I don't know you guys but FF12 looks ultra faggy to me.

the story and all of the dialogue is garbage but isn't that how every square game is? or at least every final fantasy. I dunno I'm asking

the story and dialogue got worse with voice acting and when the franchise started taking itself too seriously

was one named titus.  i gthink the other was named cid

This is a pretty apt statement aswell. In fact, I doubt there is a single fault with FF12 that wasn't also something you could criticize FF7 for.

Go ahead, try and name one thing FF12 did worse than FF7. I bet you can't do it.

I don't know. I have to give final fantasy 7 at least some credit for not being such a huge fucking time sink. Even if you skip all the utterly useless extra shit in final fantasy 12, there's still this unbelievable amount of superfluous fluff that didn't need to be in the game to begin with, or serve any practical purpose beyond their wanting to generally model the game after the structure of an mmorpg. FF7 had some of that, but not a whole lot, possibly some of the least the series ever had. The overall structure was a lot tighter and they did a pretty good job not dicking around to the point where you forget entirely what the hell you're supposed to be doing.

Objectively speaking, FF7 did a pretty fair job elaborating on the things you're supposed to care about in the story. I've become progressively more and more irritated with games that suggest some stock BAD GUY ENTITY and don't really care enough about the process to develop the ideas that they're running with. FF12 was more guilty of this than any game I've ever encountered, because you're aware of this evil political entity ruining the world or something, but spend approximately 1% of the game actually doing anything about it. The other 99% are spent fucking with the local wildlife and indigenous peoples for no other reason than the fact that you bump into them on the way to that 0.1% of pertinent stuff that you've been waiting 5 hours to see. Probably more than any game I'm aware of, FF7 went out of their way showing you why what you're doing is important and structured the world design in a way where you become very aware of how the things happening at the center of the story have rippled or are rippling outward throughout most of the world(and the psyches of the characters involved). It's really surprising how few games actually give a shit about this or go out of their way to involve the action of the gameplay in what the game pretends to be about. You resolve most of the main conflicts of Final Fantasy 7 yourself through placement of key fights, with most of the cutscenes being supplement to that rather than a replacement. I can't say that about most games, sadly, Final Fantasy 12 in particular. Like the game or not, PURPOSE is always pretty clear in Final Fantasy 7.

Also, if nothing else, the soundtrack to Final Fantasy 12 is quite possibly the WORST I've ever heard in an RPG, while Final Fantasy 7's soundtrack clearly had some effort put into it. Uematsu actually put some thought into how the music would work with what's happening on screen, while the composer for FF12 just tried to create as many innocuous, generic fantasy songs as he could muster, seemingly independent of what was happening in the game itself.

Actually, I'm really struggling to think of anything Final Fantasy 12 did BETTER than Final Fantasy 7, particularly considering the context of 7's creation being at the very beginning of the transition from simpler 2D games to the typically more complex 3D games. Even if you don't use the gambits in Final Fantasy 12(I didn't use them at all), it's still fundamentally the same mostly rubbish Final Fantasy system with only a slightly different visual presentation. I strongly disagree with the notion that the ability to structure auto-battle conditions is an impressive feature; Why bother even playing a game if you're just going to set up bot-conditions to play the game for you? That should be an indicator that the system needed to be trimmed of the inessential rubbish. FF12 is rather pretty, but even then I think the game is significantly less visually worthwhile than FF7, which exhibited the ability to convey mood and the occasional bit of substance through the visuals, even though obvious technical limitations existed at that time. The art staff of FF12 spent years making forests and mountains and caves that have no function in the game beyond it being some place you stroll through brainlessly slaughtering all the native residents.

In short, don't take that bet. Final Fantasy 7 may not be a great game, but Final Fantasy 12 is unquestionably a very fucking idiotic game. It'd be hard to make an argument for Final Fantasy 12 being fundamentally better than most games.

the characters were horribly anime and unoriginal, too. probably the least memorable cast of any recent final fantasy game, which may or may not be a bad thing i guess when you consider final fantasy x and ix's cast.

I would agree with this were it not for Balthier, who was a surprisingly interesting character and unusually well-acted for a videogame. Final Fantasy is pretty notorious for shitty character development, but he was really a cut above the typical game rubbish, I think. Certainly better than the utter trash they rolled out for the previous two final fantasy games. It's exceedingly rare that I play a game with a character whose words and presentation do not cause me intense gastrointestinal discomfort, but I felt like they had some passable ideas for the character and a voice actor who actually had the ability to pull it together. Rare for any videogame, really.

Don't think he'd be all that worthwhile outside of LOL VIDEOGAMES though, but that's a different discussion.

honestly final fantasy peaked with vi/vii. after the success of vii they decided to just try to copy vii's script and make it longer and add voice acting and realistic character models. square really lost the personality of the franchise once they changed art style and tone.

like, ffvi wasn't perfect but it did a lot of things right and better than most of the post vii final fantasies. for one, it was pretty brief. the plot was easy to follow, even with the sheer amount of characters. the script isn't a marvel but it has enough charm to carry the game and keep you interested in the welfare of the characters.

really, all final fantasy (and any square game these days) does is follow the shitty GRIND BOSS CUTSCENE MINIGAME formula. it's just more obvious and less entertaining with the later installments. there's nothing engaging about the games anymore, except that they keep changing the battle system (but really keeping it the exact same. and making it pointlessly complex).

man why did i do this i'm discussing final fantasy god i'm gay

hundley with a mild confusion and polite embarrassed condescendement (STILL NOT THE RIGHT WORD does not translate!!) how come such a bright man like you argues so much over rpg's?!? you just did a double wall-of-texts of ffxii...

i am by no means demanding you to stop talking about them because this
*conjures quick complicated motions with the right hand, clenches the fist, blood withdraws from the trembling arm, opens the clenched hand in a dramatic manner*
is what amounts of gw nowdays and it's nice to see you do these long, passionate speeches even if it's about most shallowest jrpg's ever. it just always suprises me because you SHOULD be the guy designing artistic games but the problem is that if i imagine you in a ring of sophisticated art game designers (EVERYONE WEARS BRAID - STYLED OLD FASHIONED CLOTHING) discussing whatever the fuck is hip at that time you would be the one that horrifies everyone else in the ring with the comment 'you know, unlimited saga and lufia series had a lot to sound ideas regarding to this...'
and this totally rules. you have one foot on orson welles' dick and the other on balthier's. a...a connate gamér. the concierge of rpgs.

if hundley was a videogame character (IMPOSSIBLE) in any jrpg his first appearance would be this (KRAADO MEETS HARI)

like, ffvi wasn't perfect but it did a lot of things right and better than most of the post vii final fantasies. for one, it was pretty brief. the plot was easy to follow, even with the sheer amount of characters. the script isn't a marvel but it has enough charm to carry the game and keep you interested in the welfare of the characters.

-Yes but 9 also had all of those features

uh yeeeeee-eeeeeeeees but which one is actually a whole lot better game?!??!

a-atmabuster... no...

FF9 is terrible it ignores everything that was good/interesting with what 6-8 had developed and said FUCK MAKING SENSE LET'S GO BACK TO DUMB FANTASY and it was hideous. Everything was piled on cliche where you turned your playstation on and cheese literally dripped out from under the disk cover. I meanevery character was pulled out from THE BIG BOOK OF FINAL FANTASY STOCK (guy from lost race, magical princess, romantic knights in love, lost child belongs to evil servant race, spunky young brat, OOH HE'S SO BASSASS character, evil jesters, SILVER HAIR GUY IN BIKINI). And hey let's not mention the final boss who has less than nothing to do with the plot other than 8RANDOMLY APPEARS*Hey I want to fight you to kill, and was Very very obviously just hacked in there when the game was finished to have a full FF style final boss which is just a big angry dude.

I think interms of atmosphere, setting, music, interesting locations and GENERAL LORE than FF8 is still the most interesting and original and BEST QUALITY FF game there is. The thing is people are either too hung up on the junction system or that it has a LOVE STORY (Nerds HATE lovestories) with young people who aren't generic spikey-haired heroes (ok well... zell was, but it worked in showing how annoying those kinda guys are)

The thing is people are either too hung up on the junction system or that it has a LOVE STORY (Nerds HATE lovestories) with young people who aren't generic spikey-haired heroes (ok well... zell was, but it worked in showing how annoying those kinda guys are)

I hated the game for three major reasons.  First was the damn fact that you had to draw your magic from the enemies instead of learning it, which was a huge fucking pain in the ass.  Second was the damn enemies leveled up with you.  I hate that in RPGs.  I like to feel like I've accomplished something for all my time spent leveling up.  Third was the horrible story.   Everyone's from the same orphanage and they all have amnesia, WTF.

The only two redeeming things for that game was the card game and Faye Wong.  That's it.

ehhh i never beat the game because it dragged on too fucking long. like, there was never any sense of URGENCY or a need to do anything. i never felt compelled to do anything at all. it was all just like, "do this, i guess. and go there, too, and get that one guy. i don't remember just save the world or something okay good job"

FF8 has terrible settings/locations. I don't remember much else about it though =^_^=