When the game looks pretty, it really does look pretty. Some of the rendering choices are still pretty unfortunate, with bad ghosting at times, but it is pretty often that I look at some of the actual art on display here and just gawk at it.
@Jens_Rasmussen i've never played ff15. it didn't really appeal to me that much. general consensus seems to be that ff16 is a better game, but a lot of people think it strays too far away from an rpg to be considered "final fantasy." that's the main thing people point out, that and the side quests can seem like padding at points. i can see why people think that, but i have been enjoying them a lot. i think their placement is the only weird thing, they should be during moments of downtime but sometimes they're right in the middle of important story beats.
Edit: sry, Jens, misread Roman numerals because I'm retarded, thought you said "this started with VIII"
Just . . . different
@TrevorGoodchild @Jens_Rasmussen @TornadoOfTerror thing about final fantasy is that pretty much every game is different, or at the very least final fantasy goes through kind of clumps of more similar games. everyone will kind of have a different idea of what final fantasy is and what their favorite one is because it's so diverse. there's definitely a reason why ff7 is so beloved, though, i'm sure. personally i've never really been able to get into it.
But for me, it remains undefeated
@TrevorGoodchild @Jens_Rasmussen @TornadoOfTerror if i would have played ff7 back when it came out, like if i were a ps1 kid instead of an n64 kid, i probably would have been absolutely obsessed with it. instead, i sort of just absorbed it via osmosis through the internet in my teens lol. through the culture, it does hold a good place in my heart still even though i'm not too fond of the game itself.
ff16 will be the first mainline final fantasy i actually complete. the other one is crystal chronicles: my life as a king lmao.
@Jens_Rasmussen @DEERBLOOD @TornadoOfTerror @TrevorGoodchild i know ff7 has an option to change it slightly, where the gauges fill up but the action pauses whenever one does so you have time to do stuff.
I might have made a mistake earlier though, as XII was the first non-mmo Final Fantasy that was properly action based rather than an ATB-JRPG.
@BasedLord @Jens_Rasmussen @TrevorGoodchild is he the same guy who got cloud to level 99 inside the mako reactor
@Jens_Rasmussen with the way the story works, there are these kind of chunks of time that a lot of stuff takes place in. so you'll need to get all of the side quests done for one of those chunks before moving on and once you do, they'll be gone. there's a good chance you can do it when the story settles down for a moment, though. it's just that, with the kind of player i am, when i see a side quest i want to do it immediately before doing the main quest stuff. a lot of the time, the side quests pop up at weird timings and i think that could be tightened up a bit to make it flow a little better.
for me though, that's a really minor thing. i'm willing to accept it's a video game still, and that even though the world is about to be blown up or whatever there's still video gamey side quests to be done to increase your bag size or whatever. to me, it's charming in a way... it feels like an older game in that regard. it helps that all of the side quests, although they usually boil down to "go here, kill that, collect this" all have good writing and expand on all the characters in interesting ways. there are a lot of quests that bleed into the next one in the series, and playing ff16 i've realized that's something that my own game absolutely lacks.
That started with XIII and became truly true with XV (assuming you don't even look at XIV).
>Poorly timed side quests
Do they expire if you advance the story? I am asking both in terms of completion and ability to pick them up to begin with. Or can you just pick them up and then do them later, when it is more appropriate?