Poll of the Day > Why yes, I'm a fan of RPGs.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I played Final Fantasy in the 90s.
So you're a fan of 90s nostalgia then?

The correct cadence calls for "I am", don't do that again.

Sorrymasen.

they do cause cool explosions

Franchise peaked at Nine.

80 > 90

Smoking_Hamster posted...

Franchise peaked at Six (III)

Fixed that for you.

Series never peaked and most of the entries don't hold up.

90s cartoons. Video games were harder but not impossibly so.

Judgmenl posted...

Series never peaked

Mathematically impossible unless every game in the series was exactly the same

AltOmega2 posted...

Mathematically impossible unless every game in the series was exactly the same

If the series has been steadily improving and the most recent game is the best, that isn't really a peak. Defining a peak requires a decrease on the other side of the high point; without that, all you have is an upward trend.

adjl posted...

Defining a peak requires a decrease on the other side of the high point;

I'm gonna be that guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima
The set/range is bounded by the amount of games in the series, thus you don't actually need more than one lesser data point to be a maxima.

Of course, you might disagree that peak is equivalent to maxima. You probably could define it as a point where the rate of change goes from positive to negative. Looks like Wikipedia calls it a stationary point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_point

Smoking_Hamster posted...

Franchise peaked at One.

FTFY, but yeah I know I'm literally the only person who thinks this.

FF3 (6j) is runner up for sure

AltOmega2 posted...

Of course, you might disagree that peak is equivalent to maxima. You probably could define it as a point where the rate of change goes from positive to negative. Looks like Wikipedia calls it a stationary point https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflection_point

Yeah that. In this context, "peaked" means the series has yet to do better than its previous best. While it can still technically be correct to say that is true when the best game is the most recent one, the fact that there's been no opportunity to surpass that record means that's not really the most meaningful comparison.

adjl posted...

Yeah that. In this context, "peaked" means the series has yet to do better than its previous best. While it can still technically be correct to say that is true when the best game is the most recent one, the fact that there's been no opportunity to surpass that record means that's not really the most meaningful comparison.

FF15 is not better than FF6.

Black_Crusher posted...

FTFY, but yeah I know I'm literally the only person who thinks this.

FF3 (6j) is runner up for sure

I actually agree. FF1 is the best game in the series.

11110111011 posted...

I actually agree. FF1 is the best game in the series.

Hooray!

The biggest draw for me has always been being able to make your party from whatever class combo you want. Too bad about the bugs on the NES version, but theres always Origins.

Revelation34 posted...

FF15 is not better than FF6.

I don't particularly have an opinion on the matter, having played neither. That's just how I'm interpreting Judg's "series never peaked" comment, knowing that he's generally had good things to say about later entries in the past.

Black_Crusher posted...

Hooray!

The biggest draw for me has always been being able to make your party from whatever class combo you want. Too bad about the bugs on the NES version, but theres always Origins.

And there is where we will disagree.

Origins screwed the game up. No challenge, MP system was messed up, and they started using undescriptive names for spells (fira or something instead of Fire, Fire2, Fire3)

Pixel remaster comes the closest, but I still prefer to play the NES version.

11110111011 posted...

I actually agree. FF1 is the best game in the series.

Based entirely on my own subjective experience while playing them on original release, I loved FF2 (FFIV) way more than the first game, and then FF3 (FFVI) was even better.

When FFVII came out, it felt better than FFVI in a lot of ways, but there were also ways in which it didn't feel as great. And it's aged much more poorly for me than IV and VI (or even I).

And then FFVIII came out and made me question whether or not I actually liked the FF franchise as much as I thought I did. Which made me more critical of IX and X when they came out. And then XII bored me into never caring about FF as a franchise again.



Black_Crusher posted...

The biggest draw for me has always been being able to make your party from whatever class combo you want.

That was never the draw for me. Maybe because I never bothered to do a ton of combos, and mostly just stuck to the basic Fighter/Thief/White Mage/Black Mage or Fighter/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage teams, so I never got much out of the option to mix-and-match. Or maybe the reason why I never experimented with different teams was because the idea of mixing-and-matching never appealed to me in the first place (chicken-egg).

Same reason why I always saw FFV as one of the worst titles in the series. For some people the ability to shift and mix classes and develop skills makes it one of the best games in the franchise (along with Tactics and IX), but for me the characters felt mostly dull and the overall story felt kind of lame and boring, so it's one of the worst early titles for me.

To be honest, the FF games were probably some of the first games where I started to see the narrative and characterization as being one of the most important aspects of a game (at least as relates to whether or not I'm going to like a game). I didn't fall in love with RPGs like Suikoden or Lunar because of the gameplay...

11110111011 posted...

Origins screwed the game up. No challenge, MP system was messed up, and they started using undescriptive names for spells (fira or something instead of Fire, Fire2, Fire3)

Are you sure you're not thinking of the gba remake of 1&2? In that one, it's piss easy and they changed the magic system to MP vs. spell charges like how Wizardry and Dungeons and Dragons did it.

If so, I'm not a fan of that one very much at all.

This is my review of it on Amazon here from 2015: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1PCKP4SXXIHMS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00030GS8A

11110111011 posted...

Pixel remaster comes the closest, but I still prefer to play the NES version.

I have that on Steam and didn't like it nearly as much as the NES version, mostly because the fonts are small and crappy, the screen tears when you walk around, and there just seems to be way too much negative space on every screen. Like for example the battle will have these huge swaths of nothingness and the stats screen is populated by tiny texts in the giant rectangles.

Plus I think they used friggin' ARIAL for the font.. That sucks! I got the Switch version of Dragon Quest 3 and it's the same thing here- the font selection just looks plain bad to me.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That was never the draw for me. Maybe because I never bothered to do a ton of combos, and mostly just stuck to the basic Fighter/Thief/White Mage/Black Mage or Fighter/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage teams, so I never got much out of the option to mix-and-match. Or maybe the reason why I never experimented with different teams was because the idea of mixing-and-matching never appealed to me in the first place (chicken-egg).

Same reason why I always saw FFV as one of the worst titles in the series. For some people the ability to shift and mix classes and develop skills makes it one of the best games in the franchise (along with Tactics and IX), but for me the characters felt mostly dull and the overall story felt kind of lame and boring, so it's one of the worst early titles for me.

I think what makes it cool is that the characters never break archetype- well maybe class change with Bahamut would sort of count- I know lots of people like when every class can learn every skill or spell but to me that makes the whole point of classes kind of pointless. Giving the black wizard the option of learning 3 of 4 possible spells in any given magic level is cool and promotes replays (barring the bugged spells of course). If that same black wizard can somehow equip axes and better armor later.. or your fighter can eventually learn the same black magic spells than they're essentially the same thing.

Black_Crusher posted...

Are you sure you're not thinking of the gba remake of 1&2? In that one, it's piss easy and they changed the magic system to MP vs. spell charges like how Wizardry and Dungeons and Dragons did it.

If so, I'm not a fan of that one very much at all.

Yeah, that was the one I was thinking of.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

That was never the draw for me. Maybe because I never bothered to do a ton of combos, and mostly just stuck to the basic Fighter/Thief/White Mage/Black Mage or Fighter/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage teams, so I never got much out of the option to mix-and-match. Or maybe the reason why I never experimented with different teams was because the idea of mixing-and-matching never appealed to me in the first place (chicken-egg).

Same reason why I always saw FFV as one of the worst titles in the series. For some people the

Yeah, the party composition is the complete draw for me. It's why Dragon Warrior 3 is the best NES RPG (more choices than FF & class change system is better) and why FFV is my favorite in the series next to FF1.

Black_Crusher posted...

Giving the black wizard the option of learning 3 of 4 possible spells in any given magic level is cool and promotes replays (barring the bugged spells of course). If that same black wizard can somehow equip axes and better armor later.. or your fighter can eventually learn the same black magic spells than they're essentially the same thing.

Which is why it's kind of ironic that the second FF game ever was the one where literally every character could do everything, and only specialized as you did those things.

Keep casting black magic spells? Your magic power grows stronger. Keep hitting people with axes? You start doing more melee damage. You as the player essentially decide whether your group is going to be all mages or all fighters or what, and which character is going to be your healer/tank/damager/etc simply by virtue of how you use them.

And then everyone hated it.



11110111011 posted...

It's why Dragon Warrior 3 is the best NES RPG.

The funny thing is, I'd agree - just for entirely different reasons.

DW3 had more in-depth narrative and story, and has the most interesting setting to explore. It's probably the one I played the least back then (because by the time it came out I was already moving on to Final Fantasy and the SNES), but it's also the one I enjoyed the most.

I never cared much about the party composition at all (especially since all of your companions were basically nameless, faceless mooks - as opposed to the prince and princess in DWII and the diverse cast in DWIV), and I never really used class change options (except to get myself a Sage), but the rest of the game was what appealed to me (so much so that 10+ years later I worked a couple of ideas from it and DWI into a Changeling tabletop RPG campaign I was part of).

Agreed on DW3- that's my favorite NES RPG and actually still my favorite Dragon Quest. A huge part of it is how you can create your team from different classes (I'm really big on DQ9 too, only they can all pretty much learn everything eventually if you grind enough so it's not quite as special). For what it's worth the gbc version is my favorite.

My last DQ3 team was Hero / Thief / Wizard x2. I did this to try something different and oh man do you really miss having a dedicated healer in the early game. Having to rely on the Hero's heal spells and purchasing giant quantities of herbs was interesting.

Smoking_Hamster posted...

Franchise peaked at Twelve.

Fixed and only FFVII remake is the exception.

Black_Crusher posted...

Agreed on DW3- that's my favorite NES RPG and actually still my favorite Dragon Quest. A huge part of it is how you can create your team from different classes (I'm really big on DQ9 too, only they can all pretty much learn everything eventually if you grind enough so it's not quite as special). For what it's worth the gbc version is my favorite.

My last DQ3 team was Hero / Thief / Wizard x2. I did this to try something different and oh man do you really miss having a dedicated healer in the early game. Having to rely on the Hero's heal spells and purchasing giant quantities of herbs was interesting.

Yeah, and the other great part of DQ3 was planning the levels. When I sat down a figured it out, I think you could get a character through 3 jobs at level 36 for about the same as 1 single job at level 40.

I usually ended up with a bunch of thief characters who used to be wizards, sages, or pilgrims at the end game because they got great HP bonuses and it didn't take any more time to level than the single characters.

God dammit, now I want to fire up DQ3 again lol

Black_Crusher posted...

God dammit, now I want to fire up DQ3 again lol

I just beat it around Christmas. I decided next time I'm doing 3 goof-offs to sages for the lulz.

@Judgmenl

Been playing FF7R with my partner, we're so close to the end of the game, on the last chapter.

Way I look at it, most of the games are either extremely great, or extremely terrible.

Got a lot of love for 4, 7, 7R, Tactics, 12, 13, and 14R.

ANd this is my favorite game in the series.

https://rpgmaker.net/games/7777/

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And then everyone hated it.

Because "get better as you do things" in RPGs always leads to dumb shit like attacking your tank with your fists for hours to raise his health and defense.

You know what rpg I like a lot? the elder scrolls and fallout

EchoBaz posted...

@Judgmenl

Been playing FF7R with my partner, we're so close to the end of the game, on the last chapter.

Way I look at it, most of the games are either extremely great, or extremely terrible.

Got a lot of love for 4, 7, 7R, Tactics, 12, 13, and 14R.

ANd this is my favorite game in the series.

https://rpgmaker.net/games/7777/

You are allowed to like whatever you want.

Judgmenl posted...

You are allowed to like whatever you want.

Indeed.

Also, as a fan of 90's Final Fantasy, I recommend checking out the game I linked.

Maybe check out these as well:

https://rpgmaker.net/games/427/

https://rpgmaker.net/games/82/

https://rpgmaker.net/games/272/

Zareth posted...

Because "get better as you do things" in RPGs always leads to dumb shit like attacking your tank with your fists for hours to raise his health and defense.

Hey, I'm not saying people were wrong to hate it.