Iron Chef, just out of curiosity since you've criticized many aspects of the FF series, what's your favorite console RPG? Judging by what you've said, that you don't like random battles, or the FF battle system, or linearity (among other things), I can't really think of any RPGs you'd like.

[edited by - a_zircon on March 28, 2004 5:28:57 PM]

well, I''d say the best console rpgs are with out a doubt. CronoTrigger(snes), and Persona 2: eternal punishment(psx)

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project: Ambitions Slave

I happen to like the FF series, but I wand to dump on what didn''t work. FF7 was my favorite game incidentally.

"World Maps" as in the place where your player wanders around alone with all of these tiny little city icons, nope, bad idea. Tactics, MarioRPG, Xenogears, Legaia Dual Saga, Legend of Dragoon. All better ideas as far as thats concerned. Its not so much that the maps are a bad idea, just that they''re so sparse and fileld with random battles. Xenogears at least gave you cities to wander around in from a birdseye view.

On that same token, Random Battles suck. We''ve progressed enough that we can afford to have the monsters waiting for me on the field, and I can walk around them, or strategize my fight with them.

Active-Time ... Hrm... Its almost a good idea, just I''m not to keep that stealing from an enemy and scanning him, and using an item, all use the same Time quantity. Also, prioritizing needs to become an important factor. Quite often I''ve selected an elixer from a menu item, waited, watched an enemy killed who I was going to use it on, and then watched my character use the elixer on the dead guy. I mean, if I tell someone to do something, and I had to wait for his turn, he better do it as soon as I press the confirm button.

FF9''s Trance was irritating. I trance out on the minor enemies and have an empty meter on the boss. FF8''s version of it just meant if I had the time, I could keep hitting triangle until the option appeared. FF7''s was about the same as FF9''s, except that I could save it for a turn. FFX, the same. I think its all a bad idea anyway, so lets move on.

MP is a bad idea. .hack//infection has a better way where it (SP) recovers every second, and thats a vast improvement as far as I''m concerned.

FFX''s equipment options was stupid. 99 antidotes to get a poison-proof option, yeah, I got your option right here.

The Job systems are an interesting idea, but the carrying of skills across needs to be considered. Changing WhiteMage to Fighter shouldn''t mean I lose the white magics.

The Sphere grid was sorta interesting, but I think there was an error in it''s execution. I may be inclined to want to see it again, if they tried it another way.

FF8''s junctions were a terrible idea. Personally, I would of had the magics as part of the GF''s skill set, and then had some abstract item system give the stats.

On that same token, Squall was a mistake.

Umm, thats all I can think of for the moment.

hm...this is not exactly 100% related, but are there two subgroups in RPG games: final fantasy clones (prevalent), and phantasy star clones?

Good ones:

(FFX-2) Dress-sphere, basically you can switch your characters'' class (D&D term) from fighter to mage to thief anytime you want even during battles. And each character has points accumulated in every dress-sphere. You get more skills if you acquire more points.

(FFX-2) Two items (that you get in early game) that let you to have more battles (if you seriously want to level up) or not at all (if you want a free-battle game). Compared to FFX, you only get this item at the end of the game. Must have for random battle RPGs.

Bad ones:

100 Hi-Potions, 100 Elixir, 100 Potions, 100 etc etc etc. Basically to have 1000 items in your inventory.

That thing costs 10000000 gil and I have 500000 gil.

Too many mini-games, and many of them are trivial. And the prize is 100 Mega-Potions.

I see shop-less shopkeepers everywhere.

Weapons, armors, and items that don''t have pictures.

Lengthy battles due to the amazing-breath-taking superb animations!

A boss that has 999999 HP and deals 3000 damage, and a character that has 5000 HP and deals 99999 damage.

IMHO there''s a big difference between FF1-6 and FF7-current. I only like the second batch of these. And all of them would be improved by reducing the random monster battles by 30-40%, making the writing a bit more literary and mature, and having fewer playable characters but developing each more.

alnite draws attention to one of my pet peeves, the incredible inflation of critical numbers in a game. Some RPGs don''t have a single price in the shop that doesn''t end with at least one zero. Why not just divide all those prices by ten, and do the same for whatever gives you money? Instead of a robot dropping a thousand gold coins and a magic sword costing ten thousand, have that robot drop a hundred gold coins and charge a thousand for the sword. Adding zeros all around the board does nothing.

Same thing for HP, MP, and anything else out there. And the 9999 thing needs to go. It''s a silly limit to have, and it''s equally silly that you can do that much damage. Making the numbers so huge and variable draws attention to the dice-rattling ancestors.

S&S, I disagree with you on the FF point. I agree that they can be easily divided into two categories, pre- and post-FFVII, but I for one prefer the older models. You''re a writer, and I understand that things like cutscenes and character development are important to you, but I thought FF6 was the best of the series, and FFVII represented a deviation from a system that was becoming highly refined. Graphical shifts are good, but too much focus on character development inevitably forces the designer to make a more linear game.

a_zircon, don''t get me wrong. I like just about every RPG out there to some extent, and have played as many as I could find. The critical nature of this thread leads me to be a bit more opinionated, is all. To answer your question, I don''t think that I can choose a favorite. FF6, Secret of Mana (assuming it is a valid RPG choice, which is subject to some debate), Chrono Trigger, Fallout (a strong candidate, but I''m a little biased because I just went through it again), and Tactics Ogre are all excellent games. Tactics Ogre especially, but I was playing that recently as well.

Of course, my favorite RPG is the RPG that I would make if I had the time, resources, and devotion to do it. That would naturally be teh best gaem evar. It is out of my respect and compassion for the gaming industry that I refrain from revolutionizing it. I wouldn''t want the mass suicide of all game designers on my super-talented hands, now, would I?

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
well, I''d say the best console rpgs are with out a doubt. CronoTrigger(snes), and Persona 2: eternal punishment(psx)

Was persona 2 graphically and in game design better than personal 1? Because I just attempted to play persona 1 recently and it sucked.


If we''re making a list of RPGs worthy of being imitated, I would add crono cross and vagrant story (my all time favorite RPG, just above FF7) to the list

My biggest pet peeve for all of the FF games is useless spells. The most common ones are spells that have good effects except 90% of the monsters are immune to them. These are usually spells that would make fights simple if they actually worked, Sleep, Mute, Death, Stone etc. I always try to use them and most of the time they dont do anything. Either make them work on 90% of the enemies or dont have them at all.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, drown a man in the water and the fish will eat for a week!

I would have to agree with many of the things said here. Some more ideas/rehashed ideas:

- I also like the idea of set classes. I like each of my characters to have a defined role that they are good at. I think the FFT system where you can have a primary class but use the skills of a second makes for a good amount of strategy. At the same time, I don''t like faceless characters either. FFT had faceless characters; I''d prefer to see a class-change system with predefined characters (like FFX-2 as best I can tell; I never actually played it)

- I don''t like the useless spells often found either. I never use spells in ANY RPG like sleep, poison, silence, etc... I really like the idea of them, though. Some games make better use of these spells by having a) increased success or b) regular damage to go along with a possible effect.

- Repetive, maze-like dungeons are very annoying.

- Don''t make spells too complicated or annoying to use. The Guardian system in FF8 was so intricate and complicated that it was a real turn-off. Sometimes simplicity works a lot better.

- If your RPG has money, it shouldn''t become a worthless comodity half way through the game. I think a lot of the fun I have with money in RPG''s is running my team on a shoe-string budget and having to save up for the next sword or piece of armor.

- Easily maxable characters as others have pointed out is a big no-no.

- I like the overworld map, because I like to explore and find new things. I don''t like the feeling that I''m on a train that only stops at certain places. Of course, having to run all over back and forth on a huge map isn''t fun either. It''s definetly a balancing act IMO.

- Definetly a variety of skills or spells is a plus, especially if I can''t have all of them. One thing I like about many MMORPG''s is that I am offered a large number of skills and spells, but I can only choose some of them (ie: I have to specialize) Asheron''s Call 2 for instance has a tech tree system and it''s not possible to master ALL of the techniques; you have to choose a branch of specialization that fits your playstyle.