tells you what the enemy is casting you can swap in/out the resist gear as needed so that all those damn special effects can't take hold.  There was one fight in a high level hunt where I had to constantly swap in Mirror Mail for all of my characters to get reflect up because he kept spamming stuff like disable and sleep.  The only problem is that he had a ton of hit points and sometimes I would forget to take off the mirror mail, cast renew on myself, it would be reflected, and do a full heal on the damn boss...

If one of your characters gets hit with confuse you can unequip their weapon too, not only will they do less damage but it resets their attack meter.

Complaining about exploits in a single-player game is pretty stupid. If you want the game to be challenging, don't use the exploits. If pausing every turn makes it too easy then don't pause every turn.

I have no sympathy for people who purposely make the game less fun for themselves and then complain about it. Why are you power-gaming a single-player game again?

Super Mario Brothers is a lot less fun if you hit yourself in the head with a hammer while playing.

I wasn't complaining, those were tips, I like that I can do that if I feel the need.  One of the main things that turn me off of some games are all the annoying status effects.  Self -> Esuna gambit solves most of that and is one of the reasons why I enjoyed FFXII combat so much.

Status effects are Supposed to be annoying. Somehow, I don't think the system is working as intended if you can swap equipment while in combat to change status like that.

You can change it to prevent a status effect from happening. You can't equip a piece of equipment and have it nullify a current status effect.

Not having swappable equipment in battle would have been ass.  There's plenty of bosses where one type of element is going to be healing the boss.  Plus, it's nice to go melee or ranged.  Ranged is a lot better on certain bosses to avoid having your entire party being hit by an AOE.

That's what the Opal Rings are for.

I did all but 8-10 of the clan hunts, and about half the esper fights.  The ones I didn't do are the ones that (from looking at guides on Gamefaqs, which I did mostly to find out the clan mobs locations/spawn conditions) seemed like they were higher level encounters than the final boss.  I didn't want to level to the point of making the last fight trivial.  There were some bosses that use a lot of status effects, confuse typically being the worst of them, but they were few enough and far enough between that setting up gambits didn't seem to be worth the effort to me.

Ah, but I needed to keep the bubble belt on to double my HP as he was doing thousands of damage at a time, if I swapped it out for the Opal Ring my HP would have been cut in half.

You know, the "single-player game exploit" thing is something I like.  It's optional in the scenarios that I like it, like Daggerfall for example.  Something I had fun with was making a high elf, which are immune to paralysis, and giving him a critical weakness to paralysis.  He'd still be immune and I'd have a large amount of room to stack bonuses without crippling the XP multiplier.

I also remember that I managed to have all four characters with dual imp halberds in FFVI.  I had at least one attack twice per round, maybe all of them did; it's been a while.  That was a real atrocity.

The above is why I like the combat in Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga so much.  It has that sort of weakness-exploitation and tricking built into the system, and it's also difficult enough that if you drop the ball in a fight you are likely to be fucked.

For those type of fights, I give my melee buffer gambit guy an Ally Any -> Bubble gambit.  This is the person that's responsible for keeping everyone hasted and the leader with Bravery.

Just make sure your meat shield has the bubble belt and have someone handy with an Ally Any -> Remedy gambit.