- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
Unless you're counting remake, which you can't it's unfinished, I don't think VII is longer than XIII (famously long) or XIV (which like, four or five games wearing a single trenchcoat).
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
FFXIV is a MMO, and also is not an issue for the thread because Omicron has already played that one. FFXIII is not as long as FFVII, not even close - unless you're folding the two sequels into it. And of course I'm not folding the remake into VII; it's a sequel. Also, Final Fantasy VII Remake is not long at all; I think the sequels to the remake should be counted separately from it, since if they were all the same game, they should have published as one game. Just like the Remake can't be counted as part of FFVII, or FFX-2 is not part of FFX. Sequels are sequels.
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- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
XIII is longer than VII by a good few hours, I'd still say, absent the sequels entire.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Technically she's being introduced as another imperial general, not just an agent, which does seem to imply she's kept her rank?
I think this may be the first time in the series, but 'traditionally' throughout FF Balloons are the lowest tier of the Bomb family.
Katsuragi
The 1%
Time to beat has them at similar lengths.
13 is reported to be slightly longer minimum, 7 slightly higher 100%
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I think it might help to know that I don't consider the entire length of a cutscene to be part of the game's length, since you're not playing during it, and in a context like this thread, a lot of cutscenes won't merit more than a single descriptive line or screenshot, if even that. And I'm generally not really considering side-quests/grinding either, since again, in a thread like this, ten hours of grinding, or six hours of crossing through world locations to complete a series of sequential fetch quests, can be summarized as simply as I just did.
Does that helps you see why I'm taking the position I am? I think continuing this discussion here any further would probably be a thread derail, but if you want to post your explanation of how you've come to that conclusion in PM, I'd certainly be curious to read it.
Bleah, Chrono Cross really had the worst huge party roster I've personally seen.
The vast majority of them in my memory are just "HELLO! I am DUDE. I have TRAIT. You will now ignore me for the rest of the game."
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I see your Chrono Cross and raise you a Fire Emblem.
True.
The worst part was that there weren't any multi thread setups like in FF6 that would have justified having so many.
Realistically the total roster in CC should probably have capped at maybe 9 permanent options and a half dozen or so temp members.
- Location
- Texas
I'm now imagining "secret village devoted to keeping lore and magic" finally deciding to reveal themselves to the world, only to find out the rest of the world has known about magic for generations.
Like if Wakanda went "we have a vibranium mine" only to find out there had been multiple meteor showers so the whole planet was scattered with space metals.
Like if Wakanda went "we have a vibranium mine" only to find out there had been multiple meteor showers so the whole planet was scattered with space metals.
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Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, that's... kinda what's happened here? They know about magic, and they can do some very rudimentary magic, but they're explicitly outstripped by the Empire in ability, and probably in knowledge, too.
Fire Emblem always struggled with fleshing out the non-mechanical aspects of a character, but the fact that a party can consist of a dozen people at a time and the much wider mechanical space to make them distinct from each other mean that it's big casts are much more justified.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Honestly, I've never thought about it before, but Terra just exudes confused ace/aro vibes. Which, probably isn't what they are going for given the comments about her past, but kinda works for me?
Really Omi, still not trusting the Empire for some reason? They didn't even pull anything thus update, and Leo even said "I was kind of a bad guy actually", obviously they're totally redeemed at this point and absolutely nothing bad will happen!
Shit he figured it out, we're doing FFIV Moon Plot 2: Esper Realm is Actually a Portal to the Moon Boogaloo.
Yeah this whole chunk of Locke and Celes bits in the story is just peak "characters please, for the love of god, just talk to each other instead of past each other" and as always, it's one of the most infuriating types of writing in character relationships.
On the other hand, we also get a lot of little bits of Shadow characterization in this arc, and man I was laughing the entire time because he's just so edgy I love it. It's like they brought one of the writer's 12 year old kids to work that day and told them to write for a cool ninja character and he just starts spouting things like "don't worry I wasn't hired to kill you" and "I've killed my emotions".
I've mentioned it before in thread, but I think it's just a combination of multiple factors fucking with Terra's head before the beginning of the game. She's got her Esper heritage bubbling up beneath the surface, she's got the fact that she was probably raised to be a weapon more than a person, she's got the slave crown thrown in on top of that (which random aside, do we ever see anything like that again other than right there at the beginning of the game? Is this just some new experimental tech they decided to toss on Terra?)
Anyways, then she's got her entire outburst where her Esper form comes to the forefront, so it's only now with the Empire devastated and things finally starting to calm down a bit that she's having a bit of breathing room to find herself, so to speak, and I think Terra just doesn't really know how to Human.
Omi on point with these predictions, next he'll figure out how the Emperor is actually Locke's estranged father-
Wait, shit, wasn't supposed to mention that.
JUST
FUCKING
TALK
PLEAAAAAAAASE
Yeaaaaah, sorry about that. I honestly thought Interceptor's counter mechanics were a lot more frequent then they are at that point in the game, not to mention that Shadow had a bit more screentime before now.You see. Because he acts as a defensive buff that randomly parries attacks. He 'intercepts' them.
This would have been very funny to find out if people hadn't insisted that he totally did give his dog's name way earlier and insisted on explaining the dog, his name, and his combat mechanics long before any of them actually appeared on screen
"Hrgh, not in my paycheck, I'm too cool to worry about burning little girls"
It do be Aqua Breath!
Though that raises the question of whether every other villager apparently also has the Lore skill like Strago does, since they all seem to be casting the same magic he is in this scene.
I am like 95% sure Galuf called himself Fit as a Fiddle at some point or another, yeah. At the least, it's a very Galuf line even if Strago is older.
Yeah, so, Terra. Terra absolutely does start at a disadvantage to most party members. She's got a good equipment set, and of course natural magic, but everyone else starts pulling out things early-game that don't cost MP and are way better than attacking like Edgar's Tools, Sabin's Blitzes, Cyan's Bushidos... and then Magicite happens while Terra is bedridden, and everyone can just learn magic the same as she can, making her feel even more redundant for a bit. At most, she tends to spend the early game dealing with high defense targets and keeping the party healed.
And then you get Terra back, and realize she has one of the highest natural Magic stats in the game, and Trance, and our girl just takes off. Between that and the aforementioned equipment sets, Terra is easily in the running for the best party member in the entire game for sheer power and role flexibility. Heck, if you checked out the armor shop at Thamasa there's even some good old FF staples in stupidly good gear that's female exclusive which further buffs Terra (and Celes).
Couple others mentioned it, but Smoke Bomb is an item in-game that gives you a 100% success rate at running from battles, so yeah that's what's happening here, good old dissonance from a clearly video-gamey item being used in the actual plot. Probably should have at least made it a Teleport Stone, honestly.
Also Shadow Cool Edgy, etc. etc. Really do love the guy.
She'll have more time for sass and shenanigans shortly, I'm sure.
We've already had one stall out back in FFV, and I honestly wouldn't be super surprised if FFVI has a similar stalling at a later point in the story:
Decision Paralysis is absolutely a possibility at the point where the game opens up to the point of "you can challenge the final dungeon now if you want" but also has way more "optional" side content to hit up than FFV did.
Much like Trans Icon Faris, I suspect that ace/aro Terra isn't really something the devs had in mind when writing her (especially since the game came out in what, the 1990s?) But also much like Trans Icon Faris, I think it's a perfectly reasonable character interpretation with what we got. Doesn't have to be she's confused about love because her emotions as a whole are screwed with - entirely possible for it to be that she doesn't get it because she literally doesn't feel romantic love or however that works, and is just worried that something is wrong with her.
Almost forgot: New Character, new Analysis!
Honestly illhousen pretty much covered Strago above, but I'm going to talk about it anyways because I like doing it. So Strago: pretty much what you'd expect from a 70 year old magic user, in terms of equipment and stats. He likes using rods and staves, he likes really light armor, and his magic stat is the most notable thing about him because the rest of them are mediocre at best. The main big thing he has going for him is Lore, which is actually just Blue Magic this time instead of something like Gau's Geomancer Berserker Blue Mage amalgamation.
In some ways, Strago's Lore is better than the Blue Magic of FFV - you don't have to cross your fingers and hope the enemy happens to target him with the spells you want to learn, he just has to observe them and then use his magical Taskmaster masteries to instantly learn how to cast it. On the other hand, Blue Magic/Lore as a whole got a bit of a nerf stick compared to FFV - costs are up, variety is down, and things like the "Level 4 Flare" spells aren't quite as useful as they used to be because it's a lot harder to manipulate enemy levels in FFVI than it was in FFV. Still, it's hardly a bad skillset, and it gives a magic user in this game something to do other than drown themselves in Magicite while rolling around on the Veldt until they've mastered every spell in the game so they can just be "Terra/Celes but worse".
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
Record Keeper might be the longest tbh?
...Does Record Keeper even count? I mean I wouldn't doubt it's the longest for sheer content since it effectively covers every single game and then some, but it's also a defunct mobile game where the plot mostly amounted to "Taro we have to play all the Final Fantasy games Kupo! Remember to spend all your real life money getting Ramza's Shout and Y'shtola's Stoneskin so bosses don't wipe you instantly, Kupo!"
I mean I don't have much room to talk Record Keeper is the game that originally sucked me into the world of spending more cash than a person ever should on a mobile device, but still.
- Location
- Florida USA
IIRC they literally put a script into the coding to change specific party dialogue in plot scenes to accommodate the unique dialogue style-accents of characters. So that Greco the Not-Luchadora Priest will use Spanish where the cutesy mimic creature Pip will use cutsey talk or Korcha or Macha will use their 'CHA" emphasis dialogue, Kid her not-Aussie accent, Fargo will use pirate talk YAAARRRR, the one mermaid character will use ZE GERMAN UMLAUTS JA, etc. There's even a bit in the "designers' room" NG+ ending where you can have one of the devs give lines in all those character-specific accents.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's not just a question of game length, it's a question of time management on my end. I could 'zoom out' and talk less about the details, which would compensate for increasing game length, but that has to be a deliberate effort on my part; when I am just free-wheeling it like I do now and saying everything I feel deserve mention, a denser game like FFVI gets even more words spent on the same length of gameplay. It's a complicated balancing exercise.
I'm very much excited to reach FFVII and experience the radical shift of 3D for myself, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm also worried it'll be a bit of a brick wall. We'll have to see.
Of course, people can always increase the odds of this going further by joining my Patreon subscribers
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
Strago's theme is my favorite bit of final fantasy music in... pretty much the entire franchise, I think. I can't remember if I ever figured out why, but it is. Some of the blue mage spells are heckin' neat, too, and there's a certain something to having a goofy lookin' old dude slinging magical omnicide on everything like he does. Galuf was there in the past, but galuf wasn't a greybeard, heh.
Relm, though. Most of what made Relm really memorable has been patched in this version of FF6, though I'm sure folks will babble about that when her mechanics actually become relevant (i.e. not yet!)
... also people seem to frikkin' love to remix her theme, for what that's worth. Saccharine thing, iirc, I never really liked it or any remix I've heard of it. It's okay, but it ain't no Strago's Theme or basically most of the rest of the game's soundtrack. One of my least favorite tracks in FF6.
- Location
- Spain
They already babbled about it even before Omi started with VI lol
Emy
Artificial Defender
I think this is a definition that literally nobody else is using. And for good reason: cutscenes often contain important, even plot-critical events in Final Fantasy games, and excluding them from consideration means that you're going to be talking past everyone else when discussing game length.
I can see arguments for excluding optional grinding, optional side-quests, or queue times, because they're not core to the game unless you're chasing 100% completion. But excluding cutscenes, or all grinding, means that your metric of game length is going to be totally disconnected from the actual experience that people get when playing the game.
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
yeah, while it may take less time to write about it, Omi still needs to play/watch it
Min Time Speedruns are an important part of the experience though...(ok, no, I started giggling halfway through typing that lol).
Speedrun records are not the game duration.