Comments on: The Last Remnant On PC

By: Wooly

Wooly — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:38:20 +0000

Pidesco says:

FFVII on the PSOne was era-defining.

I agree with that. It defined an era of JRPGs as games more interested in showing flashy FMVs and with crap plots tailored to children and idiots, than in offering actual engaging gameplay and story.

^This.

I can honestly recomend FF6 to just about anyone, but almost all of the other FF titles strike me as a stagnant pile of refuse.

By: Colin Hansen

Colin Hansen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:48:53 +0000

I mean, are you saying that playing final fantasy isn’t fun? Because pick one. Even at its worst (10?), the FFs are fantastically fun. See what I did there? Yeah.

Arguing that they’re grindtastic is all well and good, but unless you actually didn’t have fun that’s not really a good point. And I could think you could argue that millions of people have had great fun playing them. I don’t like JRPGs, really, and I think Final Fantasy is one of the few to have enjoyed real success in America.

If you play the FFs right, and go for the numerous collection/completion metagames, they’re wicked fun. On top of that, the characters are consistently incredibly memorable, if not interesting and compelling. That is a feat achieved of very few series of 10+ games.

By: Al3xand3r

Al3xand3r — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:40:09 +0000

Oh, forgot Chocobo breeding and racing, that was fun too, and the overall world map exploration :P

By: Al3xand3r

Al3xand3r — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:38:52 +0000

FFVII had decent gameplay, hunting down materia in a gotta catch’em all style was good fun, even though I thought the story was crap also. And then you got the enemy skill materia and started hunting down enemy skills also. Weeeeee! FF8 I found got all the worst parts of the game and no good ones, and FF9 I found to be an improvement over both as an overall game. But yeah, Grandia and Xenogears were the best examples of the era IMO. Well, if we don’t wanna bring Panzer Dragoon Saga in the discussion at all that is, cos that tramples most any era’s JRPG specimens anyway.

By: Pidesco

Pidesco — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:34:44 +0000

FFVII on the PSOne was era-defining.

I agree with that. It defined an era of JRPGs as games more interested in showing flashy FMVs and with crap plots tailored to children and idiots, than in offering actual engaging gameplay and story.

By: Al3xand3r

Al3xand3r — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:26:56 +0000

I thought the first SaGa was horrible. It could have been an indie game or something, perhaps a lower budget would have made it focus on the few decent parts, like the occasionally witty storyline — though, still, it was mostly chaotic — and skip all the rest. The second looked very appealing but I never played it.

Oh, unless Saga Frontier 1 & 2 isn’t this SaGa thing you’re talking about. I think Square’s best JRPG at the period was Xenogears. Not challenging for the most part, but a hell of a ride. Perhaps up to Grandia-caliber. Oh mighty GameArts what was to happen to you…

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:16:56 +0000

Er, you do realize that the entire SaGa series was a Squaresoft property (now Square Enix), right?

By: Tulpa

Tulpa — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:48:28 +0000

For what it’s worth, this game is part of the SaGa series in everything but name alone, so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt and pretending it wasn’t published by squenix.

For those who don’t know, SaGa was the series of games that was actually challenging and innovative and original that kind of happened to be JRPGs.

They all get mediocre to terrible reviews because the reviewers that look at them are the kinds of mouthbreathers that actually like JRPGs unreservedly, so anything that’s more complex than “HURR DURR I PRESS THE BUTTON TO ATTACK” gets awful ratings just because technically it’s a Japanese RPG.

By: Funky Badger

Funky Badger — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:26:25 +0000

FFVII on the PSOne was era-defining.

(I know the interwebs have a thing for being contrary and *ahem* Bioshock *ahem* hating the popular, but this is just going too far)

By: ET

ET — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:08:09 +0000

@Bhazor :

No, not really. Both Japanese and Western RPGs are mostly aimed at high school or college students. People just have different issues between east and west. So you see power/free-roaming issues in western RPGs, because for the west, personal freedom comes naturally and most wanted ‘more’ autonomy. Japanese teenagers are gag-bounded by rules and social structure. Their games reflect that, though I don’t mean by ‘linearity’. Sometimes they end out being more than a little wonky like Square’s been doing lately, but I think that’s because their story writers somehow figured convoluted pointless mcguffin you can’t interact with = complexity. In this regards, FFXII’s judges or FFX’s wish/pyreflies/Sin combo aren’t very different from FFI’s crystals. And until they realize this, it’s going to suck. (FFT was very good, imo, certainly more mature than some historical novels I’ve read.)

Also, you ‘read’ manga. I think ‘anime’ is the word you’re looking for.

By: Bhazor

Bhazor — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:38:44 +0000

Well I guess the key difference between western and eastern rpgs is that eastern rpgs are aimed at children and the kind of adults who watch manga.

By: Arnulf

Arnulf — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:11:08 +0000

They should release FFXIII for the PC!

…since they’re porting it to the xbox 360 anyway!