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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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Noxlux013 said:
Actually…that brings up a good point. Previous games had genuine puzzle bosses. Using Reflect volleyball to deal with the three sisters, fighting a sentient black hole gate thing; they made you think, made you strategize. I think the closest FF7 gets is "don't hit the scorpion tank when it's tail is up" and maybe that Yin-Yang physical/magical split monster.
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There's been some bosses with the occasional gimmick, I think. The problem is, any decent use of Materia tends to make the party absolutely absurd and able to just outscale bosses way sooner than in games like FFV or FFVI. FFV at least asked for a fair amount of time or grinding to bring out the really broken combos like Rapid Fire + Dual Wield or X-Magic + high level spells, FFVI doesn't really snap in half until you can suddenly slap Ultima on the entire party.

Meanwhile, FFVII gives you Enemy Skill on your way out of Midgar with super early access to good spells like Beta and Mighty Guard (particularly the latter, which in FFV was exclusive to a rare encounter in World 3 and in FFVI required shenanigans to learn from an enemy with 1 HP that starts battles poisoned). Throw in "oh hey I can just slap summons on literally everyone in the party with little cost" and as Omi has demonstrated, you can slog your way through a lot of the fights with little issue.

Final Fantasy VIII is likely to have a similar problem, if Omi grasps the Junction System quickly... which he probably will with help from the thread. Minimal grinding is required to start abusing abilities like converting cards and items into magic to superbuff your level 10 party into the stratosphere, only made all the worse by the fact that FFVIII has level scaling enemies for you to quickly outpace.
 
And now up to episode 28 of the parody! Interestingly enough the entire fight with Ultima weapon was omitted in the parody, no real idea why but presumably it was done to help the scene flow better. Also Cid didn't pull the cause of the earthquake out of his ass.

Really looking forward to the next update though!
 
Omicron said:
I'M SORRY!? WAS I NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?? WAS I NOT WORTH YOUR TIME? IT'S NOT MY FAULT MOST OF THE GAME IS SO EASY I FORGOT MY BASIC COMBAT ROTATION!

I have never felt so insulted.
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You also appear to've forgotten to try robbing the titanic representation of the Planet's rage. Rookie mistake.

I would also note that the Huge Materia are big mystic rocks, and we've got one associated with Water (the Underwater Reactor), one associated with Earth (Corel, as a mining town), and one associated with your choice of Air or Fire (Ft. Condor), depending on how you class the Phoenix.
 
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Omicron said:
so Cid has like half of my Materia library equipped on him and he sucks at using them.
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Having not played FFVII, does this give the dragoon lance and that coat the niche use case of being able to just slap all those materia on Cid to level a shitload of them at once? Does AP get split among materia, or do they all get the listed amount?

McFluffles said:
Beta and Mighty Guard (particularly the latter, which in FFV was exclusive to a rare encounter in World 3 and in FFVI required shenanigans to learn from an enemy with 1 HP that starts battles poisoned).
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You could also get Big Guard from an encounter in Kefka's tower very reliably, but you need to know the trick for it. In the path that the second party takes, one of the enemy formations has a beastie called "mover" that comes in groups of 3+ and has very high physical evasion. This encourages you to just blast the lot of them with magic, but if you do kill them one at a time, when it's down to just one of them it casts Big Guard on itself on its next turn.
 
SerGregness said:
Having not played FFVII, does this give the dragoon lance and that coat the niche use case of being able to just slap all those materia on Cid to level a shitload of them at once? Does AP get split among materia, or do they all get the listed amount?

You could also get Big Guard from an encounter in Kefka's tower very reliably, but you need to know the trick for it. In the path that the second party takes, one of the enemy formations has a beastie called "mover" that comes in groups of 3+ and has very high physical evasion. This encourages you to just blast the lot of them with magic, but if you do kill them one at a time, when it's down to just one of them it casts Big Guard on itself on its next turn.
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All Materia gets the full listed amount of AP from fights, barring some equipment having modifiers like None/Double/Triple AP.

And yeah fair, I didn't consider that you can actually hit up Kefka's Tower super early to also get Big Guard. But still, either way it's significantly later in FFV/FFVI than it is in FFVII, where you get it... what, by hitting up a beach once you've recruited Cait Sith for the Manipulate Materia? You're barely halfway through Disk 1 when it becomes available.
 
SerGregness said:
Having not played FFVII, does this give the dragoon lance and that coat the niche use case of being able to just slap all those materia on Cid to level a shitload of them at once? Does AP get split among materia, or do they all get the listed amount?
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That's correct: it's not split; all slotted materia get the same AP, times whatever multiplier the gear has. With eight slots you get the same total AP growth as you would a four-slot double materia growth item, with a lot more flexibility, though you do have to be careful of stat changes -- it is possible to severely impact your character's hitpoints if you overstack high-end magic or summons.

That said, things like the Edincoat or the Drago(o)n Lance are fantastic for loading up independent materia or summons. Or command materia, since the things command materia can link with are pretty limited to begin with.

Although pairing Deathblow with Added Cut on Vincent feels like cheating.
 
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Omicron said:
And, in turn, the fact that we just found the Flare Materia on a random baby chocobo doesn't matter to the plot. There is no question of whether the Ultima Materia is a power so rare and great that Shinra might actually want to seize it as a strategic weapon. Scarlet has that scene where she looks at the Titan Materia, scoffs at it being worthless and tosses it away, but that Materia could be anything, none of it is about Titan or tells us anything about what, if anything, Scarlet thinks of Summon Materia. I mean, there's been zero indication of what a Summon is, or how summoning works - it's just here because it's a Final Fantasy staple, I guess, the least explanation it's ever had in the series, even way back in III; no character ever mentions summoning in-character, at all.
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There is one thing the Titan materia does in the scene with Scarlet that no other materia could do: form the basis of a truly awful pun. (Of course someone mistakes the Titan, titanic, large materia for a Huge Materia).
 
Omicron said:
But frequent party swaps are incredibly annoying in the Materia system.
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Did you know you can swap entire Materia loadouts between party members? The arrange option in the Materia menu, and then the exchange option. You can use it to switch all of a character's materia, or just the materia they have on their weapon or armour.
 
Omicron said:
I'm genuinely confused. We were told 'this is about protecting the Condor and its egg' the first time we showed up here, everyone had a dialogue bit about 'new life is important and a metaphor for cultivating new things out of a dying world, we agree to do this' back then. I guess the 'trick' was that they'd already removed the Huge Materia so they could have just given it to us and we could have left them to fend for themselves? But, again, in the story everyone already agreed to protect the Condor hours ago.
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Cid wasn't there for it, and nobody told him because nobody speaks to him or takes him anywhere.

Omicron said:
I'M SORRY!? WAS I NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?? WAS I NOT WORTH YOUR TIME? IT'S NOT MY FAULT MOST OF THE GAME IS SO EASY I FORGOT MY BASIC COMBAT ROTATION!
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I'm sorry, Omi. It's not about you, it's about the Ultima Weapon. I know you're doing your best, but, frankly, it deserves more than to fight someone C-team. I hope you understand. Maybe one day in the future, when you've got your feet under you and got Cloud and Tifa (or at least Yuffie) back, you could battle together. Until then, though, it's best to Flee.
 
Omicron said:
Little Timmy just went and dug Ultima out of a well.
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Fun fact, Timmy shows they are future Shinra executive material by absolutely fleecing you if you fail to save the town!
Omicron said:
Cid runs outside, where the screen rumbles and flashes with light to signify the earthquake tearing through Mideel. Cid then… Pulls an explanation for it entirely out of his ass?
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He is a properly trained pilot. It's not inconvceivable he was taught about significant phenomena for various regions of the world so that he knew how to respond.
Omicron said:
I'M SORRY!? WAS I NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU?? WAS I NOT WORTH YOUR TIME? IT'S NOT MY FAULT MOST OF THE GAME IS SO EASY I FORGOT MY BASIC COMBAT ROTATION!
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Toppest of keks.
 
... Wait, if Mideel has a Lifestream upswell close enough to the surface that it can do... this... and no apparent defenses, why hasn't Shinra forced their way in and set up any Mako Reactors here?
 
wetodet said:
... Wait, if Mideel has a Lifestream upswell close enough to the surface that it can do... this... and no apparent defenses, why hasn't Shinra forced their way in and set up any Mako Reactors here?
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Because that's where Shinra execs get to retire, and they don't want the reactors anywhere near them. It's bad for your health. Hypothetically speaking.
 
wetodet said:
... Wait, if Mideel has a Lifestream upswell close enough to the surface that it can do... this... and no apparent defenses, why hasn't Shinra forced their way in and set up any Mako Reactors here?
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We don't know how reactors respond to earthquakes but my guess is not well.

And we've seen what happens in Gongaga if the reactor isn't stable.
 
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Yeah HP Absorb is quite odd like that. The same thing happens if you link it to an offensive spell and the enemy absorbs that element.

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Saint_007 said:
Wait, what?! How does that even work?!
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Because the materia heals the user based on how much damage they deal, and healing is probably coded as effectively negative damage, so the healing the HP Absorb does becomes reversed.
 
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McFluffles said:
Meanwhile, FFVII gives you Enemy Skill on your way out of Midgar with super early access to good spells like Beta and Mighty Guard (particularly the latter, which in FFV was exclusive to a rare encounter in World 3 and in FFVI required shenanigans to learn from an enemy with 1 HP that starts battles poisoned). Throw in "oh hey I can just slap summons on literally everyone in the party with little cost" and as Omi has demonstrated, you can slog your way through a lot of the fights with little issue.
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You know I never got Mighty Guard on my first play through and maybe that was for the best, as far as game balance, though I remember not having that much trouble with most fights anyway (I did have Matra Magic, Trine, and eventually Beta).
 
Outside of optional bosses (such as Midgar Zolom and Godo in Wutai), FFVII doesn't actually have difficulty; I believe there's a few challenge runs out there which have the player go through the game with minimal grinding and leveling, and still kill nearly all non-optional bosses before they can deliver one single attack. As in, battle start, the boss is dead before it can act.

The very existence of Midgar Zolom and Godo also proves that this is deliberate - the developers were fully able to create challenging opponents, they just choose not to, most of the time. I suspect this was done to allow the story to take center stage; Aerith's death would have lost a lot of its punch if, instead of being fought right after you found an item that made you immune to all its attacks, Jenova LIFE was a difficult boss that required complex strategy to defeat and was fully capable of inflicting multiple game overs. I don't know if sacrificing challenge to preserve the flow of the game's narrative was the right decision in all circumstances, but that's very much something they did.

@Omicron: Completely unrelated to the above, but since it was mentioned that the door to Midgar is locked, I thought it worth pointing out that you can find the key that allows you to go back... as an optional side-quest reward. Do you want us to point you to it, or would you rather hope to luck on how to find it on your own?
 
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Egleris said:
The very existence of Midgar Zolom and Godo also proves that this is deliberate - the developers were fully able to create challenging opponents, they just choose not to, most of the time.
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Godo I would grant, but isn't Midgar Zolom mainly a challenge because it's got an overpowered finishing attack? Fighting it now would be a breeze even with a Beta cast at the end.

I suspect this was done to allow the story to take center stage; Aerith's death would have lost a lot of its punch if, instead of being fought right after you found an item that made you immune to all its attacks, Jenova LIFE was a difficult boss that required complex strategy to defeat and was fully capable of inflicting multiple game overs. I don't know if sacrificing challenge to preserve the flow of the game's narrative was the right decision in all circumstances, but that's very much something they did.
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I don't recall if it was brought up at the time, but fun fact: there's a Water Ring you can find on the way to the City of the Ancients which, if you equip it, makes one party member completely unkillable by Jenova LIFE. I would stick it on Cloud and while the other party members KOed he just kept going; it was a nice way for me to pretend he was in a rage/berserker and nothing was going to stop him at that point.
 
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