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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Feb 15, 2007 16:35:10 GMT -5
Nice FF6 article, Kurt. I can't really agree with the emotional attachment and video games bit, but that's just how I feel. When I was young, I HATED FF6 (even though I loved it when I first played it) because everyone said it was better than Chrono Trigger, which is still my favorite RPG of all time. Many moons ago, I wrote a rant about FF6 that's become somewhat infamous on the net. I've seen it mentioned and linked to many times. There's a lot of typos and it's somewhat badly written, but it's still kinda funny. It's still up at my friend Alex's site. www.fantasyanime.com/finalfantasy/ff6/ff6_doku.htm
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 15, 2007 16:51:21 GMT -5
I can't really agree with the emotional attachment and video games bit, but that's just how I feel. Well, I kinda glazed over that for the moment (and I will now too) because it's something I could go on and on about. Most video games provoke emotions through their gameplay. They pose a challenge, and you, the gamer, needs to overcome it. If you don't feel any emotional attachment, then you stop caring about the game, and probably stop playing it. Those are the worst kind of games. I kinda have that thing you have about FF6 but in reverse. I played FF6 first then Chrono Trigger right after, which I found sorely lacking in comparison. From a broader perspective, it's a fantastic game and definitely one of the best of the era, but certain elements (mostly the battle system and lack of customization) really seemed lacking.
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Post by Shinigami on Feb 15, 2007 16:56:55 GMT -5
LOL ;D
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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Feb 15, 2007 17:05:31 GMT -5
I felt just the opposite. Chrono Trigger's battle system wasn't as complex, but simplicity isn't necessarily a bad thing. It was entirely functional, and it also transitioned with the exploration much more smoothly. It was also much faster in pace, whereas even on its fastest setting, you could defrost a solid frozen slab of hamburger in the time it takes for one character's ATB guage to fill in FF6. I have always had a short attention span when it comes to turn-based games, and FF6 has always felt like the most sluggish to me.
I'm also not too sure exactly what you mean by "customization". Everyone in FF6 has the same set of magics (which I've always thought was a major flaw; there's something not right about a beefcake like Sabin being able to cast Ultima). The only slight level of customization is the ability to increase stats through the use of Espers, an almost game-breaking element that turns all of your characters into gods by the time they're in their 30s and 40s. When it comes down to it, the only thing that sets the characters in FF6 apart are their innate skills, just the same as Chrono Trigger, only Chrono Trigger's characters are a lot more balanced.
Even on an emotional level, CT touched me more. CT had a much smaller cast, but the characters had much more intense interactions and were much more tightly knit. In FF6, you have 4 or 5 particularly developed characters and then a host of throw-away ones that have their moment and then become nothing more than walking HP tanks.
What makes FF6 work well emotionally are its situations, where as CT is driven by its character relationships.
Don't get me wrong, I love FF6. It has a euphorically mesmerizing, bleak, brooding atmosphere encapsulated by an absolutely brilliant soundtrack, but for me, CT has always killed it on every level.
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 15, 2007 19:08:14 GMT -5
Hmm.
There's no way I can talk about the Chrono Trigger battle system without sounding completely insane, but I'll try.
I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it animates. It's like looking at a game through a strobe light except the flashes are totally erratic. Everything about it feels off.
Like, the enemies. They just sorta jitter and putter about in place, with like two or maybe three frames of animation. Really. It's like someone looked at Final Fantasy's static monsters and apologized to no one in particular, and swore that they'd fix it. Then they started coding it and got distracted by a bowl of Cheese Doodles or something. They attempted to make the game feel more dynamic and it really just ends up looking half assed.
And the ATB meter. FF6's may be slow as molasses, but at least it's..well, animated. It has a definite start, several definite intermediary steps, and a definite end. Chrono Trigger's has like a few steps of "empty", "not quite full", "kinda full" and "you attack now". What's more, every time you do a spell or special move - which you do a LOT - it stops. This was probably because the attack animations are a lot longer than FF6. So as a result, the ATB bar looks like it's having a seizure. Things like this *really* bother me.
There are other less inane reasons I have for not liking it. There are only three characters in battle. When I first played FF6, I was massively disappointed there were only 4 characters at a time. I dealt with it, but all of a sudden, in the next RPG I'd played, we were down to three? This later became the de facto standard for a lot of RPGs, wherein having three characters in a battle is acceptable, oblivious to the fact that it drastically eliminates strategic possibilities.
There's this way of numbers too. FF6 had like, what, 14 characters? CT had half that. This was more important to me back when I was 15. Not so much now. I would've loved Suikoden at that age.
Customization? FF6 didn't have it all that much either, but the Espers gave some illusion of making these characters your own. Chrono Trigger erratically gave you those Power Tab or whatever things. That's just patronizing.
I think there were others reasons I didn't like it although I seem to have forgotten them.
Also, I don't like the narrative. Not the plot or characters - they're generally pretty rad. I don't like the way you drive it. In that, you don't, really. You stumble through it. Like. You're not just exploring a world, you're going from 1000 AD! To 600 AD! To the past and to the future, and to the past but maybe not quite so much. But all the while, you're simply having wacky adventures until eventually the game opens up the door and decides that it's had enough and you're ready to fight Lavos, a carrot which has been dangling over your head for quite some time but only at a certain point did the game to let you have a taste. The whole New Game+ thing just seemed to acknowledge it.
I'll admit that, for a sad time in my life, I was into shoujo manga. There was this one called Peach Girl (don't read it) that I mostly liked because I thought the author would do AMAZING porn, if she ever sold out. It was a story about a girl who liked two guys. All 14 chapters of it were about her life and her being wishy-washy about them. At the end, with no real build-up or logic, other than maybe the Japanese manga magazine was sick of publishing it or the author was sick of writing it, the girl chose one of the guys and the story ended.
I mean, goddammit! The only thing that stopped her from fucking the one guy in chapter 2 was that there needed to be "substance" and that substance was usually involved in lots of misunderstandings and trips to the beach or something. They may have been amusing stories at the time, but in the end, it all seems so worthless.
This is what Chrono Trigger feels to me. You're having lots of fun adventures and whatever, and it's good, but at the end? They barely carry any real narrative weight other than you having bumped into a bunch of characters that decide to help you out.
And also? Whenever it comes to any story - movies, games, whatever - I need to feel like there's a definitive end. It makes me uncomfortable otherwise. The first time I saw This is Spinal Tap? I thought it sucked. There was a loose story in there, but it could've been resolved at any moment, essentially. The second and third and fourth and fifth and twentieth times I saw it, I loved it. I had a grasp on where it began and where it ended.
The same thing, I think, could be applied to Chrono Trigger. Except Spinal Tap is a two hour movie with lots of great dialogue, where Chrono Trigger is a 20 hour game full of lots of tedious fights with a spastic battle system and a couple of amusing scenarios.
Building up to a climax is important. Chrono Trigger's climax was, what, roughly around the Palace of Zeal? Where was the build-up there? Why couldn't the game have plopped you there straight from the beginning? And then it has the nerve to totally stop the narrative to go on some subquests to resurrect Crono (which never even made SENSE considering Crono is YOU, otherwise he'd actually talk), which I don't think you had to do. But most people did. I can't even remember what came after that, but I think you could just fight Lavos and save the world.
So instead of a upward parabola, Chrono Trigger feels like it was scribbled by a four year old trying to draw a picture of his mom.
For no reason, I will blame this on Yuji Horie. I hate that guy.
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Post by kyouki on Feb 15, 2007 19:27:40 GMT -5
I played FF6 before Chrono Trigger, and get so bored with CT. So maybe it is a case of whichever one you play first strikes you as more interesting?
I agree with Kurt on how something is off about CT. It feels buggy or sloppy or something, the way it animates. The game just feels so random and I can definitely feel that a bit in the latter Dragon Quest games so maybe it is Yuji Hori's fault?
In hindsight, FF6 is pretty goofy. Part of it is the US translation (for FF3 I mean), but another part of it is the game itself. There are a couple dramatic scenes (the coin toss, the opera, Celes in the world of ruin) and it's still pretty awesome how the most ridiculous bad guy in the game ends up becoming an insane demigod at the end. But there's a TON of humor that just strikes me as forced and grating to the older me. I also feel the pacing is off... it's a good few hours in before you get that "gotta find out what happens next" feeling. Then it's paced so quickly you almost get whiplash, and then the pacing slows to a crawl in the world of ruin. It's just jarring in a plot-focused formerly linear game like FF6.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2007 19:58:27 GMT -5
... holy shit. Kurt, you just spoke ill of the holiest of holy RPGs to some gamers. And I think it's just perfect for Cranky Gamers! Just prepare to fortify a nuclear fallout shelter should you decide to post it. Anyway, FF6 is, without any comparison, my favorite FF game and one of my favorite RPGs ever... this is even playing the inferior Playstation version, believe it or not. There's just so much to love about it, and you pretty much summed it up in everything ya said. Y'know, I'm very tempted to get the GBA versions of IV, V, and VI. Who advises as such? I know IV has its scruples and glitches, but I usually look the other way when it comes to those.
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 15, 2007 21:44:38 GMT -5
Well! I guess! I really don't hate the game at all though. I mean, it bored me at the time, but I've since played it through like twice, and overall it's a fantastic game, indisputably one of the best of the 16-bit era. But there are so many tiny things that offend that my neurotic mind that it drives me nuts that I can't just ignore them and commit my undying love to it like most regular RPGs fans.
Also, definitely get the GBA FFV. It's the definitive version, in that it looks better and doesn't have the load times of the PS version. IV and VI are OK but not really all that necessary.
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Post by Revolver Ocelot on Feb 15, 2007 22:04:00 GMT -5
Hmm. There's no way I can talk about the Chrono Trigger battle system without sounding completely insane, but I'll try. I hate the way it looks. I hate the way it animates. It's like looking at a game through a strobe light except the flashes are totally erratic. Everything about it feels off. Like, the enemies. They just sorta jitter and putter about in place, with like two or maybe three frames of animation. Really. It's like someone looked at Final Fantasy's static monsters and apologized to no one in particular, and swore that they'd fix it. Then they started coding it and got distracted by a bowl of Cheese Doodles or something. They attempted to make the game feel more dynamic and it really just ends up looking half assed. And the ATB meter. FF6's may be slow as molasses, but at least it's..well, animated. It has a definite start, several definite intermediary steps, and a definite end. Chrono Trigger's has like a few steps of "empty", "not quite full", "kinda full" and "you attack now". What's more, every time you do a spell or special move - which you do a LOT - it stops. This was probably because the attack animations are a lot longer than FF6. So as a result, the ATB bar looks like it's having a seizure. Things like this *really* bother me. There are other less inane reasons I have for not liking it. There are only three characters in battle. When I first played FF6, I was massively disappointed there were only 4 characters at a time. I dealt with it, but all of a sudden, in the next RPG I'd played, we were down to three? This later became the de facto standard for a lot of RPGs, wherein having three characters in a battle is acceptable, oblivious to the fact that it drastically eliminates strategic possibilities. There's this way of numbers too. FF6 had like, what, 14 characters? CT had half that. This was more important to me back when I was 15. Not so much now. I would've loved Suikoden at that age. Customization? FF6 didn't have it all that much either, but the Espers gave some illusion of making these characters your own. Chrono Trigger erratically gave you those Power Tab or whatever things. That's just patronizing. I think there were others reasons I didn't like it although I seem to have forgotten them. Also, I don't like the narrative. Not the plot or characters - they're generally pretty rad. I don't like the way you drive it. In that, you don't, really. You stumble through it. Like. You're not just exploring a world, you're going from 1000 AD! To 600 AD! To the past and to the future, and to the past but maybe not quite so much. But all the while, you're simply having wacky adventures until eventually the game opens up the door and decides that it's had enough and you're ready to fight Lavos, a carrot which has been dangling over your head for quite some time but only at a certain point did the game to let you have a taste. The whole New Game+ thing just seemed to acknowledge it. I'll admit that, for a sad time in my life, I was into shoujo manga. There was this one called Peach Girl (don't read it) that I mostly liked because I thought the author would do AMAZING porn, if she ever sold out. It was a story about a girl who liked two guys. All 14 chapters of it were about her life and her being wishy-washy about them. At the end, with no real build-up or logic, other than maybe the Japanese manga magazine was sick of publishing it or the author was sick of writing it, the girl chose one of the guys and the story ended. I mean, goddammit! The only thing that stopped her from fucking the one guy in chapter 2 was that there needed to be "substance" and that substance was usually involved in lots of misunderstandings and trips to the beach or something. They may have been amusing stories at the time, but in the end, it all seems so worthless. This is what Chrono Trigger feels to me. You're having lots of fun adventures and whatever, and it's good, but at the end? They barely carry any real narrative weight other than you having bumped into a bunch of characters that decide to help you out. And also? Whenever it comes to any story - movies, games, whatever - I need to feel like there's a definitive end. It makes me uncomfortable otherwise. The first time I saw This is Spinal Tap? I thought it sucked. There was a loose story in there, but it could've been resolved at any moment, essentially. The second and third and fourth and fifth and twentieth times I saw it, I loved it. I had a grasp on where it began and where it ended. The same thing, I think, could be applied to Chrono Trigger. Except Spinal Tap is a two hour movie with lots of great dialogue, where Chrono Trigger is a 20 hour game full of lots of tedious fights with a spastic battle system and a couple of amusing scenarios. Building up to a climax is important. Chrono Trigger's climax was, what, roughly around the Palace of Zeal? Where was the build-up there? Why couldn't the game have plopped you there straight from the beginning? And then it has the nerve to totally stop the narrative to go on some subquests to resurrect Crono (which never even made SENSE considering Crono is YOU, otherwise he'd actually talk), which I don't think you had to do. But most people did. I can't even remember what came after that, but I think you could just fight Lavos and save the world. So instead of a upward parabola, Chrono Trigger feels like it was scribbled by a four year old trying to draw a picture of his mom. For no reason, I will blame this on Yuji Horie. I hate that guy. I'd say roughly 10% of this post was comprehensible, the rest was pretentious bullshit, although I'm sure you're aware of that. I'm not going to make a counter argument or anything because it'll just last forever and at the end of it, nothing will have changed. I don't know what it is about FF6 and CT, but it makes people squabble and debate more than any subject in gaming that I've encountered. I feel CT is a better game than FF6. I feel it has more spirit. And I'll always feel that way. I've never been truly into the ultra-serious RPG. My favorites are Chrono Trigger, Skies of Arcadia, and Breath of Fire. Much more spirited games in comparison to FF6. I feel a lot of why people like FF6 more is because they played it first and they just have such fond memories of it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. We'll just have to agree not to agree. Although, know this; if you write a CG article on Trigger, I will retaliate with the most visceral spitfire on a game the world has ever seen, and anyone with even a slight appreciation for FF6 will be stricken to tears after one paragraph, so help me god. And don't say I can't do it, because FF6 has more than enough flaws for me to exploit.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 15, 2007 22:15:50 GMT -5
YIKES!!! Heheheheh... ummmmmm... I'll just stay on the edge of this dispute. I mean, I think they're both two of the greatest RPGs ever. I give my own edge to FF6, but they are very fine games indeed. Anyway, lemme rephrase my above question: Are the GBA versions of IV, V, and VI better than the Playstation versions? Because those are the only ones I own. >_<
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 15, 2007 22:42:32 GMT -5
I feel a lot of why people like FF6 more is because they played it first and they just have such fond memories of it. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Here, here! I can toast to that. If I'd played CT first I'd probably be singing a different song. There's nothing I really need to argue about - other than the glitchy-feeling battle system, none of what I've pointed out are actually, you know, flaws. I'm sure a lot of people love the narrative for the way it is - I admire it on the level that it does something drastically different, that's still far removed from practically every RPG out there. Just, at the time, it didn't sit well with me. As for the FF games: FFIV - same basic translation as the PSOne version just touched up. Graphics look better. Some glitchiness and slowdown though. Apparently you can switch in people in the last dungeon which sounds cool. FFV - better translation than the PSOne version. Better graphics, again. No load times here, some additional job classes, although some of them are apparently a pain to get. FFVI - mostly the same translation as the SNES/PSOne version, but again, touched up in a lot of spots. All of the GBA ports have slightly degraded music, but this one suffers the most. A bit of slowdown, nothing bad. No loads though. Extra stuff is just some bonus Espers and the obligatory extra dungeon, nothing big. Graphically identical.
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Post by Shinigami on Feb 15, 2007 22:51:43 GMT -5
The European version of FFIV fixed the glitches, which makes me wonder, is it possible to play European imports on GBA/DS without modifications?
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Post by papersquadcontrol on Feb 15, 2007 22:57:48 GMT -5
FFVI - mostly the same translation as the SNES/PSOne version, but again, touched up in a lot of spots. All of the GBA ports have slightly degraded music, but this one suffers the most. A bit of slowdown, nothing bad. No loads though. Extra stuff is just some bonus Espers and the obligatory extra dungeon, nothing big. Graphically identical. I'm in sotenga's boat, as far as that I only have the PS1 version of FF6. Would you still consider the SNES version to remain the superior version, on the basis of it, according to this and most other people's observations, having a better soundtrack, less slowdown, and that the GBA version's extras are superfluous at best?
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Post by Discoalucard on Feb 15, 2007 23:02:15 GMT -5
Yeah, I'd say the SNES version is better overall. FFIV and V at least have better backgrounds graphics and sound that's reasonably close. FFVI looks the same and mostly sounds worse, although some songs are pretty decent (a few are even slightly better.)
From what I've heard, the European FFIV only fixed some of the glitches. I could be mistaken, I think the "out of order turns" bug was fixed, but there's still slowdown and whatnot.
OH, and there's no region locking, so you can import it and play it just fine if you want.
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Post by papersquadcontrol on Feb 16, 2007 1:59:23 GMT -5
Yeah, I'd say the SNES version is better overall. FFIV and V at least have better backgrounds graphics and sound that's reasonably close. FFVI looks the same and mostly sounds worse, although some songs are pretty decent (a few are even slightly better.) The two glitches that I was most concerned about were reports of the controls momentarily locking up and save files accidentally being erased. If those two problems were at least fixed in the Euro version then I'm in.
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