Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Press select to get enemy names when you go to target them. Also, after you cast scan on a target the tool tip will keep a running tally of that enemies health for the rest of that fight. No guessing The scorpion bot is called Guard Scorpion.
One thing I loved about FFVII is how they managed to keep character individuality despite being able to have each character take any role. Like the characters in FFVI, any character could be your main melee bruiser, or they can just as easily be your white mage, or whichever role you want to slot them into. Between their weapon types, limit breaks, and personalities each character manages to stay distinct.
Also, about limits. I love these ridiculous over the top attacks, and I love how there is clearly a progression in power as characters get new ones. Starting from just an extra heavy attack like Braver, to the bullshit anime tier stuff that shows up later it shows the characters growing in their own unique ways.
I would suggest you save often for two reasons. First, there are several minigames that are absolute pains in the ass, but have variable rewards based on how well you do. Second, it's very easy to get sucked into the game and just keep on going without pause. Right up until you stumble over a Midgar Zolem and you realize you haven't saved in hours just before it wipes your party out.
One thing I loved about FFVII is how they managed to keep character individuality despite being able to have each character take any role. Like the characters in FFVI, any character could be your main melee bruiser, or they can just as easily be your white mage, or whichever role you want to slot them into. Between their weapon types, limit breaks, and personalities each character manages to stay distinct.
Also, about limits. I love these ridiculous over the top attacks, and I love how there is clearly a progression in power as characters get new ones. Starting from just an extra heavy attack like Braver, to the bullshit anime tier stuff that shows up later it shows the characters growing in their own unique ways.
Getting new limits is also interesting, since they aren't directly tied to level. Rather for most characters, using your limit enough times will unlock a second limit of similar power, while landing the killing blow on enough enemies will unlock higher tiers of limit. Barring the final limit, which is gained through using a unique item after obtaining all other limits for that character. I do think the last limit for each character is a missed opportunity, since they could have been rewards for a characters personal growth, but for the most part you just kind of find them randomly scattered about. Some are even entirely missable.
I would suggest you save often for two reasons. First, there are several minigames that are absolute pains in the ass, but have variable rewards based on how well you do. Second, it's very easy to get sucked into the game and just keep on going without pause. Right up until you stumble over a Midgar Zolem and you realize you haven't saved in hours just before it wipes your party out.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The discussion of PS1 graphics makes me think of how nowadays, when games go back to that style, it's almost always for horror games which benefit from everything looking janky, uncanny, and the low draw distance. To the point where 'PS1 Horror' is its own subgenre by this point (Edit: Makes sense then that Omi mentioned both Silent Hill and Resident Evil when talking about early 3D graphics).
And bringing up guns, as well as other post-medieval technology in fantasy (well, guns aren't really 'post'-medieval, more that guns as we think of them are) also reminded me of poparena's video essay on Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which isn't as modern a setting as FF7 but is more so than usual for Zelda
And bringing up guns, as well as other post-medieval technology in fantasy (well, guns aren't really 'post'-medieval, more that guns as we think of them are) also reminded me of poparena's video essay on Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, which isn't as modern a setting as FF7 but is more so than usual for Zelda
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Suffice it to say that I've been vibrating in my seat all week for this.
I'm glad you picked up on the grungy, haphazard industrial nature of 7's aesthetic, where the world itself seems to be collapsing as fast as it's being built up. I always had the impression that, very similar to 6, this is a world that was once simpler, much lower fantasy setting before The Big Thing kickstarted the world into a supercharged industrial revolution that hardly anyone can actually keep up with. But while 6 was this very baroque, fantastical "smokestacks and flywheels" turn of the century vibe to most of it's mechanics, 7 goes for (in Midgar at least) a much more modern late-20th century to to it's technology, with generous inspiration taken from the sort of AKIRA-esque (keep an eye out for how many giant power cables you'll see throughout the game) heavy industrial sci-fi that had been popular for at least a decade beforehand. Kudos too for basically saying everything I had been wanting to about why prerendered fixed camera backgrounds are a fantastic choice when it comes to certain genres.
Like, I'm really trying avoid writing an entire essay on what a masterclass in environmental design this game is, because most of it would just be me posting concept art and screaming "INDUSTRIAL NEO-NOIR! FANTASY DIESELPUNK! THE AESTHETIC! LOOK AT IT!" over and over.
LOOK AT IT!
Anyways, I already wrote a huge long post in the spoiler thread about why I think changing the explicit culpability for the bombing run in Remake ruins one of the main narrative themes of the original game, so you have that block of text to look forward to when it's a little more relevant.
I'm glad you picked up on the grungy, haphazard industrial nature of 7's aesthetic, where the world itself seems to be collapsing as fast as it's being built up. I always had the impression that, very similar to 6, this is a world that was once simpler, much lower fantasy setting before The Big Thing kickstarted the world into a supercharged industrial revolution that hardly anyone can actually keep up with. But while 6 was this very baroque, fantastical "smokestacks and flywheels" turn of the century vibe to most of it's mechanics, 7 goes for (in Midgar at least) a much more modern late-20th century to to it's technology, with generous inspiration taken from the sort of AKIRA-esque (keep an eye out for how many giant power cables you'll see throughout the game) heavy industrial sci-fi that had been popular for at least a decade beforehand. Kudos too for basically saying everything I had been wanting to about why prerendered fixed camera backgrounds are a fantastic choice when it comes to certain genres.
Like, I'm really trying avoid writing an entire essay on what a masterclass in environmental design this game is, because most of it would just be me posting concept art and screaming "INDUSTRIAL NEO-NOIR! FANTASY DIESELPUNK! THE AESTHETIC! LOOK AT IT!" over and over.
LOOK AT IT!
Anyways, I already wrote a huge long post in the spoiler thread about why I think changing the explicit culpability for the bombing run in Remake ruins one of the main narrative themes of the original game, so you have that block of text to look forward to when it's a little more relevant.
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
So... I guess to preempt someone else asking: Any particular reason for not loading this thing up in an emulator instead? 'Cause it sounds like the functioning would be pretty significantly improved, heh. I'unno about the rest of these folks, but I wouldn't blame most anyone for deciding quicksave (equivalent, blessed be the savestate) is non-negotiable, ha.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
So, time to talk about the first boss of the game. And it's a bit of a doozy in all the wrong ways.
Scorporobot's official name is the Guard Scorpion, and it's arguably the worst boss in the game. Great, you've got it out of the way already. The reason why is kind of blatantly obvious.
Really, though, this is just a version of a boss we've seen at the start of every game since IV. Mist Dragon, Wing Raptor, Lightning Whelk, all of them had a specific counterattack stance for you to not attack, preceded them by doing some sort of action that would change how they looked. Guard Scorpion is maybe the best at this specific part of the fight design; it changes the whole camera view, brings up its tail with a weapon on the end, and you get the line warning you. Up until this point, the only comparable one is the Lightning Whelk.
Then of course it immediately becomes the worst version of all of those by where the text box ends. Do you know what you can do between the time the Attack when it's tail is up text box appears and the It's gonna counterattack with its laser text box appears? Attack the boss. Well more than enough people did as such for this line to become a meme, because if you attack the Guard Scorpion when it's tail is up, the counterattack will take a massive chunk out of both of your party members. You can very, very easily wipe to this fight as a result of the Tail Laser and as such, this great opening kinda ends on a REALLY sour note.
Honestly, as far as lines from FFVII go, the lie the game tells you in the first half hour of gameplay is probably one of the most well known, and considering how iconic and well known of a game this is, that's saying quite a lot.
Scorporobot's official name is the Guard Scorpion, and it's arguably the worst boss in the game. Great, you've got it out of the way already. The reason why is kind of blatantly obvious.
Really, though, this is just a version of a boss we've seen at the start of every game since IV. Mist Dragon, Wing Raptor, Lightning Whelk, all of them had a specific counterattack stance for you to not attack, preceded them by doing some sort of action that would change how they looked. Guard Scorpion is maybe the best at this specific part of the fight design; it changes the whole camera view, brings up its tail with a weapon on the end, and you get the line warning you. Up until this point, the only comparable one is the Lightning Whelk.
Then of course it immediately becomes the worst version of all of those by where the text box ends. Do you know what you can do between the time the Attack when it's tail is up text box appears and the It's gonna counterattack with its laser text box appears? Attack the boss. Well more than enough people did as such for this line to become a meme, because if you attack the Guard Scorpion when it's tail is up, the counterattack will take a massive chunk out of both of your party members. You can very, very easily wipe to this fight as a result of the Tail Laser and as such, this great opening kinda ends on a REALLY sour note.
Honestly, as far as lines from FFVII go, the lie the game tells you in the first half hour of gameplay is probably one of the most well known, and considering how iconic and well known of a game this is, that's saying quite a lot.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Cables in dystopias makes me think of Serial Experiments Lain as much as AKIRA, though obviously the latter wouldn't come out till next year.
I also find it amusing that Omi said he wouldn't even get into 'cyberpunk' as a term, given the spoiler thread (relinked for newcomers) got into a big discussion on what FFs do and don't count as cyberpunk
Guile
Having a really great time right now
I appreciate that you're comparing Remake side by side; that's a fun approach I haven't seen before.
I like to imagine that the second pick being a 'better' (mechanical) choice is that that's the 'canonical' choice. Cloud's not much of a hero at the moment.
Plus it's a cute line.
I like to imagine that the second pick being a 'better' (mechanical) choice is that that's the 'canonical' choice. Cloud's not much of a hero at the moment.
It's going to be interesting, seeing the jump backwards in Quality of Life (and perhaps, other things) going into FFVII. At the least, you've already noted several times this update having to rely entirely on manual save points rather than having auto/quick saves available.
Some might argue that these starts aren't really all that iconic.
I'd argue that it took me, and many others, approximately 0.1 seconds from those stars showing up in a Smash Bros reveal to start screaming "HOLY FUCK CLOUD IS IN" at the top of our lungs.
Well, at a quick glance back through them:
FFI shows the Light Warrior
FFII shows Emperor Palamecia
FFIII shows the Light Warrior, except it's the FFIII Light Warrior
FFIV shows Kain (though the DS version has a logo with Golbez instead that looks pretty neat)
FFV shows a Wind Drake
and FFVI shows Terra riding a Magitek armor
So honestly, FFV (and now FFVII maybe) are kind of the odd ones out? Up until now, it almost always depicted a character of some importance to the game besides the Wind Drake. Ah well, we'll get to what precisely FFVII is depicting eventually.
Of course, then you go back to your Popeye-esque legoman models outside of combat... but still, it's an impressive step up what the game manages to do with combat models for both the player and for enemies, and as you already know things will get ironed out soon enough with the advent of FFVIII.
So in FFVII, the ATB gauge is labeled with either TIME or WAIT depending on if... well, time is currently flowing between actions or not. It's more noticeable once you have more party members, and can visibly see say Cloud start casting Bolt, and partway through the gauge swaps to saying WAIT and other party member's gauges stop filling.
Mostly just a better way of labeling things than we had in FFIV-FFVI.
I've always interpreted it more as your party members being Just That Good to turn what should easily be lethal ordinance into glancing blows or blocks, particularly because in Cutscene Land Cloud tends to at least somewhat seem to care about gunfire. But really, that's just good old Gameplay/Story segregation rearing its head. Bulletproof SOLDIER man is also cool.
At this era of 3D games? Basically anything, as you point out going through a lot of 3D games. FFVII mostly goes for the pre-modeled setpieces route, but personally I'm more used to the polygonal world exploration of games like Super Mario 64 or other N64 games since I grew up more with that than a Playstation. Either way though it's kind of the Wild West of 3D game design as consoles are only just starting to get their footing on "how do we jump from 2D sprite games to 3D anything". Some made the jump quite well (Zelda, Mario, Final Fantasy), some stumbled a bit, and some, well...
There's a lot of franchises back in the day that famously missed the jump so badly that they died for it. Earthworm Jim, Bubsy... Castlevania wasn't killed by the jump but it sure shuffled back to 2D pretty quickly.
"Barret has a sick-ass machine gun arm" was really all the consideration he needed for teenage me to ensure he was always in my party, back when i first played FFVII, that's for sure.
Never really thought about it before, but yeah it probably would have been better to give you the Restore materia a bit later and use that as the prompting for the tutorial. Either that, or move the tutorial to right here, but I figure it's just complicated enough that explaining it now in the middle of this opening mission might mess with the pacing a bit.
One thing I've been noticing going through the Steam PC version of FFVII is that... for all I heard it was a somewhat improved translation, it doesn't actually seem to be one. From things like the Guard Scorpion, to some other dialogue bits or... choice words that don't fly as well in current day, it really does feel like I'm just playing the Playstation release again for better or for worse.
I mean, at the least you can probably expect the game to have a few sequences that go "hey guess what Poochie Mc Untrained is going in your party for this sequence whether you like it or not" so should probably keep some of those weapons in the back pocket. Thankfully, this is helped by the fact that if you've checked the equipment screen... you probably noticed that juggling equipment around is a lot less complicated than it was in previous games, because FFVII literally only has three slots per character: Weapons (which as noted are unique classes of weapon per character), armor, and accessories.
What, didn't feel like leaving her behind like the heartless mercenary you are, Cloud?
Of course iirc you actually need Jessie to open a door on the way out, so if you skip her... gotta hike allll the way back down, timer ticking all the while.
Without spoilers, dialogue options do matter to some degree. Not to the level of some RPGs out there where it's like "depending on your choices there's six entirely different endgames possible on Disk 3", but they do have some effects going forward.
Don't worry, I'm sure the thread will immediately move to spoil you on every one of them, someone's already gotten started.
Part of it for me personally is there's a certain something in how much NPCs will move around and emote now in the world. Not that they didn't very occasionally do so in other games, but in FFVII you can walk into a screen and watch as half a dozen NPCs scatter off in different directions in response to something else happening nearby, before finding a place to sit in whatever poses varying depending on what little character they have.
A few others mentioned it, but windowed mode fixes that almost entirely. Of course, you might not want that for screenshots, but I'm also pretty sure there's like... borderless windowed mode for some games where it's "fullscreen" but still technically a window for issues like this? Play around with it a bit, I guess.
Don't worry I'm sure someone or other in the thread will have that covered, because FFVII has some great music going for it.
Well, depending on your controller settings, because lmao FF7 PC Controller support. I'm not actually sure what my help/tooltip button is bound to, and it took me an hour or two to realize L and R were bound to R and L.
Ah, the good ol' Japanese Gaming Market. Premiere example that's finally starting to come to a close these days is always Atlas and their apparent hatred for the free money they get by just porting their games to PC.
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
For anyone who's playing along at home on PC and is looking to find it, the bizarre term they use in the port for the button in question is [ASSIST].
Honestly, Japan's gaming market is about as Japan-centric as America's is America-centric and apparently there isn't as high a demand for PC games over there as there is here, so that would explain it. Frustrating for us, of course, but there you have it: as usual, capitalism is at fault.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Which is kinda funny to me, given that Visual Novels are primarily Japanese and most of them got their start on the PC
- Location
- Phoenix
If you go by Advent Children, it folds up. He's able to 'set' it to either hand mode or gun mode. Granted Advent Children takes place a year after FF7 so he might not have that option with his current model of hand. Also what happened will be shown later on in the story.
It's kind of the era of that translation. The Pixel remasters you've been playing have the bonus of modern day translation which is far better than what was available when they were initially published. The translations of that time produced lines such as 'All your bases are belong to us!' and 'Welcome to die!'. The PSX era was another step up in quality of these translations but there were still plenty of mistakes, and the translaters struggled a lot with idioms and the such.
I personally, like to think of it as Cloud making a mistake in the fight, rather than a mistranslation.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Think this was part of the reason Ted Woolsey or Working Designs with Lunar were so praised back in the day, because they were leagues ahead of what was expected for the time, and among the first to realise that a literalistic translation won't necessarily make for the best translation.
Nowadays though, Woolsey's translations work alright though have their issues (a few of which were pointed out back in the FF6 LP), but Working Designs' can come off way too 'post-Aladdin', very much of the time when people thought putting modern references in fantasy was the height of clever (at least in Aladdin it was only the Genie that did that)
Though Woolsey's more liberal translations of FF6 and Chrono Trigger I'm told is why FF7's initial English translation ended up the way it did, since IIRC Square replaced him for a less experienced (and much more time-crunched) translator as they felt he took too many liberties
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- Location
- Canada, probably
This should be interesting. I know basically nothing about any iteration of FF7. I know some of the characters' names, and I know there's a guy that's like a prototype of Ghirahim from Skyward Sword. Oh, and at some point I think you fall in a hole? (I played a few minutes on an emulator in high school)
But I'm being taken off guard by a lot of small things, like the fact that there are cars, and that they managed to nail the Lego Movie aesthetic almost 2 decades before.
I think the side-by-side comparison to the Remake is going to be fascinating. Jessie being worried she'd screwed up by making the explosion so big is quite an interesting counterpoint to the original's "that generator sure got blowed to hell, yee-haw!"
But I'm being taken off guard by a lot of small things, like the fact that there are cars, and that they managed to nail the Lego Movie aesthetic almost 2 decades before.
I think the side-by-side comparison to the Remake is going to be fascinating. Jessie being worried she'd screwed up by making the explosion so big is quite an interesting counterpoint to the original's "that generator sure got blowed to hell, yee-haw!"
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
OTOH, a lot of visual novels are porn games, so there's a stigma coming from that.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Translations only got good after they put a team of several on Xenogears a year or two later, most quit early on leaving one guy (Richard Honeywood) with no experience or training in translation beyond being multilingual to do the whole thing by himself in time alotted based on the assumption of having at least three.
He was a major force in innovating translations after that, being specifically credited with things like "working with the original writers instead of guessing and hoping" and "game bibles detailing character personalities and what to do to/how to maintain consistent tone", and "editors", and there was also a move towards dedicated in house translation teams at the same time, with Honeywood being credited as founding that localization department.
Unfortunately that wasnt until '98 a year after FF7, so its not really relevant until FF8 or FF9 outside of "this is why the translations sucked so much in 1997 but were so much better even by 2000".
He was a major force in innovating translations after that, being specifically credited with things like "working with the original writers instead of guessing and hoping" and "game bibles detailing character personalities and what to do to/how to maintain consistent tone", and "editors", and there was also a move towards dedicated in house translation teams at the same time, with Honeywood being credited as founding that localization department.
Unfortunately that wasnt until '98 a year after FF7, so its not really relevant until FF8 or FF9 outside of "this is why the translations sucked so much in 1997 but were so much better even by 2000".
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- Location
- Columbus, OH
It was much too big to be called a sword. Massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough. Indeed, it was like a heap of raw iron.
(For reference, the Berserk anime came out several months after FF7, though the manga had been running since 1989.)
The Remake's change to the bomb is probably my biggest gripe with that game
Time ghosts make me roll my eyes but changing it from a mistake to just another awful thing Shinra does actually gets me a little mad
Time ghosts make me roll my eyes but changing it from a mistake to just another awful thing Shinra does actually gets me a little mad
Geckonator
Occult Materialist
You can! I think you have to press start or select, can't remember what it is by default on an unmodded game, but it brings up an extra text box above the battle interface that shows you enemy names.
In Soviet Midgar, twink obliterates YOU.
This is the future AVALANCHE wants.