/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3728906]

What made this game such a masterpiece?

[Anonymous No.3728908]

The music, mostly.

[Anonymous No.3728930]

http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2010/02/final-fantasy-vi.html
This articulates perfectly what makes FFVI such a stand out game, I suggest everyone read it when they have the time.

[Anonymous No.3728943]

So many characters and the time skip after the end of the world really makes you feel like you get to know your characters on very deep level. Losing all your friends then spending endless hours trying to find them and finding out what they have been doing since and that feeling that things will never go back to the way they used to be, even after you beat the boss, so bittersweet.

[Anonymous No.3728945]

>>3728906
An audience ignorant of the RPG genre. Must have blown some minds in America because FF is pretty much all you lot ever got. FF6 was old hat for the rest of us.

[Anonymous No.3728947]

>>3728906
The popularity of FFVII.

[Anonymous No.3728953]

>>3728945

You know this is a US website right?

Also.. calling the US "America" is only something Americans do. So nice subtle troll, but you fail.

[Anonymous No.3729050]

so i'm replaying ffvi for the first time since I was in middle school. obviously there are a shit ton of ways to break and exploit this game. any tips other than using magic stat boosts at level up? any characters that I should not apply this method toward?

[Anonymous No.3729098]

>>3728906

FF6 does a good job of portraying how much death and suffering is involved in war.

The world of ruin aptly captures hopelessness and futility. Everyone gives up fighting. Locke convinces himself he can conquer death and loss of loved ones. Cyan perpetrates an illusion for someone else who has suffered the loss of a loved one. Strago joins a cult to as an opiate to escape pain and suffering. Terra runs an orphanage to cope with feeling powerless and insignificant due to failing to stop Kefka and the large scale destruction of the world. Gau avoids civilization altogether to avoid rejection and abandonment. Setzer buries the past in an attempt to sever attachment. Relm allows her works of art to consume her as a way of avoiding despair. Edgar wants to return to his home as a way to run away from his problems. Sabin aimlessly searches for meaning and purpose- also running away from his problems. Mog is too afraid to leave his cave/home. And lastly, Shadow is of course the Jungian shadow. He's a conflict of intentions, he's a despised figure, his dreams shed light on his state of mind- and out of Shadow creativity (Relm) is born. Shadow also has a martyr complex- he wants to die for a good cause to atone for past actions.

All in all, I think FF6 does a good job of capturing the multitude of ways people deal with death, suffering, and failure.

[Anonymous No.3729112]

>>3729098
I forgot about Strago in the world of ruin. Tons of feels ;_;

[Anonymous No.3729127]

>>3728945
I'll second this. FFVI isn't that popular in Japan for a reason.

[Anonymous No.3729137]

>>3729112
Dunno how you have anything left in the tank after Doma Castle and the Phantom Train.

[Anonymous No.3729284]

You guys realize that this thread was made immediately after the previous "let's glorify FFVI" thread ended, right? You realize these threads are bait right

[Anonymous No.3729293]

>>3728945
You are trying too hard. FF6 is loved by non US people too, it sold like fucking crazy everywhere. Source-not from US.

[Anonymous No.3729514]

>>3728906
Wide array of different characters and character centric plot. Story-wise speaking, II and IV were better.

[Anonymous No.3729521]

why are jrpgs so girly

[Anonymous No.3729542]

>>3728906
I don't know since I dropped it out of boredom in the WoR
I suspect most people praise it to appear cool for not liking VII

[Anonymous No.3729547]

>>3729542
I suspect you're an idiot.

[Anonymous No.3729558]

>>3729547
I suspect you're butthurt

[Anonymous No.3729923]

>>3728930
What a pretentious article. So much "prose" and verbosity. After struggling to get through it I can't think of anything he said worthwhile that wasn't just an otherwise generic synopsis on various characters. I didn't even nod my head in affirmation at anything. I'm quite disappointed desu

[Anonymous No.3729930]

>>3728906
Great ensemble cast that utilized most of them well, good sprite work, and an amazing sound track.

[Anonymous No.3730436]

>>3729930
A game that pushed the Snes to it's near limits, except for the awful Magitek factory escape sequences.

[Anonymous No.3730462]

>>3729923
>What a pretentious article. So much "prose" and verbosity. After struggling to get through it I can't think of anything he said worthwhile that wasn't just an otherwise generic synopsis on various characters.
Welcome to HG101


>>3730436
While it was certainly a nice game it wasn't a technically impressive game.

[Anonymous No.3730472]

>>3730462
What do you consider technically impressive for SNES?

[Anonymous No.3730562]

>>3728906
>masterpiece
No, the game is riddled with bugs and imbalances, the plot is mediocre and the translation is completely off. the game has many MANY problems.

[Anonymous No.3730610]

Multiple characters, with their own stories and gameplay differences.
Decent graphics for the times, amazing music (Nobuo Motherfucking Uematsu).
Interesting "industrial times plus magic" universe. Nowadays this is common, but at the time non-medieval magic was rare.
That amazing story pull just at the middle of the game.
Good English adaptation, capturing the essence of the characters instead of just translating strings literally.

[Anonymous No.3730620]

>>3729098
this is such a great comment, thanks anon

[Anonymous No.3730626]

>>3729098
Gogo wants to run away from their individuality and obliterate their own personality. If you aren't yourself, you can't be blamed.

[Anonymous No.3730956]

Storytelling
The battle system is great too, barring you dont cheese it via its many bugs and exploits. When i was ten years old when the game came out my first playthrough was about as legit as it could get. my only problem was the aging crt i played on was so dark i literally missed a tile switch in the pheonix cave and thus missed out on locke, ragnorak (illumina), paladin sheild, etc. (the lack of brightness also gave me major problems in lufia 2, especially dragon mountain).

I still playthrough the game more than any others, mixing it up with no level runs with different characters and set ups to keep it interesting.

Still my favorite game of all time, with silent hill 2 a distant second

if a group of people could make a multiplayer FF Remnants version of this game for byond i could die happy...

[Anonymous No.3731047]

>>3730626

Yeah i wan't really sure where to put Gogo and Umaro- but a quick google search gave me some ideas.

So coping mechanisms- one is identification. By becoming another person you escape yourself and your woes. Maybe this is what Gogo is? Given how weak he is- mimicing more powerful characters gives him a feeling of power that allows him to distance himself from his own inferiority.

And, Umaro is perhaps symbolization- if we put emphasis on his bone carvings. He's turning unwanted thoughts into metaphorical symbols. His unwanted thoughts involve bones- so maybe death and mortality?

[Anonymous No.3731096]

>>3729098
Cyan has TWO non-coping episodes.

Tera has also had repeated problems stomaching war, and that started long before the world of ruin.

HOWEVER...

Gau always avoided civilization because he simply grew up in the wild.

Setzer buried his past before, and undid that in the WoR.

Sabin ran in the WoB.

Edgar was perfectly fine and focussed, he even overlooked the thieves in the name of bigger concerns.

Mog is wild like Gau.

[Anonymous No.3731109]

>>3729923
"Prose"? This is an insult, now? So, trying to make something interesting to read is a fault? I take it you like to read instructions manuals in your spare time, then

[Anonymous No.3731125]

>>3729098
This is one of the things that I love about the World of Ruin portion of the game! The party is smashed, and you have to rebuild it. You do lot even get to start with the original trio. You have to Celes takes over as the lens through which you view the coming events. Not too many games will give you a compelling main character, and then snatch it away, mid game.

I disagree with a few of your interpretations, however. Sabin never gave up. He continued to fight, even if he was powerless by himself. Celes finds him fighting, actually. A lot of the characters did some weird things, like Relm going off to be a painter. Tera fascinated me, the most. She still tried to help people, but was too terrified of her own power to actually fight. Having to leave her in that orphanage actually hurt, the first time I played through. Seeing her so diminished and fearful broke my heart, a little. Like, I had let her down by not teaching her to be breve and embrace her power as a force for good

[Anonymous No.3731251]

>>3728906
The Square Soft label.

[Anonymous No.3731276]

>>3728906
Eh, it had a lot of issues, I wouldn't call it a masterpiece. Would be nice to see a release that fixed the bugs and added better dialogue, but kept the original graphics and gameplay.

[Anonymous No.3731279]

by having some of the shittiest scenes (the opera), the blandest characters (all of them), and a shitty villain but he causes the end of the world so epic xD

ff7 is better in every way.

[Anonymous No.3731407]

>>3731279
This

[Anonymous No.3731526]

>>3731109
Sarcasm. It's more fluff than prose that tries to fancy up an altogether lackluster article. It didn't say or provide anything most people wouldn't already know from playing the game.

You know what's a great article on FFVI?

https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-vi-s-dancing-mad-a-critical-analysis-157570.phtml

[Anonymous No.3731528]

>>3731125
I never got Relm's motivation in the WoR either. For the longest while I was under the impression that she was actually kidnapped by Owzer(?) and forced to paint.

[Anonymous No.3731567]

>>3728906
Cast and its development. OST. Scale/scope. The way it handled the dark-ish themes. Light humor here and there kept it varied.
Pretty hard to argue against it being a masterpiece.

[Anonymous No.3731703]

>>3731096

Some of these things are right- but you aren't showing that I'm wrong. Only that the characters maintain coping mechanisms.

Where I think you're wrong:
Gau encountered humans on the veldt- we know that from npcs hinting at how to get Gau to trust you with dried meat. Simply growing up in the wild doesn't explain why Gau is so mistrustful of humans- nor does it explain why Gau chose to remain in the wild as a child rather than seeking the company of other humans- as a normal psychologically healthy human would do. Humans- to Gau- would be like any other animal- except Gau has subconscious psychological issues of abandonment associated with humans and that's why he treats them differently than the other animals on the veldt.

Edgar is a hard case because he seems a bit cocky- seems to have a plan, and seems to have his shit together. But when you meet up with him he's pretending to be a pirate. And then we find out- he's separated from Figaro Castle and trying to get back. He isn't looking for the rebels he fought alongside. He isn't still fighting Kefka. He adapted- changed his goals to be much smaller and picked up new skills- to be a pirate. You can fill in the blank that he was planning to fight Kefka once he got back to Figaro. But that's not in the story. His process of getting back to Figaro was a way of coping with death, suffering, and failure.

Mog isn't wild like Gau. Even if your claim were accurate- it doesn't explain anything. Mog's description is "human loving, fast talking, slam dancing moogle". What exactly is "wild like Gau" about that? Mog isn't human of course, but in some ways he's more human than Gau. Mog is a social creature. Mog lives in a society of peers. Mog fights alongside his peers to protect the rebels and defend their cave against the empire. Mog makes Umaro his bitch by saying "I'm your boss now". Gau is antisocial he doesn't fight to defend land or people. Mog is not wild like Gau.

[Anonymous No.3731747]

I just picked this game up. Never played it. Going to run it on my PS3 I guess, all though would rather play on a PS1 for the old school exp. But that would seem like a waste of money. Wish me luck!

[Anonymous No.3731773]

>>3731747
>arguing with yourself over "authenticity" but playing the PS1 port and not SNES

wew lad

[Anonymous No.3731789]

>>3731773
>thought I was posting in a ff7 thread

being this retarded

[Anonymous No.3731863]

>>3730472
not that guy but if you really need to play a game that pushed the console to its very limits, consider playing Chrono Trigger

[Anonymous No.3731895]

>>3729050

I don't play video games much anymore, apart from the odd online flash game and knowledge quiz. But I saw this bread baking on the front page and I just had to pop in, because FFVI is my favorite video game.

I can't really say anything that hasn't already been said, but let me explicitly point something out: I think it's shortly after the dinner with Geshtahl, where you can either negotiat well or poorly, if you do well (IIRC) there's a room with like 20 treasure chests in the compound that you are given access to. You can see most of the chests on-screen but there's like ONE MAYBE TWO fuckers hidden just off-screen that are easy to miss. Make sure you get those. I don't think there's anything particularly amazing in it/them, but it's the principle of the thing, you know.

Also if you want Mog to learn his water-dance you have to loop back around and do the serpent trench again before the world goes to shit. It cannot be got afterwards, no-way, no-how.

[Anonymous No.3731949]

>>3728906
It had a great atmosphere, music, lore, and characters. It used staple troupes very well. The returners vs the evil empire. A mad man demigod etc. Even with these serious tones, they took time to throw in some slapstick to keep you honest. You got to explore, and were free to do as you please. It was a great game, still is.

[Anonymous No.3731981]

>>3728906
>Likable cast of characters.
>Not only are there a lot of characters to choose from, but the game has several parts where you have to split up. This keeps the player from relying on a set team, while everyone else sits on the bench
>Great battle system - characters all feel unique
>Excellent and memorable soundtrack
>The setting was something new (at the time) for FF, and it fit the game. The art-style and sprite-work really sold the setting and everything looked great

Lastly, and this is an obvious point, but Kefka was a great villain and people love him. JRPGs often have villains that want to rule/destroy the world, but they're all talk and threats. With FF6, we finally got to see what it looks like for a villain to say that they want to rule the world and succeed. FF6 becomes a masterpiece when you wake up at Celes and get to rediscover the world you knew after Kefka ruined it. The timeskip and getting to see what happened to all of your friends is what made that game for me

[Anonymous No.3731986]

>>3731703
>>3729098

Honestly anon this is fucking brilliant and I totally agree. I'm the overbearing fag who started that enormous FF6 thread last week but i didn't even think about this idea, that all of the characters are dealing with these ideas of abandonment and so on that you've brought up. It's fucking brilliant.

So now i'm thinking about other stuff, about how often JRPGs feature these big, blind, autonomous villains that are basically just unbridled destruction. FF has lots of these villains, but they're rarely as self-aware as the villain of FF6. Phantasy Star games consistently have one big bad guy, Dark Force: it's just whatever is in Pandora's Box that doesn't get closed. PS stories are about these destroyed worlds as well and failed coping mechanisms. I really think that's just where good characterization comes from in these games, but there's some much more complicated stuff at work also, stuff that has to do with games/movies/texts & other stuff.

I don't want to go bananas again tho w/my own shit tho. I just wanted to say that this is exactly the kind of shit I wanted to fucking hear about and talk about and think about, *what these games mean.* Or some of the things they mean. Or the things they might mean. Shit like that.

Would you do this anon a favor and talk about Sephiroth? Because he's coping with the loss of something too, right? And yet he's also the primary antagonist who briefly joins the party...

I just think you're on to something really super interesting with all of this. Villains/world destruction/coping mechanisms/jrpg characterization. Don't these games intimate something about the whole idea of heroes in storytelling: die a hero, or see yourself live long enough to become a villain? Stuff like that? That there are no heroes, just coexistent assemblies?Even Kojima wound up turning Big Boss into the hero of his own never-ending saga. But that's a digression.

Goddamn I love JRPGs so much.

[Anonymous No.3732298]

>>3731986

Sephiroth isn't that psychologically interesting to me. I haven't played the offshoots of VII so maybe there's more info there on Sephiroth's psychology. Just going off of VII He's more of a mix of literary archetypes- the fallen hero, dealer of divine retribution.

The most obvious is that Seph is a fallen hero- he rises up to be a famous warrior well liked and revered, discovers his past, feels betrayed, then becomes an irredeemable villain.

I understand his villainy as a sort of divine retribution for injustices against his ancestors. You might think Seph's villainy arises through coping mechanism like displacement- displacing feelings of betrayal onto people he can harm- and you might think he uses rationalization to go from his feelings of hurt and betrayal- to taking up divine retribution against deserving targets. The psychological story fits the events- but people who cope are avoiding truth in important ways- through coping mechanisms. Sephiroth, on the contrary, embraces the truth and doesn't avoid it. In fact, embracing truth is what propels him into villainy. You have to ask yourself is Seph so emotionally fragile that he attempts to destroy the world to avoid emotional pain- or does Seph see a chance to become a deity- and take it. I think Sephiroth just wants to be a deity- and i think the writers want the sharp contrast to Cloud- who is so emotionally fragile that he throws himself on a path to become a deity (hero) to avoid the emotional pain of the truth.

[Anonymous No.3732364]

>>3732298
>Sephiroth embraces the truth and doesn't avoid it. In fact, embracing truth is what propels him into villainy

Fucking yes this.

I only started thinking about this recently, the differences between *watching movies* (or reading books) and *playing games.* Games borrow techniques from cinema to tell stories, but in a game you/I/we are at once actor, director (we control the camera) and spectator. Things change in this way. Studios still make games for $ the same way that movie producers do, but games - and my focus of interest is the JRPG, because it's such a standardized product at this point (and my favourite genre) - don't have passive spectators in the way that movies do. You have to play them. That level of virtuality changes things.

So when I read stuff like this I get floored. I knew there was something going on in FF6 and I floundered in the other thread trying to articulate what that was. Blowing up the world and so on. But this is way more interesting than that.

The characters are coping. But it's not obvious, and if the developers had belaboured all of that it would have changed the way we think about the story.
In movies - I have studied this to some degree - things run on heroes resolving their conflicts. That's what mainstream 3-act structure is all about. What has killed me for years is this whole question, *what if those conflicts can't get resolved.* Saving the world and so on. Because sometimes the world doesn't get saved, or if it does, it can only be by megalomaniac assholes. Movie audiences would be appalled, because the story sets them up for a resolution they have come to expect. But in a game, it works differently...

It's why in certain games characters work better in 16-bit 2D. Because a game story just isn't the same thing as a story on a screen, or on a stage, or even in a novel...it's a virtual story, and that changes everything.

rargh...so many thoughts. thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.3732380]

>>3731279
e d g y

FF VII looks like actual shit compared to VI

[Anonymous No.3732381]

>>3732380
I'm playing it right now as the devs intended, and it looks amazing, no need to start a war.

[Anonymous No.3732793]

>>3731981
kefka was a shit 1 dimensional villain with terrible writing.

[Anonymous No.3732840]

Now my interest is piqued, old fart who doesn't play games anymore but who tried to optimize the PS1 "system file" a few times.

So basically on the north american PS1 Final Fantasy Anthology re-release, there's this thing called the "system file" that gets generated after you actually beat the game (IIRC), and which actually records general metrics of your party's performance - things like spells/skills etc learned, items collected etc in the save state, and assigns an aggregate one-value PERCENTAGE to the whole business. I've played through the PS1 version at least twice in my life, maybe another time or two, but definitely two times with a conscious effort toward maximizing this "system file", since the basic idea appeals to my OCD, completism, autism etc. I don't think I've ever gotten more than like 60% overall, and thus my question (which I've never looked up and which I therefore put to you for discussion rather than googling, by way of conversation):

in detail, what are the metrics and weights used to generate this system file percentage?

I know for a fact that on one play-through, I got every rage that it is possible for Gau to have via normal gameplay, the big focus of that play-through (this bars two or three glitch caveats where the rage is not saved).

[Anonymous No.3732876]

>>3732793
Everyone knows these things already, anon, but he's still likable. Being a flat, one-note character with the only hint of a backstory being a throwaway line from one NPC doesn't mean that you aren't allowed to like them. Hell, part of his charm for me is that Kefka is just Kefka without some tragic backstory attached to him. I'd say that objectively, the only good FF villain is Kuja.

[Anonymous No.3734663]

no kid finished games in one play session. now days everything is consumed straight away making them really small since your not coming out from school to get tv time before dad snaps remote to watch football.

[Anonymous No.3734767]

>>3732876
Kefka is pretty strong as a villain because he doesn't start as the big bad. He's a step above mook. He's the type of character who normally gets killed in a battle halfway through the game because he was the asshole CO calling the shots. He is very clearly not at the top of the pecking order until his boss lets his guard down, and he just goes nuts like a kid in a candy store. It feels like the original intent was to have Ghestal ruling the world after acquiring the statues, but he had no stage presence, and it felt better to have Kefka usurp him.

The only other Final Fantasy villains that come close to that are Sephiroth (who you spend 3/4s of the game chasing/trying to beat to a goal and who personally kills a main character), and Sin, who you spend the whole game coping with as a matter of him being Tidus' father and the driving force of nature that has shaped the world for centuries.

[Anonymous No.3734903]

>>3731863
Chrono Trigger is awesome but how exactly is it "pushing the console to its limits"?

[Anonymous No.3735246]

>>3734903
It's not. It does look like it does so more than FF6 though.

[Anonymous No.3735251]

>>3728906
as someone who hasnt played a single FF game, where does one start?
keep in mind i only have a nintendo advance sp and 3ds.
the obvious choice is 1 but i was just wondering if it's all that necessary? i sort of just want to play the absolute best. From what i've gathered this seems to be 3, 4, 6 and 7.
Any suggestions?

[Anonymous No.3735638]

>>3732298
>Sephiroth isn't that psychologically interesting to me

me neither

[Anonymous No.3736716]

>>3728953
> US "America" is only something Americans do.
u wot m8. Dumbest shit I've ever heard. Fucking everyone says 'America' you stupid yank. Only you cunts say 'US'.

[Anonymous No.3736782]

>>3735251
>i sort of just want to play the absolute best. From what i've gathered this seems to be 3, 4, 6 and 7.
Any suggestions?

you forgot one

[Anonymous No.3736790]

>>3729137
the game is a brutal grind not worth playing ever.