Final Fantasy Omnibus

[J.T.]

I really enjoyed the FFXI MMO (RIP Lion) so I'll probably like this one, too.  My Linkshell was just about big enough to tackle endgame stuff before we all decided to abandon ship and play WoW.  Then I left WoW for Destiny and that was that.

I am lazy so I will usually play an MMO on console rather than PC.  I don't install anything on my home rig that doesn't pertain to my cyber lab.

I've already got Sea of Stars, Starfield, and 2077:  Phantom Liberty on my radar so why not add this and further destroy any free time I might have?

Edited July 29, 2023 by J.T.

[Craig H]

For anyone playing XVI, does this game ever open up? I looked at the scores various sites gave the game and they're all pretty high so I suspect I'm missing something or I just haven't arrived to a point where things open up. It's just very, very repetitive at the moment. I described this previously, but it has been all you and Cid go down a very linear path, there's what is essentially an arena of enemies, you clear those out, there's dialogue between you and Cid, then you keep going down the same path until you hit another area of enemies, you kill all of them, dialogue, go down a path, fight a boss, then a long cut scene, then you might pick somewhere on a map to go to or you might go to a village, but literally every quest objective is highlighted so there's no mystery for who to talk to. This might be one of the most hand holdy games I've ever played. I'm not looking for the Witcher 3 or anything, but damn, I keep waiting for that moment that happens in a lot of games, the Witcher 3 included, where everything just opens up and it's not all very strict, linear paths to travel along, it's not repetitive like how I described earlier, etc.

It doesn't need to be an open world, but the way this game was designed feels like it's on rails and I can't imagine it would have received all of these high scores if it were purely 40 to 80 hours of being on rails. It's definitely one of the most fleshed out stories I've seen in a FF game even if some of the sex stuff feels very out of place.

[Death From Above]

On 7/29/2023 at 6:13 AM, J.T. said:

I really enjoyed the FFXI MMO (RIP Lion) so I'll probably like this one, too.  My Linkshell was just about big enough to tackle endgame stuff before we all decided to abandon ship and play WoW.  Then I left WoW for Destiny and that was that.

I am lazy so I will usually play an MMO on console rather than PC.  I don't install anything on my home rig that doesn't pertain to my cyber lab.

I've already got Sea of Stars, Starfield, and 2077:  Phantom Liberty on my radar so why not add this and further destroy any free time I might have?

14 is really, really good. Like, it has all the problems that literally every MMO ever made has, you probably know what those are going in. If you can look past that I think there's a legitimate case it's the best Final Fantasy game.

Also, less contentious... when you actually look at the totality of that game's soundtrack, there's a pretty legitimate case it has a top 5 video game soundtrack of all-time.

I haven't played in quite a while because when I put down MMO's I mean it, but it's absolutely An Experience.

[Firebreaker Chip]

On 7/31/2023 at 4:57 PM, Craig H said:

For anyone playing XVI, does this game ever open up? I looked at the scores various sites gave the game and they're all pretty high so I suspect I'm missing something or I just haven't arrived to a point where things open up.

Having got to some fairly uh high-drama stuff in the last couple of play sessions, I assume I'm fairly near the end and it doesn't open up. You basically get the long set piece quests with a big fight at the end, then a period of being at back at base with the journey to the next mission as your main objective, and then a few side quests related to the base camp available. I'm pretty sick of the side quests because they're just "backtrack to this place you've been before to harvest/kill a thing" or "do a stupid minor errand within the base that some of the less important people who just stand around all day should really be doing"; I've just been clicking through the dialogue etc to get the XP at this point.

The quality of the story and the voice acting really carry what a shamelessly shallow experience it is for a FF game. It also frequently looks properly amazing a on a good 4k screen.

I'm not as down on as it probably sounds, it's not reaaaaally Final Fantasy, but it's hard to argue with the kind of lizard-brain excitement you get from the climactic Kaiju battle bits where Ifrit obliterates someone by uppercutting a continent into them or whatever

[Chaos]

I touched XVI for the first time in a couple of weeks on Sunday, and I played through the Kupka/Titan fight at Drake's fang. The Kaiju stuff is definitely neat if not at times visually incoherent; however, it's probably good this game is overly forgiving because it doesn't always make it clear on avoiding certain attacks or how to go about attacking in these sequences. That would be fine if this game was trying to be a FromSoft game, but that's no the case.

[Craig H]

Inject FF7 Rebirth into my veins. That game looks exactly what I want out of Final Fantasy game in this day and age if it isn't going to be FF14.

[JLSigman]

1 hour ago, Craig H said:

Inject FF7 Rebirth into my veins. That game looks exactly what I want out of Final Fantasy game in this day and age if it isn't going to be FF14.

That whole trailer is on another level. Good gods I am this close to trying to buy a PS5 since my old computer can't handle the Steam version of the first part.

[A.M.B.]

On 7/31/2023 at 8:57 AM, Craig H said:

For anyone playing XVI, does this game ever open up? I looked at the scores various sites gave the game and they're all pretty high so I suspect I'm missing something or I just haven't arrived to a point where things open up. It's just very, very repetitive at the moment. I described this previously, but it has been all you and Cid go down a very linear path, there's what is essentially an arena of enemies, you clear those out, there's dialogue between you and Cid, then you keep going down the same path until you hit another area of enemies, you kill all of them, dialogue, go down a path, fight a boss, then a long cut scene, then you might pick somewhere on a map to go to or you might go to a village, but literally every quest objective is highlighted so there's no mystery for who to talk to. This might be one of the most hand holdy games I've ever played. I'm not looking for the Witcher 3 or anything, but damn, I keep waiting for that moment that happens in a lot of games, the Witcher 3 included, where everything just opens up and it's not all very strict, linear paths to travel along, it's not repetitive like how I described earlier, etc.

It doesn't need to be an open world, but the way this game was designed feels like it's on rails and I can't imagine it would have received all of these high scores if it were purely 40 to 80 hours of being on rails. It's definitely one of the most fleshed out stories I've seen in a FF game even if some of the sex stuff feels very out of place.

Well this is exactly why I couldn’t finish FFVII Remake so it sounds like I’ll be skipping 16 too. 13 as well was a giant hallway simulator. I’ve just come to accept modern FF ain’t for me, luckily there’s some awesome graphics/QOL patches for some of the older games that gives them new life to me.

[Robert S]

Reg. FFVII Rebirth: why would you release a game on two discs if you have to download tons of GB (and I guess install everything on your HD/SSD) anyway?

[JLSigman]

 

I don't play tabletops, but so many of us FF XIV fans are going to have to buy this because you know the art and lore drops in it will be incredible.

Edited September 21, 2023 by JLSigman
adhd forgets words

[Craig H]

Oh. My. God.

[JLSigman]

If you're an old school fan, the first several seconds should give you a nice nostalgia boost

[JLSigman]

FF 14 XBox beta coming beginning of year

 

 

[J.T.]

Goddammit.  They built a job with me in mind.

I better hurry up and beat Starfield and 2077 so I can give my life to XIV during the Open Beta.

Edited October 22, 2023 by J.T.

[JLSigman]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

Goddammit.  They built a job with me in mind.

I better hurry up and beat Starfield and 2077 so I can give my life to XIV during the Open Beta.

There are going to be 2039482 Zidane (FF9) cosplaying characters within five minutes of 7.0 opening.

[Chaos]

I want to finish XVI in the next couple of weeks after stepping away from it due to lack of time and playing a fair amount of EA FC and Spiderman. I'm not a fan of this recent trend of "we have no intentions of releasing DLC" followed by "surprise, we now have DLC!" I'm curious what the reactions are to Echoes of the Fallen after some play through it today. I'm guessing it's only going to be 2-3 hours if that. It looks like it funnels you into a pretty insane boss battle quickly. 

[Chaos]

Update: I am starting to see the end in sight for the base game of FFXVI. I completed the Odin/Barnabas fight. I know people complain about this game being too easy even on a gameplay driven difficulty, but I'm kind of happy with the guard rails this game gives you if you're struggling through a section. I'm at the point in life where I do not mind a small challenge, but I also just want to just reach a conclusion when a game is this long. I reached a couple of game over screens in the Barnabas chapter with the last encounter on the platform, and then his third phase where he has an instant kill attach if you don't do enough damage, and the "that's okay, we've taken care of you" aspect was nice instead of beating my head repeatedly against the section. 

 

Spoiler

The game replenishes your potions and high potions, which I have maxed out on and still had to use most of them. (It's kind of crazy that 8 potions is the max in a Final Fantasy game). 

 

[JLSigman]

The XBox beta for FF XIV officially starts February 21. There are a bunch of rules, caveats, a couple of quid pro quos....

[Raziel]

Well the 7 Rebirth demo looks to be the entire Nieblheim flashback.  I'm an hour in and haven't hit the reactor yet, it's huge.  But I'm liking the walking around the map changes and extra traversal stuff, and it looks like the NIbelheim area is the tutorial area this time. 

The neat thing is it says that if you play the demo, you can use the save to skip the area in the game proper when it comes out.  So it's almost like playing this area ahead of time to be able to jump right into the game proper come launch day.  

I still don't know how they're squaring rolling everything back if you played Remake, but I have my completion saves from Remake ported over to the PS5 just in case they're doing something for the 70 hours I put into Remake.

[Ramo2653]

I'm at Kanver in FF16 and once you get 3 Ikons to shuffle through in the game, the combat really opens up. Also seems like the storyline at this point falls into your standard FF story so it's not a total GoT rip off.

[Raziel]

Excuse me, this is Demo part 1.  They're doing a second demo with the actual field area sometime before the game proper.  

[Chaos]

On 2/7/2024 at 5:17 PM, Ramo2653 said:

I'm at Kanver in FF16 and once you get 3 Ikons to shuffle through in the game, the combat really opens up. Also seems like the storyline at this point falls into your standard FF story so it's not a total GoT rip off.

There's some Eikons you get later on that I don't really enjoy because the main attack involves loading up, but that just may be me not learning how to properly navigate/maximize that.

I'm at the very end of the game, and I'm debating if I really want to do the remaining hunts and side quests before moving on to the finale. I did go through unlocking gotterdammerung . 

[Ramo2653]

I do enjoy using Bahamut's charge since you can dodge to make it charge faster. I peeked ahead and see that you get another one that might be similar. I usually start out fights with Bahamut's charge so fireballs are raining down but sometimes I forget and start with other stuff. I did that dragon S level hunt probably 12 levels too low and it took me about 5 tries but I got it. I'd probably smoke that monster now though. Are the later hunts difficult or just tedious after all the other stuff? I say this as a person who didn't mess with a lot of the end game stuff in FF8 because I just wanted to be done.

[Ramo2653]

On 2/10/2024 at 8:55 AM, Chaos said:

There's some Eikons you get later on that I don't really enjoy because the main attack involves loading up, but that just may be me not learning how to properly navigate/maximize that.

I'm at the very end of the game, and I'm debating if I really want to do the remaining hunts and side quests before moving on to the finale. I did go through unlocking gotterdammerung . 

Finished it yesterday. Yeah, that last Eikon seemed good in theory but I didn't like it, seemed like you had to use the abilities to load it but since normal attacks were so nerfed. I did finish all the trials, hunts and side quests too. Debating on doing a NG+ playthrough. 

I really liked the game and how everything played out. But goddamn was Annabelle an awful, awful person.

Debating a FF10 run (doubt I'll have the time to max out everything like I did when I was in high school or finally playing the FF7 Remake.

Edited February 17 by Ramo2653

[Raziel]

Went a couple hours into Rebirth, and this game is great so far.

I have to respect that the path they went for explaining why all materia, items, gear, levels were reset is... well, fuck you, we're just doing it and hand waving it, that's how.