Final Fantasy - General - The Bear and Badger

hylian_elf

Raiziel wrote:

I am not going to preorder this. I am not going to preorder this. I am NOT going to preorder this.

You already did, didn’t you?! ADMIT IT!

Raiziel

yes

JonB

Nerds.

In other news I seem to be getting completely drawn in to FFXII now. Hours spent wandering about, fighting, levelling up, unlocking new licenses and fiddling with gambits.

Sometimes I hate that I enjoy this sort of thing so much.

hylian_elf

How many hunts/marks have you done? That’s the real draw! Was for me anyway. And then there are rare hunts/enemies that only appear under certain conditions or in certain areas. I hit a wall at some point and didn’t go back, would’ve required grinding. And I hate grinding.

JonB

I've done about 8 hunts so far. All the ones I could find on the noticeboard. Except now there's a few that look too high level at the moment.

I'm not into major grinding these days either, but I do tend to go slowly anyway, exploring as much of the map as possible before moving on to the next location.

cosmicjellybean

EvilRedEye wrote:

Dark Horse are localising the anniversary Ultimania books.

I think this is first time the Ultimania brand has come over here. Hope it doesn't become a wallet-destroying trend.

Also preordered, cheers! Was a bit disheartened to see the release date as June 5 2018 though.

Hope the world makes it that long, amirite!

JonB

FFXII

Unlocked the Poach technic a while back and have been using it quite a bit since to get more loot. Only just realised that you don't get XP and LP from poached enemies. Thought progress had been slow for a while...

Loving this overall but my one complaint would be that a lot of the technics just aren't worth the bother. They're either unreliable or the sacrifice outweighs the gains. It also does that old school RPG thing where it gives you powerful magic and then it never works on the bigger enemies. Spend a chunk of boss battles turning half the gambits off.

ChopperByrne

I never played FFX properly before.

Brought the Vita to work to charge it yesterday, and started the remaster when I got home.

Immediately given two choices, Standard Sphere Grid or Expert Sphere Grid.

The game does not tell you the difference.

Sitting in a house with no power, and no mobile data coverage, I couldn't check the difference online.

I went Expert.

Checked today, and it seems Expert throws the class system out the window and lets everyone do everything.

I'll delete that save and start over on Standard instead.

This game better be worth all the praise it gets.

cosmicjellybean

I played on Vita last year and it had aged really well, and worked surprisingly well as a handheld game.

I loved it when it came out, was a bit obsessed after not getting on with 8 and not playing much of 9 at the time.

I remember it coming out on the day of my 16th birthday, and like all rebellious 16 year olds I rode the bus into watford with the birthday money from my mum, bought the game in gamestation, then waited patiently for an hour to get the bus back home. I played the hell out of it during that holiday. Thinking back that must have been during my GCSEs... explains a lot.

hylian_elf

After getting previous 3 games on release and loving them, I actually played X a year after release. It came out during a bad time at uni and life so I missed it. Then picked it up when uni finished and I was a bum looking for a job and had just met my future wife. Life was looking ok I guess and I indulged in gaming. A lot of gaming.

80 hours for first playthrough. I immediately started a second run and spent another 120 hours or so. Best turn based combat around and I loved the Sphere Grid. Monster Arena and the Dark Aeons kept me well busy.

Really wanna play it again. Have it on PS3 but I may Vita it.

acemuzzy

I played X for the first time 18 months ago. Really didn't rate it. Worse than XIII IMO. Too linear, boring story, not great battle system. Horses for courses, but it's my least favourite FF I'm sorr6 to report. Others do indeed seem to love it though so hopefully you end up in that camp!

acemuzzy

Spoiler:

MattyJ

acemuzzy wrote:

I played X for the first time 18 months ago. Really didn't rate it. Worse than XIII IMO. Too linear, boring story, not great battle system. Horses for courses, but it's my least favourite FF I'm sorr6 to report. Others do indeed seem to love it though so hopefully you end up in that camp!

I agree mostly. I don't get the love for it. Playing the remaster, battles just take too long, the exp system isn't great as characters can fall behind... Story is okay but not brilliant.

I also never understood why this gets a pass for its linearity but xiii gets slated. Xiii has a better battle system imo.

hylian_elf

I don’t slate XIII. The sequel isn’t all that. XV is shit though

EvilRedEye

XIII had TWO sequels and I found XIII-2 HIGHLY ENJOYABLE so there, Elf!

cosmicjellybean

I liked 13 too. The music and presentation was amazing, and the battles were loads of fun.

ChopperByrne

XIII's battle system seemed very similar to XII's which I didn't like.

JonB

Stumbled upon one of the espers in FFXII and think I was probably underleveled. Got it down to about a third HP on my second go but was clearly about to die. Then whipped out an 11 hit mist attack and fucked him right up.

Yay.

JonB

Just about done with FFXII after a solid month of play. Advanced in the story up the final battle a while ago, but have spent many hours going back to previous areas, exploring and hunting. Certainly won't do everything, as I'd need to raise my level significantly for a couple of hunts, and I've got to a point now where there's a lot of running back and forth across maps to find things, which isn't that much fun.

Still probably clocked nearly 80 hours though, and it's amazing how much stuff there is to find. Up there with the best of the series.

hylian_elf

Which hunt did you get to/give up on?

TheDJR

Both X and XIII are bad, you’re welcome.

JonB

hylian_elf wrote:

Which hunt did you get to/give up on?

The Fafnir and Seer ones seem undoable at the moment. Would help if I got a ribbon or two from somewhere, but I think they're just too high level.

There's a couple of others I haven't got round to trying yet.

hylian_elf

Ah yes Fafnir. I think I got stuck just after that in terms of level of hunt.

I definitely wanna carry on with the remake and try and grind my way to Yiazmat but there are so many other great games to play.

ChopperByrne

Right now, very early into the game, X seems like it's going to be very grind heavy.

At least every character can be used every battle, and save points do a full restore.

hylian_elf

Nah, I didn’t have to grind at all. In fact, I never did any grinding in any game except FF7, and that was only to beat the secret mega enemies/Weapons.

ayns

XV Pocket Edition pre-registration available on mobile devices.

You love it really.

JonB

I still haven't gone on and finished FFXII and have still been going around finding more stuff to (mostly with a guide now). Just went back to Fafnir, which destroyed me a while back, and did it quite easily.

There are definitely some balance issues with this though. Most technicks are near useless, but the shear/wither/addle/expose type are very over powered. Most big fights are best done by hitting the enemy with a load of those. Fafnir started out doing 3000 damage with normal attacks, after a while it was doing more like 300.

JonB

Still couldn't stop playing FFXII and now I've just beaten Yiazmat. Done all the hunts, got all the espers, all magicks and technicks. There's still more to do, but I really am going to finish it now.

The Yiazmat fight is pretty shit though. Far less variety than other bosses and just has an insanely massive amount of HP. Once I'd weakened him it was a case of chipping away at his 50 health bars for an age, occasionally reviving or healing status ailments. Thank god for the 4x speed up option - even with that on most of the time it still took nearly an hour.

[Deleted User]

Kudos.

MattyJ

Fair play Jon, that's a lot of enjoyment you've got out of it!

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