Should I play FF7?

[Mystik3eb]

Who knows, maybe Hayden Christensen is a better actor than these movies made him out to be?

I doubt it.

I agree, he has no emotion what so ever. He just drones on and on through the entire movie

I personally thought his performance in Ep. 3 was much improved over his performance in Ep. 2, kinda like Ewan McGregor when comparing Ep. 2 to Ep. 1.

But no, you're probably right =)

[nightmare975]

Ewan McGregor is such an amazing actor. I really liked him in Big Fish

[Sentenal]

the 3-D Final Fantasy games, in order from best to worst:

FF7, FF9, FF10, FF8, FF10-2.  I won't even count FF11.

I'm shocked and amazed that you can rate that awful FFX above FF8. Most the complaints you had about 8 were magnified in X, and worse.

Firstly, its not that hard to get higher than FF8.  If you want me to complain about FF10, I will.  FF10 had similar character problems to FF8.  Titus was a whinny crybaby, and Yuna was so nieve that it was annoying.  Rikku was annoying as well.  However, unlike FF8, I do like some of the characters in FF10.  Auron was awesome, as was Wakka.  Lulu was decent.  Kimari was...  Well, he didn't really have a personality, but he did at least have some moments.

Gameplay was MUCH better than FF8.  The turns system allowed for more strategy.  Magic was useful.  Character roles were slightly more defined for most of the game, as Titus can take out the quick ones, Wakka for air, Auron for the defence ones, Lulu for only-weak-to-magic ones, etc etc.  Although you do tend to become dependant on Aeons, at least its funner to use Aeons than GFs.

The romance between Titus and Yuna... Uhh, this was almost as bad as Squall-Rinoa.  I liked the consept of Sin, and the things surrounding that, although I didn't like Seymour.  I didn't like Titus being a damn crybaby through out the game.  I'm mixed on its storyline.

[Mystik3eb]

I have to disagree with you entirely on the gameplay issue. I couldn't even play the damn game after a while. To this day, I refuse to play the game without cheating, and even then I don't wanna play it for very long. It's so different from all the others. Moving around is clunky and slow, the environments become a pain in the ass to move around in, the sphere grid is easily the worst hunk of garbage ever thrown into a video game, especially since you absolutely had to have a character do something in battle, even skip their turn!, or else they get nothing. So to make sure everyone levels up, you have to sit there and make sure everyone does something in enough battles. Now, that's a handicap. Honestly, how on earth can you call the junction system worse than that? At least in FF8 you can level up normally!

The only thing nice about Xs gameplay was the ease with which you could switch players in and out of battle, and being able to see whos turn was up next. The battle screen layout and feel was pretty good, magic and items were nice. I hated the weapons and armor system, I hated not having an overworld map (sorry, the airship does not count), and I can't begin to express how much I heavily disliked the sphere grid.

The voice acting was mostly good. Tidus and Yuna were not. Tidus' actor suffered from typical anime overacting standards, which were painful. Yunas suffered from simply being horrible. The scenes where Tidus and Yuna would laugh loud or shout or whistle...made me wanna go to the bathroom or at least get out of earshot so I wouldn't have to hear them. However, as a whole, the voice acting just didn't blend well enough to work out as well as normal text did.

The story was fine, rather enjoyable really. The characters were...meh, nothing special. Except Auron, he was kick-ass. Graphics were the goodpart of this game. The music was sub-par, not Uematsu's typical standard.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Actually, I hated the switching between characters thing. It didnt allow any "fully making a character party powerful" thing. The rest made it so you could make one party your favourite.

And yes, Sin was good, but not as good as Lavos...
...or Kefka...
...or Kuja...
...or Sephiroth...
...or Dark Disciple (?)...

[Sentenal]

You just don't enjoy strategy.  You dont have to stick every character into every battle.  You fight a battle, stick in those who need to be stuck in, win, and go to another.  For most of the game, you can get most easy battles done in just 3 turns.

Moving in the overworld may have been clunky, but it was the same speed as the other 3d FFs.

And the grid system allowed for much more character customization than any other leveling up system in a FF game.

I think that you just don't enjoy games where gameplay requires thought.

[Mystik3eb]

You just don't enjoy strategy.  You dont have to stick every character into every battle.  You fight a battle, stick in those who need to be stuck in, win, and go to another.  For most of the game, you can get most easy battles done in just 3 turns.

How can you say that after I said how much I love the Shining Force games? =p

I'm not talking about how easy the battles are, I'm talking about how much effort it takes to give each character an equal amount of chance for experience. The only times you ever really need to switch characters is in boss battles, so to level up characters any other time takes too much time and effort, and all it does is move you one space on the stupid grid.

Moving in the overworld may have been clunky, but it was the same speed as the other 3d FFs.

Er, no. You don't move in the overworld map at all in FFX. And movement in FFX is indeed slower than the other 3D RPGs.

And the grid system allowed for much more character customization than any other leveling up system in a FF game.

I've never liked customization in RPGs. They take out the elements that make RPGs so special: individual character traits, and all that entails (including abilities). This customization stuff is better suited for games like MMORPGs or other plotless, character-depthless kinds of games. Same reason I've never liked the job system, and why FF5 isn't one of my favorite games ever.

I think that you just don't enjoy games where gameplay requires thought.

Not true at all. RPGs require thought to enjoy in the first place, that's just the way they work. Besides, I love other turn-based and/or strategy RPGs, like the Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire, Lufia, and (more recently) the Fire Emblem games, for examples. Besides, I don't see FFX being anymore strategy-based than the others, unless you count how handicapped the sphere system makes your characters, and thereby sometimes you have to be extremely careful just to survive. Xenosaga did the job way better.

Anyway, that kind of comment is usually considered either a flame or a troll, or at least is very easily taken that way. Be more careful how you word things.

[Sentenal]

I'm not talking about how easy the battles are, I'm talking about how much effort it takes to give each character an equal amount of chance for experience. The only times you ever really need to switch characters is in boss battles, so to level up characters any other time takes too much time and effort, and all it does is move you one space on the stupid grid.

Thats such a lie.  Big lie.  There is a type of enemy that one of your party members excels at killing, and all the rest arn't, with the exception of Kimari and Auron.  Titus kills the small, fast things.  Others miss them.  Auron kills the big armored things.  Everyone (other than Kimari) else does hardly any damage.  Wakka gets flying enemies.  Others miss them.  Lulu gets the flan-magic enemies.  Other hardly do any damage.  Yuna and her summons are good vs bosses.  And battles force you to switch it up.  If you don't, you suck.  And you progress rather quickly through the grid system.

Er, no. You don't move in the overworld map at all in FFX. And movement in FFX is indeed slower than the other 3D RPGs.

...

You know what I ment by overworld.

I've never liked customization in RPGs. They take out the elements that make RPGs so special: individual character traits, and all that entails (including abilities). This customization stuff is better suited for games like MMORPGs or other plotless, character-depthless kinds of games. Same reason I've never liked the job system, and why FF5 isn't one of my favorite games ever.

HA, coming from someone who likes FF8, and its junctioning system!  A game where hardly any characters have defined roles in battles!  You really don't know what your talking about with the sphere grid.

This is fact:  with the turn-system of FF10, and the fact that characters do have defined roles, forces you to use strategy in your battles.  This more than any other normal FF game.  And you hate it for this reason.

[Mystik3eb]

I'm not talking about how easy the battles are, I'm talking about how much effort it takes to give each character an equal amount of chance for experience. The only times you ever really need to switch characters is in boss battles, so to level up characters any other time takes too much time and effort, and all it does is move you one space on the stupid grid.

Thats such a lie.  Big lie.  There is a type of enemy that one of your party members excels at killing, and all the rest arn't, with the exception of Kimari and Auron.

My point exactly. All you need through most the game are Auron, Wakka and Lulu, occassionally bringing in Yuna for a summon or curing.

And no, you don't progress quickly on the sphere grid at all. I went through the entire game, trying to level up everyone as equally as possible, and they were all barely leveled up more than they started. That's alot of wasted time for little reward.

I've never liked customization in RPGs. They take out the elements that make RPGs so special: individual character traits, and all that entails (including abilities). This customization stuff is better suited for games like MMORPGs or other plotless, character-depthless kinds of games. Same reason I've never liked the job system, and why FF5 isn't one of my favorite games ever.

HA, coming from someone who likes FF8, and its junctioning system!  A game where hardly any characters have defined roles in battles!  You really don't know what your talking about with the sphere grid.

I played through the whole damn game, I know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a piece of...yeah.

And yes, I did like FF8 and the junction system, but it's not my favorite system by any stretch, I don't 'admire' it or anything, I simply like it. And no it's true, the only true individuality the characters in FF8 wind up with battle-wise are weapons and limit breaks (and GFs, except those are easily switched around). FF7 was the exact same way, actually. This would be why I liked FF9, 6, 1 and 4 so much more than most the others.

But it's not much different from FFX, really, especially after they can all learn the same damn abilities. And in FF8 it's not like you're taking days and days and days of walking around switching around characters so they can each advance completely around this retarded grid when instead three characters can do it all without any switching and in FAR less time. The sphere grid isn't even worth my time.

This is fact:  with the turn-system of FF10, and the fact that characters do have defined roles, forces you to use strategy in your battles.  This more than any other normal FF game.  And you hate it for this reason.

Ok, you don't know what you're talking about, so please stop. I've already named other games that require thinking and strategy that I enjoy, why do I have to remind you?

Anyway, the FFs are not my favorite games, none of them are on my top 10 (except maybe 6 and 9...maybe), so this statement is completely irrelevant. I hate it for very much the same reasons you hate FF8, gameplay-wise. Whether you see that as legit or not, I leave to your own personal judgement.

FFX is a terrible game that would've made a better movie. They improved alot with X-2 as far as gameplay (and even Yunas voice acting) goes, but overall layout was still too crappy to make it as good as the other FFs.

[Silvercry]

I found the Sphere Grid to be one of FF X very few redeeming features, oddly enough, for the same reason I liked the Junction system:  Leveling up is boring.

Ok, this might sound weird form someone who likes FF XI, but hear me out.  I’ve been killing 100 different things for X number experience points for Y hours just to level up to get Z% stronger  (Z being a paltry fraction of the value of both X and Y) ever since Dragon Warrior 1 made the jump across the pacific.  It’s getting old. It’s gotten old.

Along comes FF VIII.  “What’s this?!  Leveling up can actually be bad for you!  Ye, gods, if only there was another way to get stronger!  Hey, what this Junction thingy all about?  Wait, you mean to tell me I can become irresponsibly powerful without your precious experience points?  That I decide which character can do which attack, and when? All I need are some developed GF’s, some drawn magic, and an open mind?  Sign a brother up!”

A few years later, FF X comes out.  While not as (for lack of a better term) revolutionary as Junction, the Sphere Grid continued the tradition of leaving what character could do what up to the player, not some programmer somewhere Japan who randomly decides: “Ok, at level 45, Yuna can use Holy.”  I’ll say when she can use Holy, fool!  I’ve got a Lvl 4 key sphere, and I’m not afraid to use it!

There is plenty wrong with FF X.  The Sphere Grid is not one of those things.  There are many things wrong with FF VIII.  Junction is not one of them.

And I don’t see how anyone can be against finally having the option to swap characters mid-battle.  Every other RPG developer should start ripping off that idea like right the hell now.   It sure would have helped Xenosaga, I tell you what.

[Sentenal]

My point exactly. All you need through most the game are Auron, Wakka and Lulu, occassionally bringing in Yuna for a summon or curing.

And no, you don't progress quickly on the sphere grid at all. I went through the entire game, trying to level up everyone as equally as possible, and they were all barely leveled up more than they started. That's alot of wasted time for little reward.

1.)  Your gonna have trouble with quick enemies, and machina if you don't bring Titus or Rikku.
2.)  And you are full of it with your second paragraph.  It proves you either cheated throught the game, or didn't play it.  You can get fully around a character's entire path, and into other character's paths by the end of the game.

The rest of what you said was basically reguritiating what you had already said.  You have proven you do not understand the game at all.

[Silvercry]

‘Course, the same could be said about you, Sentenal.  Being overly reliant reliant on GF summoning is the calling card of someone who doesn’t get the Junction system.  Pretty much the only ones I used regularly by games end were Doomtrain (status aliments that actually work most times), Cerberus (Double +Tripple= Love), and if I absolutely, positively had to kill every mother f’er on the screen right this second, Eden.  Oh, and Odin and Gilgamesh would show up randomly, but that doesn’t really count.

[Mystik3eb]

I still believe it's all difference in playing styles. Your style fits better with FFXs than mine, my style fits better with FF8s than yours. We have our reasons for disliking these games, and find those reasons legitimate in our own views, whether the other agrees or not.

And with that, I will not argue about this anymore.

[Sentenal]

I completely understood the Junctioning system of FF8.  You draw magic, stick it on your characters, and they all become stronger, and over powered.  However, this understanding came in my second playthrough.  My impression of overreliance on GFs comes from first semi-playthrough (didn't feel like beating it, but got over 3/5 through it).  And it was easy to get overreliant on them.

However, I did like teaching GF's ablities, further buffing your characters up.  I would equate that with the HP and MP materia in FF7.  There, I said something nice about it.

[nightmare975]

Oh, and Odin and Gilgamesh would show up randomly, but that doesn’t really count.

I hated it when Gilgamesh would show up and kill Rinoa and Adel in the begining of Disc 4