11 ms·

Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 3: Playing Final Fantasy VII

87 points by doppp 3y ago

Waterluvian 3y ago
One of the things that made FF7 special for me, beyond being my first JRPG, was that there wasn’t voice acting and I was ignorant to the fact that it was a Japanese game, so I was completely unaware of all the weird translations. This forced me to resolve my own interpretations of the characters, their mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. I think this is what made FF8 and FF9 quite approachable, but then 10+ were jarring with the overly vocalized characters, verbalizing every slight emotion. I think this is what led me to appreciate a less-is-more personal opinion on video game storytelling. Voice acting can sometimes be incredible. But often it’s just in the way.
- kyrra 3y ago
  That still requires semi decent translators. Otherwise you get some pretty silly dialog like "You spoony bard!": https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/You_spoony_bard https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/You_spoony_bard!
  - chongli 3y ago
    “You spoony bard” is one of the best lines in the whole series. Why would you want it to be changed to something unobtrusive? It has tremendous staying power and it gets people talking about a game they might’ve otherwise overlooked. And that’s tragic because FFIV is a wonderful game that should not be overlooked. I think SquareEnix agrees with me, as they’ve kept the line in retranslations of the game.
    - Waterluvian 3y ago
      This reminds me of how the Demon’s Souls remake cleaned on a lot of translation issues, but not all. The Maiden in Black is the same voice actor, who speaks in very broken phonetic English, which is generally agreed adds considerably to the atmosphere.
    - kqr 3y ago
      "Son of a submariner" was similarly surprising yet a perfect match for the situation and it stuck with me since.
  - lmm 3y ago
    That's a perfectly good and underappreciated translation. The guy is a hundred-or-so year old sage, he's not going to be turning the air blue, in that scene he's finally flown off the handle and is not going to be choosing his words carefully to match the modern ear. If you ignore the meme and read the words as they are, it really helps the emotion of the moment come through.
  - 0xDEADFED5 3y ago
    somebody set up us the bomb
- 39 3y ago
  It’s the same with FF and fallout series’ for me, I’d much prefer subtitles over voice acting. It’s like reading a CYA book rather than a movie, I want to imagine their voices, not listen to some goofy voice actor. Thank said, I think FFX did a decent job at it.
- maipen 3y ago
  I think you are in a minority. Ff10 was huge leap at the time and they never looked back. Voice acting is something most people enjoy and make the story actually enjoyable.
  - okdood64 3y ago
    The dialogue is rather flat in FF10 (and most all JRPGs of that time). Not say it say it lacks substance though. Given that flatness, I always found the voice acting awkward. I much rather read it.
  - wuiheerfoj 3y ago
    Perhaps OP is in the minority, but I am too then - I couldn’t enjoy the voice-acted versions; they all sounded cheesy. With text only, I imbued the game with a little imagination - not unlike reading a book - and also found the weird translations let my imagination fill in the gaps
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Sales have generally been trending down substantially since FF7. [1] X and X-2 only sold better by merit of both being two games counted as one, and by being released and released on a zillion platforms. I think in general though there's this weird paradox in games that things we think we enjoy can make games worse, yet it feels bad to try to 'fix' now. I think the best example would be quest waypoints in various open world games. It's absolutely painful to play without them now, but on the other hand when one actually had to pay attention to your quests and goals, it resulted in vastly more satisfying gameplay compared to what's gradually turned into some weird ritual across a million games of fast-travel to nearest location, bee-line to colored dot, skim text, repeat. No idea who first said the quote (that's been attributed to Gabe Newell) but it's just so true: give players the opportunity to, and they'll optimize the fun out of your game. [1] - https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226241/final-fantasy/ https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226241/final-fantasy/
    - chongli 3y ago
      I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve got into arguments with people by saying the addition of the automap feature was bad for the Metroid series. The original Metroid was an old school hard game and a big part of its difficulty was due to the lack of a map to guide you. The feeling of tension was palpable, when you were profoundly lost and low on health. When the automap arrived that feeling was banished forever. I think in general there’s a problem with gamers who demand that their games give them nothing but good feelings all the time. They don’t want to experience sadness, sorrow, heartbreak, fear, stress, or frustration. They just want the game to feel like a Christmas party that never ends. How dreadfully boring!
- vehementi 3y ago
  > 10+ were jarring with the overly vocalized characters, verbalizing every slight emotion. Thanks, this describes my take perfectly as well.
plagiarist 3y ago
I love that game. I don't know how much of it is the excitement, but having enjoyed "III" and then going to VII I was pretty hyped when the opening sequence switched to player control. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius, you're basically at the peak of console music and graphics for the time, and it came in a thick box with three CDs. Materia is on of my favorite systems, too, it made getting new weapons, armor, or materia more exciting than other games because you'd usually have a new way to combine the skills you want, or a far stronger attack with worse skill slots.
Flux159 3y ago
I'm eagerly waiting for 7 Remake's part 2 this February, having not played the original since it was on Playstation & I only had an N64. Having played a lot of SNES JRPGs via SNES9X or ZSNES, I loved the story and character building in FF6, gameplay of Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean, and overall gameplay of Lufia 2 and Chrono Trigger when I was younger. I think back and I find that not that many modern games have the same influence on me as those older games from my childhood - I don't think it's necessarily the quality of games has gone down, FF16, Tales of Berseria, YS VIII are all exceptional RPGs, but it might be that we have so many entertainment options these days that truly memorable games get lost when there's always something new around the corner.
- oglop 3y ago
  I’m in the minority, but I was let down by the game. I have RSI so forcing me into the modern combat in games destroyed it for me. I just wanted my turn based game. It also just didn’t feel like the original at all for as far as I played. Barrett’s voice was embarrassing to listen to I also remember feeling. Yes you can switch off the fighting but that other system is very broken and it’s nothing like the Orginal.
- M4v3R 3y ago
  Final Fantasy VII Remake was an exceptionally good game. It managed to make me feel like I was a kid again when I was playing the original game for the first time. The graphics, music and overall mood was just right. I can’t wait to play Rebirth in February.
  - wredue 3y ago
    I personally found the music “overdone”. I get wanting to spin it for today, but found in every reimagining that there was just too much going on with it.
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
  Lufia 2 is my favorite SNES game! I'm surprised I don't see people talk about it as much as the other RPGs from that era.
mberning 3y ago
I remember as a teenager thinking that these RPGs were high art. Woof.
fishtacos 3y ago
FFVII was the first RPG I ever played. As an immigrant from a poor Balkan country, I never had access to computers and the only console I had ever played until 1997 was Atari 2600, which was a clone with built-in games (although it did have a slot for cartridges as well). I did buy an SNES after much convincing my father, against the advice of my friend. It was basically EOL at that point, but the price was right for our family's budget. I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII. When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times. Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years. The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.
- aquova 3y ago
  I enjoyed your story, but I do want to make one correction. The upcoming second part to the remake is called "Rebirth", not Afterbirth. I think that would be a very different game indeed.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    OP may be thinking of a different game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/401920/The_Binding_of_Isaac_Afterbirth/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/401920/The_Binding_of_Isa...
- okdood64 3y ago
  I played FF7 three times during my pre-pubescent years. Along with Chrono Cross twice, Chrono Trigger, FF9 and FFX. (I could not get into FF8's story or magic system.) I really wanted to like FF7 Remake but stopped around 2/3 way through Midgar. I don't know whether it's my lack of patience with with single player RPGs at this age, or whether it was just not a good game. I find I can only really get into the odd competitive multiplayer game these days because of the community & friends factor. That said I always found I enjoyed FF7 much more after getting out of Midgar and having a semi-open world to run around in, versus the more on-rails experience of Midgar. I suppose I'll give the next installment a go.
kris-s 3y ago
I would not have been as kind to FF7 as this author was. By any modern measure it is a bad game. The raw story material and the character design is fantastic. But the gameplay. The gameplay is so tedious the author couldn’t even continue without modifying the game.
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  yeah, one of my problems with Japanese properties in general is this obvious design by committee thing and budget issues that turn great pitches into incoherent nonsense by the end you can basically count on one hand how many anime style or Japanese gaming properties don't go off the rails and finish the initial story. Final Fantasy VII is a prime example, the world building at the beginning of the first game in the “VII” franchise is fantastic. In such an arduous funnel, most people see that. But then there’s vampires, dueling identities, ridiculous backstories that cause continuity issues and separate subsequently released games for each, pretty much just ignore the final boss in the first game and the resolution in the post cut scenes, because now there’s multiple universes for no reason with no foreshadowing whatsoever. like. stop. there was no cliffhanger or loose ends. they even got fans jumping through mental hoops about the definition of “remake” to rationalize the unnecessary ridiculousness of breaking the story even further for no benefit, but in 4k. they could have just done the exact same story without the kingdom hearts nonsense but its like someone at Square can’t be fired for some dumb distinctly Japanese reason.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    It seems like you’re talking about the modern FF7 Remake, which is actually an alternate universe version of the original FF7 series. The original didn’t have a lot of the bits you are calling out because it wasn’t trying to retcon in 20+ years worth of story buildup, and is a much simpler story. That’s not to justify the complexity of the FF7 lore. I think it and Kingdom Hearts are both ridiculously over complex now, but that people delineate between Remake and the original because of that huge divergence in story. The article and rest of the comments are about the original game.
    - 3y ago
haunter 3y ago
>I also think that while the cinematic scope and melodrama would eventually be copied by “Western” rpgs like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Witcher, there is a degree of vulnerability to Cloud and his Final Fantasy successors that still isn’t quite allowed to exist among most of the gruff dudes and sad dads of ‘western’ games. JRPGs are just much more open about feelings. It's really hard to describe. I'd actually even say that you can see that across all japanese games really regardless of the genre.
- chongli 3y ago
  The thing that bothered me about the later Final Fantasys is that as the series went on, the protagonists got younger and more like pop stars than original characters. At some point it seems like they forgot they were making fantasy games and just started aping pop musicians (both in fashion and appearance/age) and Hollywood. This happens to a lot of game companies though. Turnover leads to teams with no connection to previous games in the series and with that a loss of connection to what made the games so special.
  - marricks 3y ago
    I mean, they were always aping something though? Replaying FF7 I realized, at its core, it is just a mismash of 80s horror movies. Still love it, but its interesting to notice in retrospect.
    - chongli 3y ago
      Before FF7 they were aping fantasy tropes. This is fine if you're making a fantasy game! Though my favourite game in the series is 6 which adds steampunk to the mix but without being overly self-conscious about it.
      - marricks 3y ago
        Totally. And FF7 was new (to me at least) in what it aped so it's all fine and cool.
    - 3y ago
Lucasoato 3y ago
I fear that the site has been struck by "dead by Hacker News"!
footlose_3815 3y ago
Few games inspired the unexpected wonder and scale that FF7 did. 8 did a little. 9 hit the mark. So did X. Everything after was kinda of numb... I felt nothing for FF12 characters, or for the absolute trainwrecks that were FF15 and FF16. FF15 was an excuse to market real-life products to the player. It was exchausting having immersion broken by nissin noodles ads, and coleman camping gear ads. FF16 is some of the worst fighting I've ever had in a game, with a focus on these garbage cinematics. The brand is dead to me. I'll only replay the classic games, and that's why square has 1-6 pixel remasters at a staggering $80 virtual, and you can't even find the physical version for less than $110 on ebay. That's how bad the new series are. Now we're awash in a cacophony of copycat indie devs who flood the market with cringeworthy half-finished games that can only copy the wonder of the FF series. We at-least have hope with stunning remasters like Star Ocean Second Story R, which has that feeling of depth, progress, story, and nuance.
- rikthevik 3y ago
  For me, the highlight was FFVI. Square was firing on all cylinders on the SNES. FFVII started the tilt into anime and, aside from FFIX, they've continued to lean into that. I don't care for it. Luckily the indie developers (and even teams within Square Enix) have taken up the mantle. Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars, the Star Ocean Remake, the Tactics Ogre remake, Crosscode, the Seiken Densetu 3 remake, Live A Live, SaGa Frontier 3, the Octopath Traveler games - they're quite good, and that's just in the last few years! Maybe not to everyone's taste, but they are well made games and there's no shortage of good stuff to play.
  - djur 3y ago
    I'm not sure what "tilt into anime" means here. FF has always been heavily influenced by anime. If anything, the earlier games bore those influences more obviously.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      I don't think it's exactly a tilt into anime per se... FF1-6 & 9 had very distinctive characterization and art styles, with out of proportion characters. A lot of it was forced by technical limitations of the NES/SNES, but it's a style that we grew to love. 7, 8, and the rest -- not so much; it's a much more mainstream aesthetic.
hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
I was never into JRPG in general, to the point that I don’t feel the impulse to own a console. I guess it’s really preference as I can stomach old Western CRPGs such as Ultimate and such.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  Even Pokemon, the quintessential JRPG?
  - hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
    No, pretty much every one of them. I prefer darker, heavy themes. For example I love Double Dragon and Castlevania on NES but never enjoyed Mario or Zelda or such — found them too naive for my taste back in the day (was eight year old)
    - dehrmann 3y ago
      Pokemon's pretty dark. Where's Ash's father, exactly? And we're in this world where kids leave home to enslave monsters to fight other kids? Plus the local mafia also fights these kids?
    - gettodachoppa 3y ago
      There's a few darker JRPG games. Check out the Shadow Hearts series. It has a horror vibe/setting.
dehrmann 3y ago
Not VII, but I never played a Final Fantasy before, and the internet told me X is modern-enough, good, and approachable, but I'm having a really hard time getting into it. Plus my time is more limited these days. Maybe I should try powering through?
- theptip 3y ago
  I played VII - X when they came out, X was pretty bad. None since VII had any content worth powering through for; if you don’t dig it, I wouldn’t recommend it. (Doubly so because JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient.)
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    > JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient Good point. I've played Pokemon and South Park: Stick of Truth, so maybe I've had enough of a taste of JRPGs to know what they're about. I wonder if the grinding was because content was expensive to produce, so it's a lazy way to add gameplay, and their target market is kids who will happily grind if it's a video game (vs. a piano).
    - djur 3y ago
      Nah, grinding was (and remains) in CRPGs with adult audiences. Some people just really like it. These days people, adult people with jobs and families, will pay a monthly fee just to grind.
  - kqr 3y ago
    There are SNES emulators for Android. With time compression, some of the worst of the grinding goes away. I still haven't finished it, but I got further in FF6 in the past year than I did before, thanks to that. (I have very little patience for grinding.)
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  May I ask what you don't like about it? It eases you in with a tutorial, there's a lot of story and dialog for the "movie game" generation, the Sphere Grid is mostly locked so you can't cripple yourself by picking bad upgrades (unless you played one of the remakes and picked an open grid?), it's the usual high production values FF title... FFX to me is the pinnacle of the FF turn-based battle system. That said, it IS over 20 years old. I think there's some game genres which, if you didn't grow up on them, you might not enjoy them. Kinda like how you have to eat sushi a few times before you start liking it. I think turn-based JRPGs are aimed at people who enjoyed those games in the 25 years ago. The Metroidvania genre, even more so.
wredue 3y ago
> I look forward to giving Final Fantasy VIII a try; although it’s widely regarded as one of the black sheep of the Final Fantasy family FF8 is actually so bad as to possibly turn this person off the series entirely IMO. Bad characters. Questionable, easily exploitable battle mechanics. Terrible, nonsense story with some of the dumbest “reveals” of virtually any game ever. It’s a kinda of neat setting and world, but just used so so so poorly. For anyone that has played them but wants to, I still recommend 10 with a mod to give everyone experience every battle (spoiler, 10 still had the “haha gotcha for not levelling everyone equally” annoyance that was popular in JRPGs of old).
- bombcar 3y ago
  All I remember about VIII was fighting with everyone over playing Triple Triad. I can't remember anything about the story or the game, it was all about working out how to collect those cards.
- djur 3y ago
  The thing about VIII is that it has all the pieces of a really interesting story, but they completely fail to cohere into a narrative that supports the themes. The Laguna dreams are a fantastic narrative concept that results in an incredibly dumb reveal, for instance. If you play the game with the idea that it's a story about Squall overcoming his fear of forming connections with others, you can kind of do some surgery on the story as you go, but it still feels like a fever dream. (The story almost makes more sense if you interpret everything after the failed assassination of Edea as being Squall's dying fantasy -- which is not a good sign for the coherence of a narrative!)
dang 3y ago
Related: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 3: Playing Final Fantasy VII - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736161 - Dec 2023 (1 comment) Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306057 - Nov 2023 (89 comments)
jdlyga 3y ago
FFVII hit massive popularity by being the right game at the right time. And it's a great game, and one of the better FF games! But it was a bit of an experimental bridge between 2D and 3D RPGs. Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy X are much better in terms of gameplay and storytelling.
- imbnwa 3y ago
  The original commercial in America was the greatest commercial I’d seen around age 12 or so that wasn’t a Super Bowl ad. It would only be matched in awe for young me by GTA 3’s montage ad backed by “O mio babbino caro”
a1o 3y ago
Here is my favorite website for it: https://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7.htm https://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7.htm
PikachuEXE 3y ago
Those who are interested in JRPG might also want to try out Trails series (The Legend of Heroes: Trails, by Falcom) No. of titles: 3 (Sky) + 2 (Zero/Ao) + 5(Cold Steel) + 2(Kuro) + 1(just announced) All stories happen in the same word in near time frame (within several years/decades not after hundreds/thousands of year)
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Xenogears is by far the best JRPG on the SP1 I'd put Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, and maybe Final Fantasy Tactics too, I've never had a chance to play it though. Suikoden II, Suikoden, Final Fantasy 7+9 WOuld be next for me. Final Fantasy VIII is just weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njLpZDfUCQ&list=PLihy8fVYWAMDIjj2I_Oup6UUq4pawp62I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njLpZDfUCQ&list=PLihy8fVYWA...
- konfusinomicon 3y ago
  xenogears was amazing, even with the unfinished nature of the second disc. you should definitely play FFT. just make sure to keep multiple save files so you don't get stuck like many including myself have at this one infamous part
unethical_ban 3y ago
The pearl-clutching of the author regarding the women of the story, and Cloud's aversion to cross-dressing, is about as eye-rolling to me as those elements were to him. That aside, it was a decent read, and in the end he said what I was hoping he'd realize: It was a game targeted at a particular demographic, though potentially enjoyable by anyone. The easter eggs which he chose to ignore are a part of the "openness" of the game that makes it feel like a more immersive world - I remember farming chocobos for hours in order to get the golden one, which would let me get the Knights of the Round summon. As the author realizes but doesn't quite say, it was a product of its time. It is amazing as a video game the same way Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are amazing rock and metal - their sound is more impressive when you realize they were the vanguard of a new way of music. Seinfeld is "just" a nihilistic comedy like dozens of others, but it was first. Some of these games are considered so great as a bandwagon effect, but I say that in a kind way: It's part of the common culture of gaming, and so experiencing it (and hopefully enjoying it) brings you into a familiarity with the subculture, the same way one has probably watched Star Wars or Star Trek to be a "sci fi" geek.

87 points by doppp 3y ago

One of the things that made FF7 special for me, beyond being my first JRPG, was that there wasn’t voice acting and I was ignorant to the fact that it was a Japanese game, so I was completely unaware of all the weird translations. This forced me to resolve my own interpretations of the characters, their mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. I think this is what made FF8 and FF9 quite approachable, but then 10+ were jarring with the overly vocalized characters, verbalizing every slight emotion. I think this is what led me to appreciate a less-is-more personal opinion on video game storytelling. Voice acting can sometimes be incredible. But often it’s just in the way.

kyrra 3y ago
That still requires semi decent translators. Otherwise you get some pretty silly dialog like "You spoony bard!": https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/You_spoony_bard https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/You_spoony_bard!
- chongli 3y ago
  “You spoony bard” is one of the best lines in the whole series. Why would you want it to be changed to something unobtrusive? It has tremendous staying power and it gets people talking about a game they might’ve otherwise overlooked. And that’s tragic because FFIV is a wonderful game that should not be overlooked. I think SquareEnix agrees with me, as they’ve kept the line in retranslations of the game.
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    This reminds me of how the Demon’s Souls remake cleaned on a lot of translation issues, but not all. The Maiden in Black is the same voice actor, who speaks in very broken phonetic English, which is generally agreed adds considerably to the atmosphere.
  - kqr 3y ago
    "Son of a submariner" was similarly surprising yet a perfect match for the situation and it stuck with me since.
- lmm 3y ago
  That's a perfectly good and underappreciated translation. The guy is a hundred-or-so year old sage, he's not going to be turning the air blue, in that scene he's finally flown off the handle and is not going to be choosing his words carefully to match the modern ear. If you ignore the meme and read the words as they are, it really helps the emotion of the moment come through.
- 0xDEADFED5 3y ago
  somebody set up us the bomb
39 3y ago
It’s the same with FF and fallout series’ for me, I’d much prefer subtitles over voice acting. It’s like reading a CYA book rather than a movie, I want to imagine their voices, not listen to some goofy voice actor. Thank said, I think FFX did a decent job at it.
maipen 3y ago
I think you are in a minority. Ff10 was huge leap at the time and they never looked back. Voice acting is something most people enjoy and make the story actually enjoyable.
- okdood64 3y ago
  The dialogue is rather flat in FF10 (and most all JRPGs of that time). Not say it say it lacks substance though. Given that flatness, I always found the voice acting awkward. I much rather read it.
- wuiheerfoj 3y ago
  Perhaps OP is in the minority, but I am too then - I couldn’t enjoy the voice-acted versions; they all sounded cheesy. With text only, I imbued the game with a little imagination - not unlike reading a book - and also found the weird translations let my imagination fill in the gaps
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Sales have generally been trending down substantially since FF7. [1] X and X-2 only sold better by merit of both being two games counted as one, and by being released and released on a zillion platforms. I think in general though there's this weird paradox in games that things we think we enjoy can make games worse, yet it feels bad to try to 'fix' now. I think the best example would be quest waypoints in various open world games. It's absolutely painful to play without them now, but on the other hand when one actually had to pay attention to your quests and goals, it resulted in vastly more satisfying gameplay compared to what's gradually turned into some weird ritual across a million games of fast-travel to nearest location, bee-line to colored dot, skim text, repeat. No idea who first said the quote (that's been attributed to Gabe Newell) but it's just so true: give players the opportunity to, and they'll optimize the fun out of your game. [1] - https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226241/final-fantasy/ https://www.vgchartz.com/game/226241/final-fantasy/
  - chongli 3y ago
    I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve got into arguments with people by saying the addition of the automap feature was bad for the Metroid series. The original Metroid was an old school hard game and a big part of its difficulty was due to the lack of a map to guide you. The feeling of tension was palpable, when you were profoundly lost and low on health. When the automap arrived that feeling was banished forever. I think in general there’s a problem with gamers who demand that their games give them nothing but good feelings all the time. They don’t want to experience sadness, sorrow, heartbreak, fear, stress, or frustration. They just want the game to feel like a Christmas party that never ends. How dreadfully boring!
vehementi 3y ago
> 10+ were jarring with the overly vocalized characters, verbalizing every slight emotion. Thanks, this describes my take perfectly as well.

plagiarist 3y ago

I love that game. I don't know how much of it is the excitement, but having enjoyed "III" and then going to VII I was pretty hyped when the opening sequence switched to player control. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius, you're basically at the peak of console music and graphics for the time, and it came in a thick box with three CDs. Materia is on of my favorite systems, too, it made getting new weapons, armor, or materia more exciting than other games because you'd usually have a new way to combine the skills you want, or a far stronger attack with worse skill slots.

Flux159 3y ago

I'm eagerly waiting for 7 Remake's part 2 this February, having not played the original since it was on Playstation & I only had an N64. Having played a lot of SNES JRPGs via SNES9X or ZSNES, I loved the story and character building in FF6, gameplay of Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean, and overall gameplay of Lufia 2 and Chrono Trigger when I was younger. I think back and I find that not that many modern games have the same influence on me as those older games from my childhood - I don't think it's necessarily the quality of games has gone down, FF16, Tales of Berseria, YS VIII are all exceptional RPGs, but it might be that we have so many entertainment options these days that truly memorable games get lost when there's always something new around the corner.

oglop 3y ago
I’m in the minority, but I was let down by the game. I have RSI so forcing me into the modern combat in games destroyed it for me. I just wanted my turn based game. It also just didn’t feel like the original at all for as far as I played. Barrett’s voice was embarrassing to listen to I also remember feeling. Yes you can switch off the fighting but that other system is very broken and it’s nothing like the Orginal.
M4v3R 3y ago
Final Fantasy VII Remake was an exceptionally good game. It managed to make me feel like I was a kid again when I was playing the original game for the first time. The graphics, music and overall mood was just right. I can’t wait to play Rebirth in February.
- wredue 3y ago
  I personally found the music “overdone”. I get wanting to spin it for today, but found in every reimagining that there was just too much going on with it.
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
Lufia 2 is my favorite SNES game! I'm surprised I don't see people talk about it as much as the other RPGs from that era.

mberning 3y ago

I remember as a teenager thinking that these RPGs were high art. Woof.

fishtacos 3y ago

FFVII was the first RPG I ever played. As an immigrant from a poor Balkan country, I never had access to computers and the only console I had ever played until 1997 was Atari 2600, which was a clone with built-in games (although it did have a slot for cartridges as well). I did buy an SNES after much convincing my father, against the advice of my friend. It was basically EOL at that point, but the price was right for our family's budget. I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII. When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times. Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years. The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.

aquova 3y ago
I enjoyed your story, but I do want to make one correction. The upcoming second part to the remake is called "Rebirth", not Afterbirth. I think that would be a very different game indeed.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  OP may be thinking of a different game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/401920/The_Binding_of_Isaac_Afterbirth/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/401920/The_Binding_of_Isa...
okdood64 3y ago
I played FF7 three times during my pre-pubescent years. Along with Chrono Cross twice, Chrono Trigger, FF9 and FFX. (I could not get into FF8's story or magic system.) I really wanted to like FF7 Remake but stopped around 2/3 way through Midgar. I don't know whether it's my lack of patience with with single player RPGs at this age, or whether it was just not a good game. I find I can only really get into the odd competitive multiplayer game these days because of the community & friends factor. That said I always found I enjoyed FF7 much more after getting out of Midgar and having a semi-open world to run around in, versus the more on-rails experience of Midgar. I suppose I'll give the next installment a go.

kris-s 3y ago

I would not have been as kind to FF7 as this author was. By any modern measure it is a bad game. The raw story material and the character design is fantastic. But the gameplay. The gameplay is so tedious the author couldn’t even continue without modifying the game.

yieldcrv 3y ago
yeah, one of my problems with Japanese properties in general is this obvious design by committee thing and budget issues that turn great pitches into incoherent nonsense by the end you can basically count on one hand how many anime style or Japanese gaming properties don't go off the rails and finish the initial story. Final Fantasy VII is a prime example, the world building at the beginning of the first game in the “VII” franchise is fantastic. In such an arduous funnel, most people see that. But then there’s vampires, dueling identities, ridiculous backstories that cause continuity issues and separate subsequently released games for each, pretty much just ignore the final boss in the first game and the resolution in the post cut scenes, because now there’s multiple universes for no reason with no foreshadowing whatsoever. like. stop. there was no cliffhanger or loose ends. they even got fans jumping through mental hoops about the definition of “remake” to rationalize the unnecessary ridiculousness of breaking the story even further for no benefit, but in 4k. they could have just done the exact same story without the kingdom hearts nonsense but its like someone at Square can’t be fired for some dumb distinctly Japanese reason.
- dagmx 3y ago
  It seems like you’re talking about the modern FF7 Remake, which is actually an alternate universe version of the original FF7 series. The original didn’t have a lot of the bits you are calling out because it wasn’t trying to retcon in 20+ years worth of story buildup, and is a much simpler story. That’s not to justify the complexity of the FF7 lore. I think it and Kingdom Hearts are both ridiculously over complex now, but that people delineate between Remake and the original because of that huge divergence in story. The article and rest of the comments are about the original game.
  - 3y ago

haunter 3y ago

>I also think that while the cinematic scope and melodrama would eventually be copied by “Western” rpgs like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Witcher, there is a degree of vulnerability to Cloud and his Final Fantasy successors that still isn’t quite allowed to exist among most of the gruff dudes and sad dads of ‘western’ games. JRPGs are just much more open about feelings. It's really hard to describe. I'd actually even say that you can see that across all japanese games really regardless of the genre.

chongli 3y ago
The thing that bothered me about the later Final Fantasys is that as the series went on, the protagonists got younger and more like pop stars than original characters. At some point it seems like they forgot they were making fantasy games and just started aping pop musicians (both in fashion and appearance/age) and Hollywood. This happens to a lot of game companies though. Turnover leads to teams with no connection to previous games in the series and with that a loss of connection to what made the games so special.
- marricks 3y ago
  I mean, they were always aping something though? Replaying FF7 I realized, at its core, it is just a mismash of 80s horror movies. Still love it, but its interesting to notice in retrospect.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Before FF7 they were aping fantasy tropes. This is fine if you're making a fantasy game! Though my favourite game in the series is 6 which adds steampunk to the mix but without being overly self-conscious about it.
    - marricks 3y ago
      Totally. And FF7 was new (to me at least) in what it aped so it's all fine and cool.
  - 3y ago

Lucasoato 3y ago

I fear that the site has been struck by "dead by Hacker News"!

footlose_3815 3y ago

Few games inspired the unexpected wonder and scale that FF7 did. 8 did a little. 9 hit the mark. So did X. Everything after was kinda of numb... I felt nothing for FF12 characters, or for the absolute trainwrecks that were FF15 and FF16. FF15 was an excuse to market real-life products to the player. It was exchausting having immersion broken by nissin noodles ads, and coleman camping gear ads. FF16 is some of the worst fighting I've ever had in a game, with a focus on these garbage cinematics. The brand is dead to me. I'll only replay the classic games, and that's why square has 1-6 pixel remasters at a staggering $80 virtual, and you can't even find the physical version for less than $110 on ebay. That's how bad the new series are. Now we're awash in a cacophony of copycat indie devs who flood the market with cringeworthy half-finished games that can only copy the wonder of the FF series. We at-least have hope with stunning remasters like Star Ocean Second Story R, which has that feeling of depth, progress, story, and nuance.

rikthevik 3y ago
For me, the highlight was FFVI. Square was firing on all cylinders on the SNES. FFVII started the tilt into anime and, aside from FFIX, they've continued to lean into that. I don't care for it. Luckily the indie developers (and even teams within Square Enix) have taken up the mantle. Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars, the Star Ocean Remake, the Tactics Ogre remake, Crosscode, the Seiken Densetu 3 remake, Live A Live, SaGa Frontier 3, the Octopath Traveler games - they're quite good, and that's just in the last few years! Maybe not to everyone's taste, but they are well made games and there's no shortage of good stuff to play.
- djur 3y ago
  I'm not sure what "tilt into anime" means here. FF has always been heavily influenced by anime. If anything, the earlier games bore those influences more obviously.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I don't think it's exactly a tilt into anime per se... FF1-6 & 9 had very distinctive characterization and art styles, with out of proportion characters. A lot of it was forced by technical limitations of the NES/SNES, but it's a style that we grew to love. 7, 8, and the rest -- not so much; it's a much more mainstream aesthetic.

hnthrowaway0315 3y ago

I was never into JRPG in general, to the point that I don’t feel the impulse to own a console. I guess it’s really preference as I can stomach old Western CRPGs such as Ultimate and such.

dehrmann 3y ago
Even Pokemon, the quintessential JRPG?
- hnthrowaway0315 3y ago
  No, pretty much every one of them. I prefer darker, heavy themes. For example I love Double Dragon and Castlevania on NES but never enjoyed Mario or Zelda or such — found them too naive for my taste back in the day (was eight year old)
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    Pokemon's pretty dark. Where's Ash's father, exactly? And we're in this world where kids leave home to enslave monsters to fight other kids? Plus the local mafia also fights these kids?
  - gettodachoppa 3y ago
    There's a few darker JRPG games. Check out the Shadow Hearts series. It has a horror vibe/setting.

dehrmann 3y ago

Not VII, but I never played a Final Fantasy before, and the internet told me X is modern-enough, good, and approachable, but I'm having a really hard time getting into it. Plus my time is more limited these days. Maybe I should try powering through?

theptip 3y ago
I played VII - X when they came out, X was pretty bad. None since VII had any content worth powering through for; if you don’t dig it, I wouldn’t recommend it. (Doubly so because JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient.)
- dehrmann 3y ago
  > JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient Good point. I've played Pokemon and South Park: Stick of Truth, so maybe I've had enough of a taste of JRPGs to know what they're about. I wonder if the grinding was because content was expensive to produce, so it's a lazy way to add gameplay, and their target market is kids who will happily grind if it's a video game (vs. a piano).
  - djur 3y ago
    Nah, grinding was (and remains) in CRPGs with adult audiences. Some people just really like it. These days people, adult people with jobs and families, will pay a monthly fee just to grind.
- kqr 3y ago
  There are SNES emulators for Android. With time compression, some of the worst of the grinding goes away. I still haven't finished it, but I got further in FF6 in the past year than I did before, thanks to that. (I have very little patience for grinding.)
gettodachoppa 3y ago
May I ask what you don't like about it? It eases you in with a tutorial, there's a lot of story and dialog for the "movie game" generation, the Sphere Grid is mostly locked so you can't cripple yourself by picking bad upgrades (unless you played one of the remakes and picked an open grid?), it's the usual high production values FF title... FFX to me is the pinnacle of the FF turn-based battle system. That said, it IS over 20 years old. I think there's some game genres which, if you didn't grow up on them, you might not enjoy them. Kinda like how you have to eat sushi a few times before you start liking it. I think turn-based JRPGs are aimed at people who enjoyed those games in the 25 years ago. The Metroidvania genre, even more so.

wredue 3y ago

> I look forward to giving Final Fantasy VIII a try; although it’s widely regarded as one of the black sheep of the Final Fantasy family FF8 is actually so bad as to possibly turn this person off the series entirely IMO. Bad characters. Questionable, easily exploitable battle mechanics. Terrible, nonsense story with some of the dumbest “reveals” of virtually any game ever. It’s a kinda of neat setting and world, but just used so so so poorly. For anyone that has played them but wants to, I still recommend 10 with a mod to give everyone experience every battle (spoiler, 10 still had the “haha gotcha for not levelling everyone equally” annoyance that was popular in JRPGs of old).

bombcar 3y ago
All I remember about VIII was fighting with everyone over playing Triple Triad. I can't remember anything about the story or the game, it was all about working out how to collect those cards.
djur 3y ago
The thing about VIII is that it has all the pieces of a really interesting story, but they completely fail to cohere into a narrative that supports the themes. The Laguna dreams are a fantastic narrative concept that results in an incredibly dumb reveal, for instance. If you play the game with the idea that it's a story about Squall overcoming his fear of forming connections with others, you can kind of do some surgery on the story as you go, but it still feels like a fever dream. (The story almost makes more sense if you interpret everything after the failed assassination of Edea as being Squall's dying fantasy -- which is not a good sign for the coherence of a narrative!)

dang 3y ago

Related: Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 3: Playing Final Fantasy VII - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38736161 - Dec 2023 (1 comment) Putting the "J" in the RPG, Part 1: Dorakue - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38306057 - Nov 2023 (89 comments)

jdlyga 3y ago

FFVII hit massive popularity by being the right game at the right time. And it's a great game, and one of the better FF games! But it was a bit of an experimental bridge between 2D and 3D RPGs. Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy X are much better in terms of gameplay and storytelling.

imbnwa 3y ago
The original commercial in America was the greatest commercial I’d seen around age 12 or so that wasn’t a Super Bowl ad. It would only be matched in awe for young me by GTA 3’s montage ad backed by “O mio babbino caro”

a1o 3y ago

Here is my favorite website for it: https://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7.htm https://fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff7.htm

PikachuEXE 3y ago

Those who are interested in JRPG might also want to try out Trails series (The Legend of Heroes: Trails, by Falcom) No. of titles: 3 (Sky) + 2 (Zero/Ao) + 5(Cold Steel) + 2(Kuro) + 1(just announced) All stories happen in the same word in near time frame (within several years/decades not after hundreds/thousands of year)

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

Xenogears is by far the best JRPG on the SP1 I'd put Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, and maybe Final Fantasy Tactics too, I've never had a chance to play it though. Suikoden II, Suikoden, Final Fantasy 7+9 WOuld be next for me. Final Fantasy VIII is just weird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njLpZDfUCQ&list=PLihy8fVYWAMDIjj2I_Oup6UUq4pawp62I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1njLpZDfUCQ&list=PLihy8fVYWA...

konfusinomicon 3y ago
xenogears was amazing, even with the unfinished nature of the second disc. you should definitely play FFT. just make sure to keep multiple save files so you don't get stuck like many including myself have at this one infamous part

unethical_ban 3y ago

The pearl-clutching of the author regarding the women of the story, and Cloud's aversion to cross-dressing, is about as eye-rolling to me as those elements were to him. That aside, it was a decent read, and in the end he said what I was hoping he'd realize: It was a game targeted at a particular demographic, though potentially enjoyable by anyone. The easter eggs which he chose to ignore are a part of the "openness" of the game that makes it feel like a more immersive world - I remember farming chocobos for hours in order to get the golden one, which would let me get the Knights of the Round summon. As the author realizes but doesn't quite say, it was a product of its time. It is amazing as a video game the same way Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are amazing rock and metal - their sound is more impressive when you realize they were the vanguard of a new way of music. Seinfeld is "just" a nihilistic comedy like dozens of others, but it was first. Some of these games are considered so great as a bandwagon effect, but I say that in a kind way: It's part of the common culture of gaming, and so experiencing it (and hopefully enjoying it) brings you into a familiarity with the subculture, the same way one has probably watched Star Wars or Star Trek to be a "sci fi" geek.