Final Fantasy VII: Kind Of REDACTED In Retrospect

ya that one-winged angel track is tha hotness

i wish i could find CD1 so i could sell this

See, I've played other PC RPGs that people have madly repped for (particularly Arcanum and the Fallout series) and been seriously "eh" about them. The thing that made the Black Isle/Bioware games so outstanding was that they managed to get the seamless actionesque interface properly on top of the turn-based combat system; that revolution in and of itself completely flipped expectations from RPGs to another level, whereas FFVII basically made console RPGs focus on cutscenes and stat-fiddling.

I will not deny that the storyline to FFVII is great. It's some seriously excellent narrative. I found the actual game mechanics irritating, though; even when it came out for the PC, I had absolutely no desire to pick it up (I'd played it on my roommate's PS and I was moving out due to getting married.)

― Dan (But Yeah, Cait Sith Is Retardo) Perry (Dan Perry), Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:18 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hah, i'm playin BG1 right now and those 2 games (fallout[awesome], arcanum[sux]) are my main points of comparison. i have a lot of problems with it, mostly gameplay related - just a lot of dumb design decisions. like, if you're implementing a regimented, RTS-style group formation movement system that makes it impossible to maneuver in tight spaces, make sure that half the game's environments (ie. all the interiors) aren't comprised of ventilation duct-sized corridors and matchbox houses. and the fact that enemies respawn WHILE YOU'RE IN an area drives me nuts, it's basically the same as random battles and possibly is worse. it's got some things going for it tho, like great strategic depth to the fighting and it's pretty immersive. i think it's just that everything lives in the shadow of fallout for me now.

Honestly, BG2 kicks all kinds of shit out of BG1. It's seriously amazing.

(there are still some pathing issues but MAN the story is about a bazillion times better)

yeah, i actually started off w/BG2, but when it threw me in the middle of this story i didnt know wtf about, i just said fuckit and DLed (420 pirate pc games every day peace) BG1.

i hated arcanum and bg1 but i dont have a clear recollection of why - arcanum i remember being just ugly not as part of any aesthetic but just ugly and cheap-looking. bg1 was frustrating but idk why

FFVII basically made console RPGs focus on cutscenes and stat-fiddling.

i think theres a really good thread in this - i think this is still partially true and it might be interesting to talk about "games that have had changed the other games in their genre are made" but less wordy and awful

BG1 is HARDER THAN HELL. It's kind of insane how impossible some of the fights are until you get into the rhythm of combat management; anyone who can do well at that game playing real-time gets serious kudos from me.

arcanum WAS very ugly and cheaply made - it's like a 9 year old game and it was still considered dated looking when it came out.

i feel like i put together a great lil party in BG - one tank (-7 AC) and 5 archers. they just mow motherfuckers down. only thing I'm lacking is great magic, Dynaheir is my only mage and she's limited in her spell selection

Oh dude, keep levelling her; IIRC she is an unstoppable monster by the end of the game.

I mean, yes, her 4 hp means she gets cut down a LOT initially but some of the spells she gets to by the end are fantastic.

yeah, she is def getting better over time, it just takes a while to build up some useful spells. saves u money on identifying shit too

minsc is a philosopher-king imo

BG1 is HARDER THAN HELL.

i really missed out on this era of pc gaming (say like 97-00) i was @ lol boarding school and didnt have access to a computer that would play them. i did however play jap imports including FFV and it was crazy to me how much harder the combat in bg was.

FFVII has one of the worst combat systems in any well-regarded rpg imo

Minsc is far and away the best character to ever appear in a roleplaying game ever (2nd fave: HK-47 from Knights of the Old Republic)

the great thing about the 1-tank system is that i basically have one unhittable dude who i lead in front by a ways, so he soaks up basically all the attackers while the untouched ranged fighters just fire away. i think traps have probably killed them more than bad guys.

I think the party I ended up rolling with the last time I played was:

Me (fighter)
Branwen
Imoen
Garrick
Minsc
Dynaheir

I did tend to send Minsc or myself in swinging and have everyone else range the monsters to death.

ya, I grew up a JRPG dude and i avoided western PC RPGs for years partly because of the steep curve when u first get into them. now i'm at the point where I can't play JRPGs because they're too easy. *casts KOTR over and over*

Mine, right now, is

Me (Fighter, 4 points in Bows)
Imoen
Minsc
Dynaheir
Kivan (great sniper)
Khalid (the tank, which is kinda funny cuz he is always like 'b-b-blublub i am such a pussy ;_;' when i send him to merc some fools)

haha im gonna have to track down of copy of goddam bg now

i think the success of stuff like disgaea (another game for my genre-changers thread) means that their are a good # of challenging JRPGs its just that they tend to be hard in a much different way. also superhomo

i still think the jap version of FFV is one the hardest games of all time

ff6 seemed impossibly difficult to me when i was a lil kid... it still has some sections that are tough 4 me

If/when you get to BGII, make sure you get Aerie, Jaheira and Viconia all in your party at the same time, fun-time lolz.

also massive lolz here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate_NPCs:

Khalid

* Jim Meskimen
* Half-Elf, Fighter, Neutral Good.
* Jaheira's bumbling husband, and almost her polar opposite. Khalid is a nervous, easily panicked warrior with a pronounced stutter. Like Jaheira, he is a member of the Harpers. Jaheira and Khalid were Gorion's good friends, and Gorion leaves instructions for the protagonist to meet with them at the Friendly Arms Inn after he is killed in an ambush at the beginning of the game. Canonically, the events of Baldur's Gate I are completed with Khalid in the party, however, he is killed at the outset of Baldur's Gate II.

Khalid was described in a 1998 PC Gamer review as the character most likely to be taken out into the woods, stripped of his gear, and shot, a reference to both his personality and his position as an inferior party member who cannot be removed without losing Jaheira, causing many players to kill him themselves.[citation needed]

lollollollolo @ "citation needed"

Jaheira's the useless one! I actually sent her into a house by herself, then switched to the rest of the party and booted her out, that way she couldn't walk up to me and take Khalid with her.

also i love that Minsc is the only one with his own wiki article

I spent most of BGII running around with a posse of ladeez so I didn't think Jaheira was useless.

(there are still some pathing issues but MAN the story is about a bazillion times better)

!!!! This is so incomprehensible to me, I remember being really bored & disengaged by BG2's story after loving BG1's?

I totally don't understand JPRGs, I get that people whose opinions I respect get pleasure from them, I just can't understand how.

i think the success of stuff like disgaea (another game for my genre-changers thread) means that their are a good # of challenging JRPGs its just that they tend to be hard in a much different way. also superhomo

Can you elaborate on this?

!!!! This is so incomprehensible to me, I remember being really bored & disengaged by BG2's story after loving BG1's?

I really liked the "romance" stuff, plus the side stories for all of the companions seemed much more fleshed out to me in BG2. Also, the cutscenes with Irenicus torturing Imoen were super creepy and some of the plot twists genuinely took me by surprise.

the superhomo part?

what made bg2 so good is making your part in the story really important and world-historickal right from the beginning, something they nicked from jrpgs i think! rather than earlier d&d-based games where the important stuff starts to happen at like level 45 and you have to grind up from level 1

also the voiceover in bg2 was uniformly excellent

speaking of superhomo i was always pissed that as a male character u had many fine bytches to mack on but as a chick the romance scripts were with the lamest dude in the game. </3

haha yeah! There was a planned romance with Haer'Dalis but they pulled it due to time constraints and turned it into him mackin' on Aerie.

One of the most fun parties I put together was playing a male character with Jaheira, Viconia, Aerie and Haer'Dalis and trying to get everyone to hook up.

my biggest narrative-related beef with BG1 is that your party members feel fairly faceless - aside from some canned, 'spontaneous' dialogue, they don't really react to events or environments.

They fixed that in BG2, largely by drastically reducing the number of possible party members (in general, the only ones with personalities in BG1 are the ones in pairs and the ones with serious full-on beefs).

i think the success of stuff like disgaea (another game for my genre-changers thread) means that their are a good # of challenging JRPGs its just that they tend to be hard in a much different way. also superhomo

Can you elaborate on this?

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Tuesday, March 10, 2009 10:55 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

okay off the top of my head jap games tend to create challenges by emphasizing randomness (where is the grail? search an empty square behind a house in a town two islands away!) and leveling enemies (lol those knights have 1000 hp and u r level 2!). they also - much more than western games - assume the player is a completist so a # of games are structured to punish that. want the only golem's bell in the game? well replay this battle until u get the 1/32 drop!!! and of course all that bell does is unlock a crappy class that you will never use

at its worst these games are just an excersize in mindless grinding but at their best they both require and punish repetition. think of ffv or march of the black queen's reputation/moral system. which is often where the strategy is - the tension between leveling/grinding/replaying enough so that u dont get slaughtered but still can get the "best ending" or the actually unhelpful "myrddian helm"

whereas the stuff the makes western games difficult is a lot closer the game's mechanic rather than structure. they also tend to place a lot less emphasis on filling item slots or unlocking things. i can go on more abt this but thats the gist of my thinking

my biggest narrative-related beef with BG1 is that your party members feel fairly faceless - aside from some canned, 'spontaneous' dialogue, they don't really react to events or environments.

This is pretty exactly what I preferred about BG1 - it presented you with all these interesting characters and then left to you think up what they were doing and feeling, whereas BG2 felt like reading a fantasy novel? Possibly I am alone in this?

I mean, to clarify - I don't want to be left, Eye of the Beholder style, to do all the work myself - I want to be given a setup, and for the game's own ideas of who the characters are to come to the surface in discrete chunks and chafe and align and make friction with my own, to give me the pleasure of reshading my ideas to incorporate new evidence as often as I can cope with it. Anyway that is why I loved that game?

Lamp's post is good and interesting!

I love Minsc a lot too but I'm not reading the rest of this thread for fear of BGII spoilers, still haven't got around to playing it cos I haven't OCD'd on BGI quite enough.

GP, I think that is kind of exactly what BG2 did...?

BG2 & David Warner's Irenicus is what finally made realize the importance of great voice acting in anglophone games, and the how great it was when you had a classically trained actor in the role.

Actually, David Warner and Paul Darrow both highlighted how greatly improved genre entertainment can be with classically trained actor types, as opposed to whatever cheap stringer a casting director or voice-over studio found living around Vancouver/L.A.

Of course, I encountered both actors at an age when I could finally appreciate what they brought to the game, as it were.

Yeah I mean people def def have hugely different thresholds for this, it's a totally personal thing! Some people are happy to make stories around stairscumming in roguelikes, some people want animated cutscenes to feel involved, whatever - I was just positioning the games on a spectrum?

all game voices should be by billy west

and ron perlman

BuuuuuuUUUuuuut SEEEEEpiroooooooooth.....

One thing I do want to mention, which may or may not be obvious, is that I find my personal enjoyment of a game to jump by several levels when there are actual characters & dialogue. I offer up the contrast of BG2 and the Icewind Dale games; ID1 & 2 had better technology and an equivalent story, but it was due to the characterization, dialogue, and attendant voice-acting that puts BG2(and its predecessor of Planescape) as some of the greatest rpg/computer/video games ever made.

One of the criticisms of this I've read goes along the lines of "oh you can just make a story for your characters, why should you actually need somebody to talk it out," which always seemed like bullshit to me; if I wanted to do that, I'd write up dialogue for when the lego men on my desk got sick and tired and decided to declare war on a toy dalek. It's a 6-parter, but I could have edited it down into a real 'crackling' 4-parter.

Final Fantasy VII: Kind of Retarded in Retrospect: A Baldur's Gate II Thread

I'm just butthurt because when I played BGII about 8 years ago, it was the first non-JRPG I had ever played, and it confused the hell out of me. I quit after a few hours.

This FFVII thread is making me want to reinstall it!

I actually first entered the world of rpgs thru the game that helped spark jprgs: Ultima III(a.k.a. the NES 'Ultima'). I played mainly pc rpgs for years(w/ the exception of some nes games) and it wasn't really until i played ffvii in 1999 that i got to get the feel for how jrpgs worked. I was used to stuff like Ultimas IV - VII and a Half.

And now it's interesting to see what happens when americans deliberately make jrpgs, see 'Anachronax' and all the summons in 'Planescape'. (they even tip their hand to the FF series in the game thank-yous)