/vr/ - Retro Games

>>10914567
Because so many of the characters are ugly. The style is beautiful when taken at a glance but most of the main players are unlikable freaks.

It's a fantasy game. So players want to play an fearsome and honorable knight with cool armor and swords but instead you get a pathetic loser in command of an absolute embarrassment order of knights shown up in every way by the female counterpart led by Beatrix. My 4-year-old loves Steiner because Steiner's such a buffoon. "Look I'm shaking my arms mad like Steiner!" Toddlers love that shit. And if you thought Steiner was pathetic and annoying, wait until you meet Quina and Amarant. Freya is a boring mope. Plus, dragoons in other games looked like Knights in armor with dragon themes. Freya wears this weird raincoat-looking thing and oh yeah, is a giant rat.

Shouldn't be fucking hard to figure out why FF9's character design choices turned people off. Either you went full reddit and embraced all the nonsense for its quirky novelty or you didn't.

And incidentally, playing this with kids gets really fucking boring sooner than later. They loved Steiner's antics. They love Vivi.
They didn't so much love the most of the lengthy dialog scenes in Lindblum and it's hard to get through any decent amount of content in the 30-45 minute chunks of time we play. The 4yo literally asked to play FF1 (NES version) instead because driving the ship around and getting on and off at different parts of the world and going to different towns is more fun for him than trudging through pre-rendered backgrounds and listening to me read dialog.

>>5789282
>>5791258
The problem with Steiner is that he's unreasonable and his behavior is constantly played for laughs. He's a stooge in a party that, as far as I'm concerned, didn't need one. He could have been insecure and overcompensating with conflicts over duty and self-worth without being an obnoxious fool every step of the way. Plus he looks goofy. Zidane is a cocky/funny guy, a carefree player with loose morals. He could have been a great contrast with a more stoic, reserved Steiner who disapproves of Zidane's reckless ways and objects to the plans without devolving into a fit of sputtering rage every time Zidane tools him. Instead it's just constant shenanigans and tomfoolery for hours of the game until finally Steiner gets some fair treatment.

Vivi stands out because he's one of the few characters who isn't obnoxious fool. He actually has a legitimate reason to behave like a naive child and (unlike Eiko) he is earnest and not bratty. Quina is a one-note greed monster who people think is wise because he randomly gets some good lines. Amarant is a caricature of an edgelord whose brooding aloofness is so over-the-top I could not take him seriously at all.

Garnet and Zidane are OK, they are portrayed as young teenagers in extraordinary situations and that's fine. My problem is that taken altogether the party in FF9 is a clown car of goofballs. While I realize this is a valid artistic choice and disliking it is a matter of taste, it was very disappointing to me as a game that was touted as a return to the old-style Final Fantasy. The older games had characters who were, on average, older and more mature. Child characters like Palom & Porom and Relm were minor side characters, and the shorter length of the stories meant that goofy stuff rarely over-stayed its welcome.