Ah, Final Fantasy 7. It certainly is a game that exists.
My friend's been getting into Final Fantasy, so I wanted to get him one of the classics for Christmas. But after thinking about it for a bit, I thought that 7 wouldn't be a good gift. Its graphics are ugly in high resolution, its translation is awful, its minigames are excessive, and its plot—while very good—also has a lot of frustrating ambiguity and plot holes. It really feels like the dawn of a brave new era, and this can really show in how frustrating it can be at times.
And yet, it's still honestly my favorite in terms of the time I spend thinking about it.
Perhaps this is because of all the time the fandom spends crafting stories for it, expanding on the missed potential, the thematic parallels, the excellent character drama. It certainly is very fitting for 7, a story about the power of the stories people tell—Cloud's fragile ego supported by a false identity, Barret throwing himself into ecoterrorism to escape despair after losing everything, Sephiroth's messiah complex—to be in turn empowered by the stories people tell about it.
To paraphrase Omicron, 7 rewards you for asking why to the mysteries it presents. Fans take this spirit to ask why to this mysteries it presents but doesn't answer. I think that this, along with the admittedly more important iconic status and sexy characters, is a large part of why it's got so much fanfiction.
Yet at the same time, these stories obscure the truth. I honestly didn't think about the ambiguity of Sephiroth and Jenova, even though it's honestly a question which should have more resolution for such important characters, because, well, the fanfiction always comes up with an answer for this. It may not necessarily be one I agree with—I personally prefer the interpretation of Sephiroth being the dominant personality but influenced by Jenova's instincts, because I strongly dislike attempts to absolve the pretty boy of all responsibility by blaming the scheming woman and also it just feels like a major waste of Sephiroth's importance as a foil to Cloud if he stops existing after Nibelheim—but it's still an answer instead of ambiguity.
And of course there's the whole issue of flanderization, which hits everyone but especially poor Aerith. Every interpretation is filtered through someone's biases, and, especially thanks to fandom's collaborative nature, this adds up. I don't begrudge people the ability to write what they like as a hobby, but it's also rather ironic for a game about the hidden depths of characters. So, whether or not Nomura screws the pooch on Remake, I will always be glad it exists for one thing and one thing only: Chair Aerith.
RE: Character naming, I vaguely recall hearing about someone who named Cloud Zack, because that was his name, and proceeded to have an amusingly confusing time later. This may be apocryphal though, unlike the person who named Undertale's Fallen Child with their own... which was Chara.
I want to leave FF7 with the music I've queued up to play while reading it's posts.
I'm very excited for FF8, whenever it appears. It was the first game I was old enough to actually have retained memories of, though because I was like, six, they weren't formative so much as foundational. Instead of a source of nostalgia, they went into a more bone-deep set of 'this is what video games are, right?'. FF10 would be the one to actually take that spot, though nostalgia might be the wrong word for a particular torment I underwent (which is not the torment you're thinking of).
With regards to FF8 though, I never saw past the first area... I think I have vague memories of
A train going into a ravine? But I definitely remember the bit where Squall wakes up in the infirmary and wanders around the school, and fighting Ifrit? The students walking three abreast. And of course the fighting monsters on a grassy plain with ATB and iconic battle music. I think at some point there was clearing them out of a muggy, jungly garden. Seeing the area from above.
What sticks in my mind the most though is... the sound and shape of the cursor moving around in menus.
Honestly I'm kind of worried the LP is going to overwrite these uncertain and fragile memories, but such is the nature of memory itself. Even accessing them now, to try and get them down and realizing in the process how woefully sparse they actually are, is corrupting them every time they're examined.
It's been twenty years. I'm ready to see what the rest of the game is about.
Kefka: (delivers grandiose soliloquy laying out his motives in debate with the protagonists)
Verdict: Go back to Clown College, failure.
Sepiroth: says ".........." while his trenchcoat billows dramatically around him
Verdict: Greatest villain ever, watered crops, centralized authority, and industrialized the nation
"Blah blah blah I have an absentee father and a domineering mother BILLIONS MUST BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE ANIMALS" does not become psychological depth just because you bare your chest to say it.
If you wanna play that game, being a bootleg Joker doesn't grant psychological depth just because he's in a fantasy world and is an angel when he doomer rants at you
If you wanna play that game, being a bootleg Joker doesn't grant psychological depth just because he's in a fantasy world and is an angel when he doomer rants at you
Admittedly, I don't think Kefka is meant for much psychological depth. Like the Joker, I think he's meant to be more along the lines of "wouldn't it be funny if I killed a bunch of people? I'm laughing at least."
Sometimes it's just fun to watch a guy who loves being an evil piece of shit.
I think that's probably the biggest reason behind Kefkas hype crowd. As a part of the story he's weaker, sure, but he's loving being a piece of shit so much it's a little infectious.
...but I was counting on @Egleris to come out from stage left as the lone, brave dissenting voice for "FFV is actually better than either." Thank you for your consistency, Egleris.
(With that said I more or less agree with @illhousen's assessment on that topic later in the reply chain.)
Witnessing this statement get dropped so casually resulted in me experiencing a full PTSD flashback. There were times and places on the Internet where bringing up this debate could get you stabbed. Great way to experience your own sweeping operatic conflict, complete with extremely loud acting and intractable personal vendettas.
Some days I wish I had been there to experience such games in their hour of glory and take part in these debates myself, although not having any past emotional connection to the topic and being able to casually throw PTSD grenades into the thread like this and incidentally revive 20-year old arguments is its own fun.
Instead my formative experience was arguing about which game had ruined Sonic the Hedgehog forever. Good times.
Also, hard Rec for machinabridged. It's more comedy focused side, but it gets what FF7 was going for and personally, honestly improves in a handful of areas.
Cait Sith gets just… soooo much better characterisation.
So, I have been watching the Machinabridged series off and on (got up to around Aerith's death), and while it's fun, one of my biggest gripes with it is that it's the peak of Tifa/Aerith mischaracterization I've ever seen, with Aerith being so childishly innocent as to seem barely be able to function without assistance and Tifa being obnoxiously aggressive and rude to the point of outright abuse. It's like they're incredibly broadly exaggerated versions of "themselves," only the "themselves" that is being exaggerated isn't actually how their character was originally written, so it's a parody of a mischaracterization? It's very strange.
Kefka: (delivers grandiose soliloquy laying out his motives in debate with the protagonists)
Verdict: Go back to Clown College, failure.
Sepiroth: says ".........." while his trenchcoat billows dramatically around him
Verdict: Greatest villain ever, watered crops, centralized authority, and industrialized the nation
Kefka being the Jonker absolutely cannot match up to Sephiroth's perfect petty hater behavior. Omnicidal funny clown is good but the personal nature of Sephiroth's hater behavior is the key aspect of his appeal. He's a fucking loser who spent five years malding his way out of the afterlife because in the middle of his developing god complex he got got by a random dipshit country bumpkin, that's absolutely peak.
"Blah blah blah I have an absentee father and a domineering mother BILLIONS MUST BE SLAUGHTERED LIKE ANIMALS" does not become psychological depth just because you bare your chest to say it.
To put on my serious hat for one second, this does ultimately come down to "My opinion > Your opinion" and all that but:
In Sephiroth's favor he has an absolutely visceral connection with the protagonist of his game that gets a lot of focus and time for development, Kefka has individual moments with members of the ensemble cast that hit hard (Doma and Cyan's family, the Slave Crown on Terra) but those are isolated events and they never get the narrative space and time to cook Sephiroth's hatred for and extended gaslighting campaign of Cloud does, absolutely a point in his favor.
In Kefka's favor, his motivations may be "We did mad science to create a clown serial killer with super powers now let's make him a general, what could possibly go wrong" but he's recognizably himself for the entire plot of his game, from the first flashback at Narshe to the final battle atop the tower his characterization is consistent (offscreen Golden Kefka power ups aside). This contrasts with Sephiroth and the fact that (Advent Children et al aside) you can make a coherent argument that Sepiroth our main antagonist is just a Sepiroth shaped anglerfish lure Jenova is using to jerk Cloud around, that's a weakness in his writing and there you can give Kefka an advantage.
Which one makes for the better villain is (IMO) a case of where those narrative strengths and plotting weaknesses land for you personally.
Joining Wade in serious mode. I didn't experience VII personally as a kid because I was The Nintendo House in my friend group. Not sure how common that was for other people, but I had the N64, someone else had the Playstation, and someone else had the X-Box, and so between all of us we had full coverage. I could have gone over and played through it, but if I'm going to hang out, I wanted to play magic or command and conquer or whatever with everyone, and so I mostly only experienced the playstation era of RPGs second-hand. VII was popular in my friend circle. Uematsu's still cookin' on the soundtrack, the team's sheer ambition from VI is clearly still in full effect. It's a good game.
I like VI better though
Yeah, the long-term miss on Sephiroth's writing doesn't get enough weight I think. Like, I now agree with Squirtodyle and others in the thread that the intent here legitimately was to subvert Sephiroth's hype. This was one of the things that this LP brought out for me that I hadn't thought about before because that's not what... most people took from the game?
Like, if they were trying to do something else (and like I said the thread convinced me this is the case) they failed. Badly. Part of it probably does have to do with how Sephiroth's archetype, and every other version descended from him seems to be inexplicably popular in Japan. And they don't walk it back slightly. Much like with Aerith, Squeenix themselves have leaned into the mischaracterization it in everything since. I mean, shit, I haven't played kingdom hearts, maybe him being a cuckbaby gets brought up there.
I don't fault the writers for intent here. Sephiroth is a part of a pretty distinguished tradition of failed-satire-recreating-its-subject.
We'll have to see which version of the landing that Remake sticks*
*will we get to the relevant parts of the Remake in part II, or will we have to wait for the third?
I think this extends to the cast, too. A lot has been said here about the smaller roster and expanded limitations allow much more depth than previously, and this is true! As I said before though, more doesn't always translate to better, and a deep psychological study is not inherently superior to a broader ensemble. And in my particular case, unfairly or not the whole edgy prettyboy loner thing scans to me as "I don't have a personality" and when both Cloud and Sephiroth are trying hard to be that for the vast majority of the game (Jenova Anglerfish, or Cloud's actually cool side for the last like 5% of the game notwithstanding) it makes it hard for me to vibe with the rest of the game when it all is resting so hard on those two despite all the other good work going on.
More fodder for the hypothetical FFVI Remake: What if you just don't fight Kefka at Narshe? Introduce one or two more Imperial minibosses, and have them take the fall in that particular battle, and earlier when you face Kefka at the siege of Doma, rather than him running, make it more explicit that he's misleading Sabin/Shadow with illusions, which will serve double-duty as foreshadowing the confrontation with Leo.
It never bothered me that much for reasons I think were covered when that was current to the thread, but the people who did have a problem with it largely hated because of the offscreen powerup, but I think if you just make those one-and-a-half changes, you can actually have Kefka as an actual powerhouse all along, and then the 'bullshit' part of his boost after the empire learns about magicite doesn't have to be as gigantic.
I won't revisit this whole issue; I could try and put forward a more complete vision of my characters and arguments for which I think will work best, but ultimately a lot of this is about personal feelings, personal experience, personal interpretation. I can't change that.
I'll say this, though: One thing I do have is this thread, the live reaction of my audience to each update as we went through both games, and this grants me a particular view - of both my own takes, and people reacting with agreement or disagreement progressively as each game's plot unfolded. And what's interesting is that both Sephiroth and Kefka saw me having a significantly more positive reaction than some of my viewers, including some who'd never played the games. Some readers lost interest in Sephiroth as soon as he started showing up as his modern self with the self-aggrandizing claims of godhood, while others were ready to abandon VI entirely after Thamassa first, and even moreso after the Floating Continent. Both these characters were divisive and had some significantly harsher detractors than myself.
We've just been over a full game featuring Sephiroth. But, since I've been reading some old FFVI updates... Kefka's presentation is immaculate. His spritework, his dialogue, his iconic laugh, his puns, his extremely straightforward motivations, his panache, his grand betrayal, fantastic work all around.
But.
One thing that's important to remember in assessing reactions to Kefka is how much shit he gets away with. The Esper Genocide is the one event I cite as of symbolic of the whole thing, and for some people it's like "the one bit that's just an ass-pull," but the reality is that Kefka escapes at Doma, and he escapes at Narshe, and he somehow manages to fool everyone into thinking Celes is a traitor long enough for her to do some kind of weird attempt heroic sacrifice, and he shows up at the Sealed Gate going 'actually everything that just happened in the past few hours was my master plan and you idiots fell for it,' and then after the Esper breakout and the ruin of Vector he is put in prison, only to later show up and go 'I know you all anticipated a potential betrayal by Gestahl and left behind most of the party and the entire Returner forces specifically to watch over Gestahl and me in case of treachery, but we just managed to pull off that betrayal completely unhindered off-screen," then he backstabs Leo with illusion magic that has never shown up before and never will again, then he single-handedly wipes out the entire Esper species, then he and Gestahl attempt to seize the power of the Warring Triad and when Gestahl goes to kill him, Kefka equips literal plot armor that makes him immune to all magic and murders Gestahl, then steals the full power of the Warring Triad for himself (by a mechanism that is never explained and that he somehow seems to be the only one able to leverage) while our party (who are equipped with, y'know, swords) stand around gormlessly just watching him do it, and then the Triad goes out of alignment and the world explodes...
...and after waking up in the ashes, we find out that despite the game clearly explaining 'the Triad are in alignment because their powers neutralize each other's, which causes them to remain petrified, but if they were to ever be brought out of alignment their power would be released and they would be free again and immediately wage war against each other again,' Kefka did not die from being at Ground 0 of the released Triad but instead somehow absorbed their full power and is now using them as giant magicite batteries to power his divinity.
So.
I love Kefka. I really do. As a character, he is fantastic, and I can absolutely see how one would equate him with Sephiroth in the tally, especially now that we've seen that Sephiroth's writing in VII is more complicated than it usually seems from spinoff material, both for good (his flashback self and backstory are genuinely quite compelling) and for bad (his writing towards the end of the game kind of gets the messy kind of ambiguous rather than the good kind and he eventually just disappears from the narrative altogether), while Kefka remains consistent throughout.
But as an element of the narrative Kefka is an infuriating mess who turns everyone who interacts with him into gullible idiots who are incapable of taking a shot at a fleeing man or stopping him from slowly moving rocks or of spotting incoming betrayal from someone they explicitly anticipate betrayal from, someone who keeps getting away with shit and then has the gall to implicitly say 'if you'd killed me sooner I wouldn't have become such an apocalyptic problem), and who just waltzes over plot holes throughout the narrative.
And that's been a fairly consistent complaint in reader reactions to FFVI as it unfolded, even if I gave it much more of a pass than some just because of how much flair the Mad Clown has going for him. But in turn, Sephiroth has no less flair, and a lot of his escapes are actually justified by the mechanisms of his post-death state and how he uses Jenova decoys instead of fighting us, while the idiot ball is largely replaced by narratively justified mind control that is a major component of the narrative.
So a lot of the Kefka vs Sephiroth split, I think, is going to come down to whose plot contrivances are most likely to bug you as you play through it.
I've played the beginning couple of hours of FF 6, recently, and watched playthroughs of 12, 15, and 16, but when I was in high school, FF 7 Compilation came out and I knew enough video game nerds to experience a version of the game through osmosis. Reading this playthrough really drove home how much of that osmosis has nothing to do with the actual game.
Thank you! This is one of the big reasons I like to do this Let's Play: To both introduce players other than myself to games they've barely heard of at all (like V), and to give us a chance to see what certain pop culture behemoths are actually like rather than the impression we've gotten from them through osmosis. I'm glad I'm able to provide that experience to some of my readers, as well as to myself at the same time.
Unfortunately, my first FF was Crystal Chronicles on the GameCube. It was a fun game, but had about as much characterization as FFI and FFIII.
Sorry if this has already been covered (it probably has been), but which games are you planning to cover? I thought it was just the main series (I-XVI or whatever the latest is by the time you run out of games), but you've mentioned Tactics now. Is it just whatever games are available on Steam or…?
The current plan is: All mainline numbered games, with X-2 swapped in for XI, because XI is a very old MMO that would kill this Let's Play to attempt, and with Tactics thrown in at some point, hopefully before we've finished covering the PSX era, as a look into a divergent path Final Fantasy could have/did take.
One of the core selling points of the Remake is that they absolutely understand what the characters were in the original game, and more importantly, what they were intended to be. The characterization has received enormous praise from basically everyone, because it's actually walked back the substantial character drift that the FF7 characters have been subjected to since 1997 and instead have nailed the actual intent of them from way back when, with Aerith as the prime example.
I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that they'll nail Sephiroth, they've already done so in the first game and I can't imagine they won't continue to do so in the next.
In the confrontation at the Edge of Creation, Sephiroth holds out his hand to Cloud and says "The world will become part of it one day. But I won't end. Nor will I have you end." and there are like, two ways you can read this:
1) This is AU!TimeTravel!Gray!Independent!Sephiroth, and he is hinting to Cloud that unlike the maniac from his memories, he is actually a friendly-ish figure closer to the Nibelheim Flashback version of himself, and he wants Cloud and himself to fight together for a future in which neither of them has to die;
or,
2) This is Original!Sephiroth who realized that if he destroys the world with Meteor, he won't get to keep showing up at the foot of Cloud's bed at 3am to loudly eat cereal, and hating on Cloud is more important to him than godhood so he's now revising his plans to factor him a way to have Clou join him in the Perpetual Dunk Machine.
Others have spoken of these events before, but this is a good place to remind ourselves what was happening at Squaresoft at this moment in time.
Final Fantasy 7 was massive. It's hard to overstate how massive it was. It was so massive that, flush with success and cash, Squaresoft looked to broaden their horizons and break into the movie business.
Imagine a Looney Tunes ACME safe full of greenbacks plummeting into a bottomless pit.
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a huge, expensive undertaking, attempting to bring pioneering CGI animation to new heights and shelling out for big-name American voice acting. In 2001 it released to a general round of indifference, recouping slightly more than half its $137 million budget. (The film itself isn't...terrible, to my recollection, but it sure wasn't good either, and apart from similarity in theming it sure wasn't what FF fans were expecting from a Final Fantasy movie.) It was a disaster that threatened to sink Squaresoft, and between its failure and the delays of Final Fantasy X, were what led to Square, desperately looking for a way out, merging with publisher Enix.
And Enix said "monetize your IP, you idiots."
And from FFX came FFX-2, and within a few short years dropped Dirge of Cerberus and Advent Children; the letter two being looked back on as dogshit nowadays but which were undeniable financial successes at the time and set Square-Enix on the path to becoming the monster corp we know today.
Until Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 dropped and threatened to sink the entire company into a financial pit because it was such a massive undertaking that was received badly and Square-Enix desperately needed a way out-
Yahtzee Croshaw: "Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything, tee-hee-hee."
Final Fantasy 8 & 9 still bear the Squaresoft logo, as they were made while Spirits Within was in production, but this is it right here, where the seeds for the end of an era were sown.
I have Integrade now. I have started it. I am still on Chapter 1.
I am... increasingly worried that FF7R's specific blend of Action RPG gameplay is designed not to interface with my brain. I found the miniboss fight with two dogs at the very start challenging enough, but now I am just. Completely incapable of making a dent in Ramuh. I got far enough to recruit the Wutai NPC with the staff, and I've reached the point where the Avalanche girl tells me "are you ready to proceed have you done everything you need in Sector 7, so I checked to see if I was supposed to come back to beat Ramuh one chapter later with five extra levels but apparently... not? I am supposed to be able to beat him at this level? And I just can't. He annihilates me within seconds every time.
I think there is something about this gameplay style that isn't clicking with me at all, despite having finished the base game.
I definitely am looking forward to FF8. On top of the more negative stuff I said, its FMVs and music basically burned themselves into my brain and kinda-sorta defined me for a while in small and big ways. Like, the music and the graphics were "blow you the fuck away" levels at the time.
So, the only advice I can give without spoilers is that while Tifa in Remake is almost a character action game protag, Yuffie is just straight up a character action game protag, including perfect parries.
The current plan is: All mainline numbered games, with X-2 swapped in for XI, because XI is a very old MMO that would kill this Let's Play to attempt, and with Tactics thrown in at some point, hopefully before we've finished covering the PSX era, as a look into a divergent path Final Fantasy could have/did take.
Quite frankly the dogs in general are horrific. It doesn't help that the game seems to want you to use Yuffie's special block and I just can't get the timing down.
Oh, and prepare to suffer the true final boss of Intergrade:
I was counting on @Egleris to come out from stage left as the lone, brave dissenting voice for "FFV is actually better than either." Thank you for your consistency, Egleris.
You're welcome! I strive to be consistent so I'll take this as a compliment. And I can see the point of "FFVII just offers more to talk about", which is true, and I do think it's a pretty good game itself. I'm just the type who thinks that a game being simple is no limit to that game also being great.
FFX-2 and FFXII are paired games in my mind for a lot of reasons, so being able to have the comparison carried out in the thread is something I'm really looking forwards to. I'll avoid explaining why because both should be played as unspoiled as possible to have their full effect.
Well, as someone who's entire Sonic experience until a few years back when I went and played the classics was "Adventure 2 is pretty dope I guess kid me", I can in fact confirm which game Ruined Sonic Forever:
Sonic 1, it's Sonic 1, that game be ass.
More seriously, I really think it's just that Sonic didn't make the jump to 3D anywhere near as gracefully as a lot of other franchises. Not a complete series crash and burn like some other games out there, but Adventure 1 is already kind of messy, Adventure 2 is a game carried by Sonic/Shadow levels and Chao Garden, and then 3D Sonic just goes on to fairly consistently have something wrong with almost every game dragging them down to varying degrees (and of course culminating in shitshows like 06).
Honestly if it's just Kefka managing to escape once or twice to come back stronger later, I don't particularly mind. Doma in particular he's very specifically avoiding fighting you since he's more interested in running off to poison the river and has a whole camp of soldiers to potentially throw in your path.
It's... everything else, especially the Esper Genocide + using the Warring Triad as his own personal power source that can make Kefka rather obnoxious.
In THIS house General Brunette Seifer is a brave patriot defending us against alien ghosts by shooting them with the Death Star, IN THIS HOUSE he's a hero end of story.
I have Integrade now. I have started it. I am still on Chapter 1.
I am... increasingly worried that FF7R's specific blend of Action RPG gameplay is designed not to interface with my brain. I found the miniboss fight with two dogs at the very start challenging enough, but now I am just. Completely incapable of making a dent in Ramuh. I got far enough to recruit the Wutai NPC with the staff, and I've reached the point where the Avalanche girl tells me "are you ready to proceed have you done everything you need in Sector 7, so I checked to see if I was supposed to come back to beat Ramuh one chapter later with five extra levels but apparently... not? I am supposed to be able to beat him at this level? And I just can't. He annihilates me within seconds every time.
I did like Spirits Within just fine when it came out, and still a few years ago when I rewatched it. I can see how the unusual blend of (post apocalypse) scifi + GHOSTS + bonus enviromentalism can be a hard sell (it was for other movies who tried similar variations as well), but I don't remember it being a bad movie itself, nor the common criticisms holding much weight in my experience. Most of the people whom I heard rant back then (and that before I got on the Internet bandwagon) felt like what really bothered them was that it wasn't a FF7 movie, and, well... *glances at Advent Children*
You're welcome! I strive to be consistent so I'll take this as a compliment. And I can see the point of "FFVII just offers more to talk about", which is true, and I do think it's a pretty good game itself. I'm just the type who thinks that a game being simple is no limit to that game also being great.
Finally, as is traditional, here comes the follow up question about what you know about the next game you'll be playing, @Omicron. You mentioned having played (but not finished!) FFVIII, but not having tried Final Fantasy Tactics (yet). So, since you're unsure which one you'll go with, would you be willing to share what you already know of them both? I'm actually quite curious about how well you remember FFVIII, since it's a much more nuanced game than most people realize, and I think a comparison between your memories of it and the experience of actually playing it might be the best way to provide empirical evidence towards that belief of mine.
I have played the first disc of FFVIII up to the assassination attempt against the witch, Whatsherface (Medea?). Very specifically, my disk broke down during a cutscene in which she transforms two statues into basilisks or gargoyles or something. I have spotty recollections of everything up to that point - the Spider Mech fight, a train heist with a 'president' who turns into a zombie, meeting Linoa, was there a prom ball? I feel like there was a prom ball, meeting a sniper dude for the assassion, and multiple inexplicable scenes where we move to instead control Laguna's party.
Beyond that point, the only thing I know is that I've encountered multiple references to a big twist where "everyone went to school together," or to an orphanage, and their memories were erased somehow. I have no idea how this ties into the broader plot because this was encountered mostly in the form of joke-y references and memes. Also at some point Seifer and Medea(?) join the party, and this game has Gilgamesh as, I think, a summon. Also the words "Time Compression" are relevant to the plot somehow.
The game has an emphasis on politics and questionable protagonist actions that are novel for the series. Someone says "Don't blame us, blame yourselves or God" in one of the translations and everyone is sad about the better translation changing that line. The final boss is in a monastery and is called "Ultima" and looks like a woman riding a giant set of cogs. Cloud is a playable cameo character, I think.
As someone who has never played any Final Fantasy, I actually have to agree with that based on your playthrough summaries. 5 is the only one that has not screamed "blatant plot holes" (though I'll admit part of my dislike for 4 is actually just that I don't like such dark stories). Of course I have no idea what playing them feels like.
I honestly think that most of the reason why 5 doesn't have blatant plot holes is because it's got the least ambitious story (not counting NES games), and thus the least strain from the writers straining beyond their limits and development time trying to give you something epic and tragic and oh wait where is Kefka pulling out all these powers from?
They have genuinely amazing ideas for scenes, but as any writer can tell you, one of the hardest parts of writing is stringing these amazing scenes together well.
V's greatest virtue is that it doesn't fuck up. It gives itself a low ceiling, which means it can never punch as hard as the Opera or Solitary Island or Aerith's death or the (first) Northern Crater, but that creates a safety limiter that keeps it from trying beyond its capabilities. It performs very well in its simple framework with limited peaks.
It also rarely excels, and overall struggles to keep players in its loop. @ZerbanDaGreat got the Pixel Remaster Bundle at the same time as I did and was ahead of me for most of this LP but they eventually dropped off partway through V, and it's anecdotally a common thing people report about playing V. Of those who did succeed, New Frame Plus took one entire year to make an FFV video half the length of his FFIV video which had come out far more quickly. Ludiscere's FFIV video was a year ago, which... is admittedly the time it took him to do that IV video to begin with, but it's looking like it'll take him more time to finish on V.
V rarely fails, rarely has plot holes, and its villain is enjoyably straightforward without attempted complexity to potentially mess up. It's a consistent, fun, reliable experience. It also doesn't ever really rocks your socks off, because the reason it's so reliable is it's not trying. All its boldness and ambition is in its mechanical system, which is significantly superior to VI's and, arguably, to VII's (this is actually a point of contention, some uphold Materia as the peak of FF character building), and that system is a refinement on a system that's been iterated on in two games prior already, rather than something wholly new.
And ultimately I expect more for a game I'm going to sink forty hours into than "not fucking up by playing it safe." Especially if I'm going to be writing a novel's worth of Let's Play commentary for it.
...
All of that is only true, however, assuming a certain amount of buy-in, like "Finding the kind of comedy V is built around entertaining rather than unfunny and obnoxious," "enjoying bombastic straightforward villains instead of being bored by them," and perhaps the most important, "not feeling like Faris is the most offensively written FF character to date."
That's not a given, and I can't blame anyone for either of these three points. Any one of those would tank the game, all three would make it the worst FF game in the entire series so far.
Thanks for succinctly putting why FFV doesn't stand out as much as the others. It doesn't have its glaring plot holes, but then again, it never really tries all that hard compared to its more famous brethren. It just is, and that's all there is to it. Its classes system is an overhaul over previous games, especially FIFII, but the story and characters never truly shine like they do in FFVI or FFVII. FFIV gets a pass because it's the first SNES FF, and gets a pass for introducing the series globally, but has a barebones plot, so nobody really pays attention to it.
V's greatest virtue is that it doesn't fuck up. It gives itself a low ceiling, which means it can never punch as hard as the Opera or Solitary Island or Aerith's death or the (first) Northern Crater, but that creates a safety limiter that keeps it from trying beyond its capabilities. It performs very well in its simple framework with limited peaks.
It also rarely excels, and overall struggles to keep players in its loop. @ZerbanDaGreat got the Pixel Remaster Bundle at the same time as I did and was ahead of me for most of this LP but they eventually dropped off partway through V, and it's anecdotally a common thing people report about playing V. Of those who did succeed, New Frame Plus took one entire year to make an FFV video half the length of his FFIV video which had come out far more quickly. Ludiscere's FFIV video was a year ago, which... is admittedly the time it took him to do that IV video to begin with, but it's looking like it'll take him more time to finish on V.
V rarely fails, rarely has plot holes, and its villain is enjoyably straightforward without attempted complexity to potentially mess up. It's a consistent, fun, reliable experience. It also doesn't ever really rocks your socks off, because the reason it's so reliable is it's not trying. All its boldness and ambition is in its mechanical system, which is significantly superior to VI's and, arguably, to VII's (this is actually a point of contention, some uphold Materia as the peak of FF character building), and that system is a refinement on a system that's been iterated on in two games prior already, rather than something wholly new.
And ultimately I expect more for a game I'm going to sink forty hours into than "not fucking up by playing it safe." Especially if I'm going to be writing a novel's worth of Let's Play commentary for it.
...
All of that is only true, however, assuming a certain amount of buy-in, like "Finding the kind of comedy V is built around entertaining rather than unfunny and obnoxious," "enjoying bombastic straightforward villains instead of being bored by them," and perhaps the most important, "not feeling like Faris is the most offensively written FF character to date."
That's not a given, and I can't blame anyone for either of these three points. Any one of those would tank the game, all three would make it the worst FF game in the entire series so far.
Also, calling Kefka a Joker knockoff but not calling Sephiroth an Elric of Melnibone knockoff? For shame.
I jest, though how much does Sephiroth actually have in common with Elric? I guess spending the latter half of Disc 2 just lying around does sound pretty Elric-y
He's a knockoff of Psaro the Manslayer.
Designwise anyway.
Funnily enough, Psaro has suddenly wandered back into relevance quite recently with Dragon Quest Monsters recent revival being a prequel to his adventures in DQIV.
Fwiw, the game that this thread has made me most want to go play myself so far is ffv, the job system has seemed the most fun set of combat mechanics. But the one I have most enjoyed vicariously experiencing via omi's posts is ffvii.
He's a knockoff of Psaro the Manslayer.
Designwise anyway.
Funnily enough, Psaro has suddenly wandered back into relevance quite recently with Dragon Quest Monsters recent revival being a prequel to his adventures in DQIV.
Not exactly. He was either blonde or purple haired with spiky anime 80s hair originally, and was redesigned to look more Sephirothy for a 2001 remake of DQ4. I'd post a pic but I'm on my phone.
Lunar's Ghaleon though had the look down back in 1992. How Sephiroth-y he is varies on the version, but he's always had the 'former greatest hero ever turned evil' thing down, the manipulation, and (I think) the big sword
