Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Again, let's not speak too much about what happens in the game before it actually happens to Omicron.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy IX]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- England, unfortunately.
- Pronouns
- She/They
Honestly, there's plenty of good ones... but sometimes it feels like there's just so many that it's excessive, but otherwise harmless.
Except the lone one I have a personal vendetta against. It knows what it did.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I do actually love the minigames. Just like the summons, it's a joy watching the devs go nuts and experiment with all this new tech available to them.
I think I spent something like half of my playtime in Gold Saucer. Suffice to say, there's at least two of us.
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
So a few years or so ago I replayed through all of FF7 and found it a lot easier than in my memories. I thought back on things and realised something:
Summons are pretty cool. They're also a complete trap, doing not enough damage to warrant their inclusion over other materia and hitting other stats that you'll want to keep up. Outside of things like Choco/Mog combined with added effect for the stun, Hades, or Final Attack + Phoenix, they are just not worth even equipping in my view and will actively make things harder.
+1 for another minigame enjoyer. I think my first time playing through the game I spent more time on the minigames combined than actually playing the story.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, right, the select button. That thing which used to exist. I need to remember that it's a thing.
Man, first time I got my hands on a PS4 controller (having skipped both previous generations) it fucked me up to find that there's a button standing exactly where I expected the Select button, but it's "Share" and it's there to take screenshots. There's no select button anymore. Messed up.
Well, no. If that fixes the game crashes I'll consider it, but, like...
...it makes the screenshots look like this. I don't like it. There doesn't seem to be a "borderless windowed" mode in the options, either.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of the PSX Horror Nostalgia Renaissance. If you're into that, I strongly suggest both Bloodborne PSX and Signalis.
I mean, mood.
The main reason is "I have the game right there in my Steam inventory, why would I bother emulating it."
That said, as I realize just how few QoL updates the Steam version of the game has (read: it has none), an emulator is getting increasingly tempting. At the very least it would introduce quicksaving and acceleration.
Incidentally, can we talk about how that's kinda messed up? Like, here's the logo:
It's Terra riding Magitek armor, a cavalry saber in hand, presumably running down some enemy.
Except there are only two times in the entire story where Terra is seen piloting armor: in an optional dream cutscene, and as a brainwashed living weapon used by the Empire to kill people.
Magitek armor is the opposite of an affirming thing for Terra. It looks "badass" but for her as a person it's purely connected to traumatic moments of being used by others.
It really feels like this is coming from earlier in development, at a time when Terra using Magitek was a more consistent/affirming thing. I mean, it looks sick, but it's a kinda baffling choice.
That's what they do in the Remake, incidentally. Jessie offers Cloud a Healing Materia as thanks for saving her from the rubble during the big escape, which leads into the tutorial menu for using Materia.
Hmmm. I'm not sure how on board I am with these changes, to be honest. I might just stick with the default setup.
I see your argument, but...
The green-tinged Mako/water is obviously inspired from nuclear reactors, and the reactors' towers look very much like a nuclear power plant's cooling tower, for sure.
But Mako is "the life blood of the planet" that is being pumped straight out of the ground. That's much closer to oil. And the general vibe of "draining the planet's energy" doesn't map to nuclear power at all. And Mako isn't framed as dangerous/evil the way uranium and nuclear waste are typically portrayed as having in anti-nuclear media.
I think it's much more of a fusion of every "dangerous" source of energy, and it doesn't map cleanly to nuclear energy at all.
My dude, I literally said that I was going to start the game mod-less to hew close to the "original" experience and then add mods as I felt was needed if things got too frustrating, but you do you.
Oh! Yes, I did. Totally forgot to put it into an update because it was one of the very last things I did, but it was a sweet moment. I should have called it though, I definitely suspected something like that was going on
For those who haven't played the game, here's the conversation in full:
Lola: "I knew the flowers and letters weren't from my boyfriend. I was just afraid to admit it."
Lola: "I didn't want to accept what that meant... I was lying to myself... But it's all right now."
Lola: "I don't know who wrote those letters, but reading them helped to ease the pain in my heart."
Lola: "I'm sure whoever wrote them must have suffered the same kind of pain... I wish I could meet him..."
Frontman: "Actually..."
Cyan (interrupting): "Look to the future."
Cyan: "No matter how dark it may be, there will always come another dawn. And after it, another day..."
Lola: "There's always more light ahead... Thank you. I'll take your words to heart."
It's a sweet moment, although I do feel it kinda lets Cyan off the hook easily.
Terra: Bring me closer! I want to hit them with my sword!
You could emulate or snag 7th Heaven to introduce the exact QoL you need for the LP and nothing more, like getting the game on a modern graphics API and borderless fullscreen, which is less QoL and more asking a 26 year old game to stop trying to kill your computer.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I dunno, literally the entire story stems from the circumstances of Terra's enslavement and dehumanization by the Empire. She was abducted by Gestahl during the same raid that saw them obtain the Espers they used for their research, research which saw Vector become the dominant military power on the entire planet, and presumably Terra's abilities and status as half-Esper is what inspired the Magitek Knight research that resulted in both Celes and Kefka becoming enhanced, with the latter's enhancement changing the fate of the entire world. Also, y'know, Terra in Magitek Armor is the very first thing you see in the entire game.
Thus if I were to pick one image that connected the entire plot together and it wasn't Kefka, it'd be the brainwashed Terra in a suit of Magitek Armor.
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The FF6 logo is clearly meant to reference to the cut quest chain where Terra gets her own personal set of Magitek Armour for finally completing the 2.0 MSQ.
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Geckonator
Saint of Awe
Perfectly understandable, you made your case way earlier that you'd rather see the original translation. I'm just offering translation trivia I'm finding from playing the other version (and revealing ways in which maybe the original wasn't that bad, as has already been noted).
The sad part is that The Reunion has some very good technical fixes for the Steam version, such as the framerate and the ever-problematic mouths (I think you've already noticed them hanging open by default, which is the whole reason they were cut from the PlayStation release but Eidos added them back in for the PC port without checking). Honestly, your emulator idea isn't that bad for the experience you want to have with this.
When it comes to FF7 minigames, I only have on thing to say, which will be repeated unspoiled when it becomes relevant:
Trying to do the complete military parade properly on the PC port is agony. RUFUS! NEW PRESIDENT OF SHINRA! RUFUS!
Trying to do the complete military parade properly on the PC port is agony. RUFUS! NEW PRESIDENT OF SHINRA! RUFUS!
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
You'd probably get better music with emulation since IIRC the unmodded PC release uses shitty MIDIs instead of the original soundtrack in all its synth glory.
Geckonator
Saint of Awe
That got fixed on Steam with an update years ago, at least.
Now sound effects apparently still have minor problems to the trained listener, which is why Reunion also includes fixes for them.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Yeah, it's another case where the (modern) console ports of old Final Fantasy games have more and better QoL that has never been ported back into the (modern) PC ports.
As far as I can tell, there's one single "QoL" feature in the Steam version, which is actually detrimental to a "proper" playthrough: there's an option outside of the game to "boost" characters, which makes your active party as per the chosen savegame have 9999 HP, 999 MP, and about half of the maximum amount of gil possible (presumably because getting the maximum gil gives an achievement). Levels and stats are unchanged, so all it does is give a bigger buffer in fights.
Meanwhile, console versions (at least on Switch, and from what I can Google up PS4 as well) has the much-needed acceleration (3x), as well as No Encounters and Battle Boost, which sets HP, MP, and Limit Gauge to full, all the time.
I have no idea why Final Fantasy PC ports are always so ignored. Fushigi mystery.
Nottheunmaker
Altman be praised
- Location
- USG Ishimura
I'm not going to say anything that hasn't been said before, and was probably said in this very thread, but I'm saying it anyway, for myself.
I love Midgard.
Midgard is a nightmare. It's everything wrong with modern cities taken to an extreme. Not the absolute extreme, just to the edge of believable. It's a place that feels real in a way no other Final Fantasy game ever has. It's worn and lived in, crumbling as it's built. It's all fantastical with its two level layout and weird monsters roaming the slums, but it's horror is in the banal way it suffers urban decay and corporate corruption. There's fantastical elements to its horror as well, but it's all hidden away in the Mako Reactors and Shinra HQ. The average person can't see that, but even someone on the plate can look down at the slums. I absolutely love this terrible, terrible city.
And that's kinda what killed my attempt to play this game. Once I was out of Midgard, a lot of that went away. There's hints of the diesel punk setting strangling the fantasy world it sits on like a tumor, but ironically it felt lifeless compared to the city. It didn't have that feeling of history, that lived in-ness. Perhaps appropriate, what with Midgard sucking the life out of the rest of the planet, but I just couldn't keep going once I left.
I love Midgard.
Midgard is a nightmare. It's everything wrong with modern cities taken to an extreme. Not the absolute extreme, just to the edge of believable. It's a place that feels real in a way no other Final Fantasy game ever has. It's worn and lived in, crumbling as it's built. It's all fantastical with its two level layout and weird monsters roaming the slums, but it's horror is in the banal way it suffers urban decay and corporate corruption. There's fantastical elements to its horror as well, but it's all hidden away in the Mako Reactors and Shinra HQ. The average person can't see that, but even someone on the plate can look down at the slums. I absolutely love this terrible, terrible city.
And that's kinda what killed my attempt to play this game. Once I was out of Midgard, a lot of that went away. There's hints of the diesel punk setting strangling the fantasy world it sits on like a tumor, but ironically it felt lifeless compared to the city. It didn't have that feeling of history, that lived in-ness. Perhaps appropriate, what with Midgard sucking the life out of the rest of the planet, but I just couldn't keep going once I left.
I absolutely get where you're coming from, and I do agree with everything you said about Midgar. But imo there's still plenty more great locales that get me almost as excited from a purely aesthetic and worldbuilding point of view.
- Location
- Texas
I'd try using the 7th Heaven mod manager as a launch point instead of steam, just don't bother with any mods (yet). Pretty sure it does have a border less windowed mode. And that way you can poke through the available mods at your leisure, and know what answers exist to potential problems going forward.
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The new Limit Break system sounds like Ikari Points from the SNES RPG Lufia 2, with the difference being that in Lufia 2 you could spend IP to use effects from equipped items, and didn't necessarily need to use all our IP on one effect.
Interesting that Final Fantasy is learning from more RPGs than just Dragon Quest.
Interesting that Final Fantasy is learning from more RPGs than just Dragon Quest.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Something I did find particularly interesting was how the setting of FFVII contains a lot of Japanese.
We've already seen stuff like Shinra's logo, where "shin ra" is the pronunciation of the kanji in their logo (神羅, which doesn't have an inherent meaning; it just stands for "god"/"godly" and "light fabric"). And there's the big signs on each of the Mako reactors; I don't have a convenient screenshot from FFVII to illustrate, but I do have one from Powerwash Simulator:
That kanji just means "one", but written in a formal way for use in legal or financial documents. Kanji trivia: in normal usage, "one" is written as 一, ie just a single horizontal line. "Two" is written 二, two horizontal lines, and "three" is 三, three horizontal lines.
This causes the obvious issue where if someone wanted to write an order for one (or one hundred or one thousand or whatever), someone else could forge it into an order for two, simply by adding a line. So the kanji used for the first three numbers, when in important documents, are changed into something much more difficult to modify.
As seen, "one" is 壱, "two" is 弐, and "three" is 参. That Shinra uses these legal forms of the kanji for their Mako reactor signs, rather than the more commonplace ones, makes the signs seem more ostentatious and Serious Business and Corporate.
And in general, the frequent use of Japanese in signs and backgrounds increases the cyberpunk aesthetic in a way I'm not sure was intended: a lot of cyberpunk and stories emulating the cyberpunk aesthetic has Japanese kanji everywhere, because the origins of cyberpunk had the assumption that Japan and its corporations were going to take over the world, at least financially. This trend of including Japanese megacorps into cyberpunk works continued even to "modern" works, for some reason.
But at the time of FFVII, Japan was already undergoing the collapse of their economic bubble, and 1997 was the middle of their Lost Decade (which some say was actually the Lost 20 or 30 Years, but that's another discussion). So it doesn't seem like FFVII was consciously copying cyberpunk aesthetics from a decade or more ago.
And yet "there are Japanese signs because it's a game from Japan" doesn't seem to explain it either, considering none of the prior Final Fantasy games have anything like that, being set in a Generic Medieval European aesthetic as originating in Dungeons And Dragons. It could very well be due to the explicit placement of the setting into a "modern" look in Midgar, rather than "knights and castles and also space stations" of prior Final Fantasy games.
We've already seen stuff like Shinra's logo, where "shin ra" is the pronunciation of the kanji in their logo (神羅, which doesn't have an inherent meaning; it just stands for "god"/"godly" and "light fabric"). And there's the big signs on each of the Mako reactors; I don't have a convenient screenshot from FFVII to illustrate, but I do have one from Powerwash Simulator:
That kanji just means "one", but written in a formal way for use in legal or financial documents. Kanji trivia: in normal usage, "one" is written as 一, ie just a single horizontal line. "Two" is written 二, two horizontal lines, and "three" is 三, three horizontal lines.
This causes the obvious issue where if someone wanted to write an order for one (or one hundred or one thousand or whatever), someone else could forge it into an order for two, simply by adding a line. So the kanji used for the first three numbers, when in important documents, are changed into something much more difficult to modify.
As seen, "one" is 壱, "two" is 弐, and "three" is 参. That Shinra uses these legal forms of the kanji for their Mako reactor signs, rather than the more commonplace ones, makes the signs seem more ostentatious and Serious Business and Corporate.
And in general, the frequent use of Japanese in signs and backgrounds increases the cyberpunk aesthetic in a way I'm not sure was intended: a lot of cyberpunk and stories emulating the cyberpunk aesthetic has Japanese kanji everywhere, because the origins of cyberpunk had the assumption that Japan and its corporations were going to take over the world, at least financially. This trend of including Japanese megacorps into cyberpunk works continued even to "modern" works, for some reason.
But at the time of FFVII, Japan was already undergoing the collapse of their economic bubble, and 1997 was the middle of their Lost Decade (which some say was actually the Lost 20 or 30 Years, but that's another discussion). So it doesn't seem like FFVII was consciously copying cyberpunk aesthetics from a decade or more ago.
And yet "there are Japanese signs because it's a game from Japan" doesn't seem to explain it either, considering none of the prior Final Fantasy games have anything like that, being set in a Generic Medieval European aesthetic as originating in Dungeons And Dragons. It could very well be due to the explicit placement of the setting into a "modern" look in Midgar, rather than "knights and castles and also space stations" of prior Final Fantasy games.
Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
I grew up in the SNES era, so my first introduction/impression of these spells was Ice/Bolt 1/2/3 (incidentally, FF6 was my first introduction to the word "esper" which means that in my mind, it is now forever connected to Beast Mode Terra). When I first encountered Fira, I thought my game was borked or there was a mistranslation.
Even to this day, I still kind of prefer the Ice 1/2/3 to Blizzard/Blizzara/Blizzaga, regardless of the "proper" translation.
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