Blogs Games I Own: Final Fantasy VII

Don't forget better translation =P

 

God no, that was part of it's charm

 

I really should get round to playing a FF game through one day

I'm a huge RPG nut in general (i have nearly every 360 RPG going) but i've just never got into the FF ones.

I think a fair bit to do with it is the utterly ludicrous sword the main character has, i know jRPG's aren't exactly known for realism, but at least a slight nod towards the laws of physics would have been nice. the sword would still be stupidly large if they reduced it's volume by 33% or more. the trailers for the newer FF games and watching the film just made me whenever the main character was shown

That said, this article is enough to awaken my interest again, the next time i run out of games to play i'll give it another go (forcing myself to ignore the main character )

 

Off course

 

Totally.

It's like the meme that was spawned by the horrible translation "all your base are belong to us" in Zero Wing.

Interestingly, swords like that did exist - "zanbatou" (literally 'horse-chopping sword') - they weren't sharp, and they were designed so that infantry could combat horsemen. It's said that due to their weight, no one has ever used one to it's fullest effect (not exactly surprising that, eh?) but I agree that Cloud flings it around far too easily. Then again, he was supposed to be a genetically altered super soldier, so suspension of disbelief is doable. Just.

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I'd love to see a remake of FFVII on the PS3. And FFVIII, for that matter.

 

I have to admit a certain fondness for FFVII. It was my first RPG, and my first real game that I seriously got into. You could argue it was the start of my hardcore gaming lifestyle.

However, after moving from that to "proper" RPGs like Baldur's Gate and TES etc, I realised just how limiting it really was, and how much more fun WRPGs were.

However, it is easily my favourite JRPG of all time. The materia and weapon slot systems were amazing fun, and very complex. The amount of possibilities was staggering. I was so disappointed to find FFVIII used a totally different system, and even more disappointed to find that Square(Enix) never went back to materia.

 

Chalk me up as another person who can't get FFVII working for PC. a few years ago I had it working pretty well with a FX5200 for a video card, but as soon as I upgraded to a X1650pro, all of the polygons lost their textures and IO was left with a sea of black aside from the pre-rendered backgrounds. now the game just refuses to install at all (some error about uninstallshield being open, same when trying to install FF8).

I'm enjoying Crisis Core: FFVII right now on PSP, but I'm disappointed that they decided to go with the Advent Children style of combat in the cut scenes. the game doesn't feel at all like a final fantasy, but it's fun to get a background on Zack and how sephiroth was before going awol and all murder-y.

 

I bought the PC "ports" of Final Fantasy 7 and 8 shortly after they came out (since I didn't have a playstation at the time), and had them working many years ago (in Windows 98 with an ATI Rage Pro -- or maybe it was the first "All-in-Wonder" card), but I think they were really just emulator stubs running the playstation code, so I'm not surprised that newer hardware and versions of Windows confuse them. I eventually got rid of them and bought a PS2 and the "greatest hits" playstation versions of them. I haven't played very far in the playstation version of FF8 (although iirc, training in FF8 is a bit strange - I think because of the way enemies level up as you do, only their stats go up faster, you actually end up trying to avoid gaining experience. also, you can spend half an hour in a normal battle to draw spells from the enemies, then spend only 5 minutes to wipe out a boss); I'm focusing on FFX-2 at the moment. As far as remakes go, I see no rush to remake 7 or beyond, since they were already in 3d - I would like to see remakes of 1,2,5, and 6 in 3d (3 and 4 have already been done for the DS), and maybe some games that hadn't gotten official translations before, like Seiken Densetsu 3.

 

I'm gonna play FFII in a few weeks on my Vacation. It saddens me that FFIII never got remade for PS1. It's the only one I can't play on PS2/3.

I think my favourite is IX, it must be PS1 graphics perfected, still looks darn good to me. The system is the best so far IMHO. Junction kinda sucks, makes you never wanna use magics.

 

really enjoyed final fantasy tactics.. even tactics advanced on the gayboy.. nothing like being stuck out in a pirate boat in the middle of nowhere =] plays like a game of chess (which I own at! I stomp mudholes in chess)

 

+1

When I saw the tech demo for the PS3 I almost literally needed an emergency change of underwear. It was a very close call.

I'm not sure why they dont do it. Surely it would get the sales?

 

Thing is, it's easy to not use magic in FF8 - 100 Ultima attached to Elem-Def makes you immune to just about all magic damage, and magic really isn't needed as soon as you've got Squall, Irvine and Quistis as your dominant team (Lionheart, Shockwave Pulsar and Quick Shot will take anything down without too much trouble...) To be honest, I rarely used magic in any other FF game unless it was a character that was completely terrible at physical attacks... or an enemy that was immune to physical attack...

Final Fantasy Tactics is awesome. FFTA and FFTA2 aren't quite so good, but they're still OK. If FFT was enjoyable, have a look at Disgaea 1, 2 and 3 and Makai Kingdom.

It probably would... and it's not like Square haven't remade stuff. A few years ago they were solidly of the opinion that they'd never make a sequel (and then they made FFX-2...) or that they'd not rerelease a game... then they started releasing the old NES/SNES FF games on the PS1. So there is a chance... just depends how much they think they can make out of it.

 

I remember my brother bought a second hand PS1, which happened to come with FFVII.
We tried it once, couldn't work out what was going on (manual? pah!) and played other stuff.
A few months later, bored, I tried playing it again, this time after at least glancing at the manual.
From then on, I was playing it at every opportunity, which as it was my year out was most of the time.
Eventually, after probably 2-3 months of 8 hours/day I got all the way to the last boss, and promptly got my arse kicked so hard, this being my first jRPG I had no idea the amount of grinding I should have done to level up, I was probably a level 40 or so by the end, with only the equipment you get on the main quests.
So in the end I've never finished it, but I still remember the way the storyline just gets bigger and bigger. At the start of the game you're just running around in the slums, by the end you're jetting around the whole world in a jet propelled zeplin.

So, was the PC version any good then?

 

The PC version was almost exactly the same as the PS1 version. Only some graphical tweaks were applied, IIRC.

 

...is it just me that's annoyed about the overly long GF animations over-and-over-and-over again in FF8?
Or did I miss a trick to shortcut them? (on PS1)

"......100 Ultima attached to Elem-Def makes you immune to just about all magic damage..."
Any other good tipps?

"...Lionheart, Shockwave Pulsar and Quick Shot..."
Haven't managed those yet...and am in disk 3 of 4


Xir

 

You shouldn't really shortcut them, as hold down F (default on keyboard) and mash A to boost the damage that the GFs do. If they've learned Boost, anyway. You can get 2.55x more damage on some GFs (like Eden which has a really long sequence) if you're quick and careful. The ones in FFVII, FFIX and FFX were just as annoying.

It's been a while since I played FF8 obsessively, but I believe 100 Aura + 100 Ultima means you actually get healed by some attacks. 100 Meltdown attached to Status-Def reduces your vulnerability to various status ailments. If you've got Card Mod, try as hard as you can to get Laguna's and Ward's cards, as they Card-Mod into 100 Heroes (invulnerability for one character) and 20 Holy Wars (invulnerability for all three characters) respectively. That makes fights like Omega Weapon a total cakewalk as he can't touch you. (Go into the fight with Squall on, say, 500HP so he gets a Limit Break really easily...) Getting Squall's Lionheart as fast as possible is quite useful, as the Lionheart limit break is ridiculously powerful. It's possible to get the things needed to make the Lionheart by playing Triple Triad against the woman standing by Balamb railway station before you even enter the Fire Cavern. It takes ages, but it's doable.

Lionheart is the limit break you get with Squall's best weapon. Shockwave Pulsar can be taught to Quistis using a single Dark Matter, IIRC. Quick Shot (using Fast Ammo) is probably more useful than Irvine's most powerful limit (which uses Pulse Ammo) as Pulse Ammo is quite hard to get hold of (again IIRC...) Now, either I'm just the luckiest person in the world when it comes to getting the Lionheart limit in FF8, but if you make sure Squall is always very low on HP, he'll almost always use Lionheart (it's supposedly random which limit out of the four he uses...)

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Man, it's been ages since I played FF8. I can hardly remember all of the tricks I used to use. Although, this blog post has made me want to go back and play it again. A lot.

 

And it played in like 800 x 600 resolution so you could have it as a tile surrounded by black or stretched over your screen. Personally I opted for the former

 

Yeah, it gave you the choice between 320x240 and 640x480, IIRC. At the time, neither really looked bad (I'd spent most of the last year playing C&C almost non-stop) but 640x480 looked a lot better.

The fan-made high res packs keep drawing my attention, but every time I've tried them, they haven't worked for whatever reason.

 

As far as the backdrops go, they just ported the Playstation versions over to the PC - this is why they looked so crappy on 640x480. IIRC, the Playstation resolution was 320x200, so the backdrops would have been rendered to this resolution - no way were they going to re-render all those backdrops for the PC version's higher res. The battle screen and anything to do with polygons looked amazing on the PC version.

I shall have a look for these fan-made packs...Though again, I doubt they can do much for the pre-rendered backdrops...

Why oh why won't Squeenix remake this game with modern graphics :'(. They can keep the scrolling text boxes, they don't have to have voice acting... (because they probably wouldn't offer the option of japanese voices and english subtitles - instead they'd make a hash of the english voice acting... Just look at what they did to Cait-Sith in Advent Children!)

 

Yeah. I was running FFVII and FFVIII on a Voodoo3 originally, then a Voodoo5... the best thing about the Voodoo5 was the FSAA implementation that didn't corrupt the graphics the way that ATi and nVidia's AA did - and still do. Looked silky smooth with 4xFSAA, even at 640x480.

They don't, not really. But seeing FFVII running in 1280x1024 of 1600x1200 is quite sweet.

You'll want to check out...

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14329

http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=137851

http://qhimm.com/

http://forums.qhimm.com/

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=5731.0

For info on getting FFVIII and (with a little more surfing) FFVII in higher resolutions or generally 'prettier'.

I never saw Advent Children with the English dub. Japanese with subs all the way... English dubs are never any good - they try to hard to lip sync, and butcher everything in the process.

I'd like FFVII and FFVIII remade on the PS3 (or PC for preference, although that's unlikely) actually. 'Twould be awesome.