/vr/ - Retro Games

>if the game didn't release in my country then it means it's shit

I can't believe people with this mentality, are they all self-centered americans?

In Europe we didn't get anything and when we did it was inferior 50hz version, so we know "(un/)released in my country" means jack shit

>>10049310
sucks to be european lol

>>10049278
Why are ESLs spics so common now?

Five is incredible.

I like to play it and imagine what I would have been doing in my life if they had localized it for America.

>>10049357
idk, do some research and report back

5 is one of the best Final Fantasy games. It sold extremely well in Japan (much, much more than 4, and few less than 6). In Japan it's held in a much higher esteem. The fact that we got 4 instead of 5 kinda sucks.

>>10049278
2 is one of the worst titles in the series, it had a system that just flat out didn't work where stat usage determines stat growth and there are no levels
in theory kinda neat
in practice beating up your teammates and healing them is the best way to level

>>10049278

In whom was this idea seeded? I followed the US version of the series back then and loved it, and it has never occurred to me until this very thread that anybody might possibly have thought the Japan-only series entries were inferior. I've never heard of anybody thinking that.

IIRC the reason they skipped some of the titles was because some suits at Square thought the games would be too hard or confusing for US players. I'm not sure what this assumption was based on, because there had been RPGs on PC that were a succes in the US before Final Fantasy became a thing. Also they did release Final Fantasy 1 as well as Dragon Warrior 1 in the US and those sold alright I think.

>>10049360
>I like to play it and imagine what I would have been doing in my life if they had localized it for America.

They did for the GBA port

>>10050490
Publishers always come up with BS excuses when asked about an unreleased game, so they're like
>oh don't worry about that, you wouldn't have liked it anyway!
besides they genuinely believed people would like what *they* told them to like

Anyway RPGs sold really well on NES and GB, FF1 US sales outsold Japan ones even. But publishers failed to capitalize on that because they were too lazy to release games that needed long translation and costly booklets and thus the public lost interest in a genre, since the genre was pretty much extinct already.
The decrease of popularity in console RPGs is entirely on the publishers fault.

>>10049310
It's especially silly considering both 2 and 5 were translated and ready for release and got cancelled for logistics more than anything else.

>>10049278
Has 3 actually ever been released? I remember we never got that one.

>>10050387
well why not, they chose 3 of six games to bring stateside, and it says a lot about those 3 games and a lot about the other 3.

stuff like them not being able to afford to bring over some of them wont occur to anyone who just plays what comes out. following japan and stuff isn't something everyone just does.

>>10050943
3 has only come for the first time in the pixel remaster

>>10050316
This is a meme that outs people as not actually playing the game.

In practice you can just play it like any other FF and it's fine. Too easy in fact. Not even close to the worst in the series, nor the best. It's alright.

>>10051051
and the 3D DS remake??

>>10051095
some people hate monster closets or the word system, but I think they're clever

>>10051097
the original game had 4 blank slate characters, the ds remake has four actual characters with story bits. if you check them out you will notice that the original game is way different than the DS version

>>10049278
If you're interested in the evolution of the series, II and III are worth a look: II was an ambitious title that set the path for both the later story-focused titles like IV and VI and the SaGa series with its mechanics (Which would get much more refined). III would introduce the job system as we know it, which V would refine further, while introducing the remaining serieswide elements that I and II did not.
Just keep in mind that they're Famicom RPGs, so they're kinda janky. Especially II.
FFV is more of a dark-horse, with it being considered to have the best gameplay due to the job system letting you build a character by unlocking skills. The game even has a community event, "Four Job Fiesta", which is about beating the game with only four jobs.
>>10050490
FFII had a proto that was made. That seems to be a mix of censorship (the game has Hell as a main plot point and several deaths) and timing (the first game came to the west in May of 1990 and the SNES was released in Japan in November of that same year, coming west-ward a year later). III was almost certainly due to timing since that released in 1990. By contrast, IV launched in both the west and Japan in the same year.
V is the one that was said to have been held off due to difficulty concerns.
https://www.chronocompendium.com/wiki/index.php?title=Super_Play_Magazine_Woolsey_Interview
>The Final Fantasy series basically has two seperate tracks: the odd series (FFI, FFIII, and FFV) are controller command drive games, whereas the even series are more story line driven games. As for FFV though, well although we're sure it's a great title it hasn't been a hit with too many people in out-focus groups, although the more experienced gamers loved the complex character building - it's just not accessible enough to the average gamer. But we're determined we want to release it so we're going to wait and introduce it once there's a larger audience for it's particular style. Hence the wait.

>>10051097
The DS remake changes a lot of the game, between the story, some of the dungeon layouts, the job skills though the PR version took quite a few of those, so it isn't REALLY the NES version either and armor/weapon sets, the enemy skills and AI, etc.
III DS is a pretty extensive remake that you're probably better off treating as a different game from the original.

>>10051049
>and it says a lot about those 3 games and a lot about the other 3
Yeah, it says localization takes too long to justify releasing a huge expensive game after the console it's on has already been replaced

>>10051154
it says they weren't very good.

>>10049310
>Seething Eurocuck whining about America

>>10049360
Final Fantasy Anthology on PS1 has a stupidly transrated version, but it's a serviceable version that released in 1999; not too far removed from the SFC's era

>>10051051
wow it took 23 years to be released on the PS. That's actually really pathetic why couldn't they just remaster it along with 2. It's better than 2.

>>10052015
I like 2, but yeah it's crazy how long it took. But it's stuff like that that makes it seem like these games aren't localized because they don't measure up.

>>10052015
The prevailing theory is that Square lost the source code.
The official statement is that the game was too big to be remastered for the Wonderswan (seemingly moreso an issue of manpower and assets than actual cartridge size.) The Wonderswan releases became the basis for all the rest of the 2D ports, so the only port of 2D III was the Virtual Console version.

>>10050943

>>10049278
2 is widely considered to be shit. People seem to like 3 well enough. 5 has a large following of people who enjoy it for its job system, though it is typically agreed that the story is not very good.

>>10049278
Considering they released all of them on the PS1 later in english (except 3 lol) yeah they are good.
5 is great, 2 is fine people shit on it for it's different leveling system but it's fine, 3 is like 5 in a lot of ways but not as developed as 5 but it's still fun.
2, 3 and 5 are significantly more grindy than any others so that might be why they weren't localized originally. Although it's not as bad as people make it out even the grindiest FF game is peanuts compared to fucking DQ.

>>10049278
>2
It has a surprisingly ambitious story for NES. But the gameplay is only enjoyable if you really like to grind skills up. Its levelling system works much better for JRPGs.
>3
Easily the most ambitious of the NES trilogy. But it just gets cumbersome to play after awhile and by all accounts, the final dungeon is a nightmare.
>5
This one is great. The gameplay is like a far-improved version of 3, plus ATB combat. The story is underrated, silly but enjoyable, I laughed out loud a few times playing the GBA version. Deserves to be up there with 4. Actually, this one is probably even better than 4.

>>10050490
>I'm not sure what this assumption was based on, because there had been RPGs on PC that were a succes in the US before Final Fantasy became a thing.
The people playing PC games at that time were far more likely to enjoy RPGs than the average NES gamer. This is back when the action-platformer was king.

>>10053312
>Its levelling system works much better for JRPGs.
Fuck, I meant to say action RPGs

>>10050387
whost*

4 changed my life, I don't think I would have enjoyed 5 nearly as much if it had been released contemporaneously.

>>10051097
Never fucking happened.

>>10051145
FFV is fucking my ass so goddamn raw right now. The bosses are vicious.

Is Faris from V the first instance of a canonical tranny character in a game?

>>10055393

>>10055389
can't show that in a christian manga

5 is one of the best for sure even with a kind of basic story. I just replayed it again this winter with a mod to unlock all the jobs from the start and had some extra fun although it doesn’t change much. 3 NES I played but never beat as a teenager and I remembered it more fondly than it is. I beat it sometime over the winter for the first time, the NES rom + translation on my MacBook. It’s great and for nes RPGs it’s top notch but 5 worked out a lot of kinks so it can be kind of annoying to go back to, and there’s some forced-job areas that are annoying. The sprites and chiptunes are some of ur best of all time. By far the coolest Victory Fanfare out there using the original theme (although 9 is epic too, 7 is the best but a different theme after the fanfare)

>>10055429
>marathoning FF on a MacBook
kek, are you that retard in the /v/ thread yesterday that was bringing two mages to Oeilvert?

>>10055389
I finished V recently, and yeah bosses are tough.
ExDeath's first fight in particular, I only got past because I used Chemist shenanigans.
>>10055380
>The job level bit
>He thinks job levels only affect the job-specific abilities
lol. lmao.

>>10055587
>tfw I'm about to fight ExDeath for the first time

Blue Dragons are fucking absurd.

>>10050637
My favorite part is that FF1 was programmed almost entirely by an American-Iranian man who lived in California, then Square loved his work so much that he was retained for FF2 and when his work visa ran out they literally moved the entire base of operations to California so he could keep working on the game, and then FF2 STILL didn't release in the US despite being made in America by an American.

>>10051098
The word system is a good IDEA but the execution is a fucking pain and makes it not very fun.

>>10055650
I suppose you could just have item macguffins to take to NPCs too, it's the same as an inventory of words.

>>10055654
They may as well just check if the right word is in your inventory and trigger the appropriate dialogue for it. There are no consequences for saying the wrong word to the wrong person, so there's no reason you can't just thoughtlessly use every word on every NPC. It could also be cool to let players type in a word at will, so the player's knowledge of the right words could let them do things out of order without getting each word into the inventory first (or even a few hidden words that never go in the inventory), but that opportunity is missed. So when there are no consequences and no real freedom for the player to act on their own knowledge it really is no different from collecting key items and in most RPGs (even FF1) key items automatically trigger dialogue with no need to dig through menus.

>>10055587
Huh, I actually ended up finding ExDeath pretty easy, died the first time because I wasn't expecting his double attacks but I got him easily second time


>Ninja, Ranger, Dragoon and White Mage with Time magic
>precast Float to counter his gay earthquake
>keep Hastega up
>use healing staff for the first half of the fight before he starts shitting damage
>use Image on the three damage dealers and Blink on the White Mage
>use full party Curaga casts once he starts being a total asshole


The Gil Turtles gave me FAR more trouble earlier, holy shit those things are complete nightmares

>>10055628
>they literally moved the entire base of operations to California so he could keep working on the game
It's a mystery why they treasured him so much, since half of the game doedn't work.

>>10049278
2 is meh
3 is very forgettable

5 is great but no 4 or 6. Still worth a play.

I think the one we actually missed out on when younger was 5.

>>10049360
I had this debate with my friend recently about how 5 is better than 8. He literally thinks 8 is better because "nobody plays 5".

>>10055389
I used the dumb dumb workhorse method and just grinded my characters to the point I knew they would win the boss battles.

>>10056823
Sounds like your friend is an NPC with no thoughts of his own.

>>10055683
your character shouldn't know the word ahead of time though, lol. most jrpgs do the automatic dialogue trigger, but it could be nice to have some more interactivity. ideally I think all NPCs should react to multiple words, something akin to Morrowind with a list of topics that grows.

>>10055723
It was keeping on top of his attacks, especially when they double, that got me. Doesn't help that he can zombie people, nor that this was the first time I'd played V for more than like an hour, so I didn't which jobs synergized well

>>10049278
3 and 5 are amazing. They're my favorites in fact

I like to think of 1, 3 and 5 as a trilogy.

>>10057239
>your character shouldn't know the word ahead of time though
In real life you can say anything to anyone at any time. You could say Wild Rose to someone and get a positive result and the in-character RP reason could just be that he guessed. It would open up the progression in interesting ways and justify the system being as cumbersome as it is. As it stands I can't think of a reason for forcing the player to go through all those dumbass menus beyond a very bare illusion of puzzle solving. Either incorporate more freedom in the words the player can use or incorporate consequences to saying the wrong things to the wrong people or there's just no reason for it.

>>10057271
Yea the double wrecked me the first time, at that point you need heavy healing as often as possible or it's over. I got lucky on the zombie, only Faris actually got hit by it.

>>10057508
>In real life you can say anything to anyone at any time.
that's not true though, people are limited by their applicable knowledge. it's impossible for someone to broach a topic with zero information to premise it.

God, I'm fucking terrible at REMEMBERING shit in these games. In IV I went through both of the optional caves with damaging floors before I remembered I could use Float to avoid the damage, and in V now I went through the entirety of ExDeath's castle doing the same shit, completely forgetting Float and instead relying on Mighty March/Healing Staff in random encounters to replenish health.

>>10058363
Sour spaghetti.

>>10049278
It's more like if you grew up during the era, you had an attachment to the ones you played and the rest you got late after being wow'd by FFVII and later titles. It was hard to go back from the three mainline PSX FFs to the older ones unless you were already playing in that era and had attachments to it.

I did pick up FFV for the PSX when it came out and played it completion and had a blast, but then I had several friends who tried it and decided they didn't really like it. However, despite growing up with FFVI and previous titles, those same friends never played them anymore despite having fond memories of the games. I think it was more that I actually enjoy retro games in general and thus didn't have a problem going back to play classic games I hadn't in the past whereas my friends were the type that don't want to regress backwards in technology so they won't bother with a series they like's older games.

I think Diablo is a good example in that field as well, I still play it regularly just like I did when it was new, whereas despite spending thousands of hours on it, my friends won't touch it again because "it looks dated."