you know what screw it Nephtis, I was going to write yet another lengthy reply explaining myself but you obviously don't get it. Im not bashing these things before they come out, and it was never my intention to piss and moan about it. I am of course going to try them, and the fact that you don't care if they suck contradicts you defending the "attacks" that you seem to think I made.

Also, when is said "dis" in my earlier post, that means disrespect, not discuss

Replaying FFVII the past week has brought back some fond memories of playing the game bacck in the day when I first got it. And being on Vacation last week, I played the entire game in one sitting uninterrupted (not including breaks for food and bathroom needs). Playing the game like that has single handedly changed my opinion on this subject altogether.

When I look at how much I love FFVII, and what they would have to do to it to update it makes me cringe. The new graphics would be nice of course, but voice actors would be brought in to add more life to the characters. While some games nail the characters perfectly, some voice actors plain old suck, so they'd have to hire either celebrity talent or take a chance on unknowns that could potentially be hit or miss. The new voices wold also completely change your perception of the characters, probably in a bad way. Voice actors could ruin the whole thing.

They would also have to add in new sidequests and update story information to make the expierience fresh. With the sequels and prequels coming out, they might end up warping the original storyline to make it fit better with the new additions to the FFVII family, and while these alterations would most likely be minor, theirs always the chance they could change something big and fuck it up.

Like Square has been saying all along, the game is playable on a current generation system, and the more and more I think about it, the original is still good. Why fix something that isn't broken. While I certainly would ike to see that Crossdressing Cloud bit in Wall Market, I think I've officially jumped to the other side of the fence and don't favor a remake. It's probably not worth it...

Look Finalseph 7, FFVII was made to stand alone in your theory, and frankly your theory makes less sense with every post. I initially thought you didn't want the sequels, then you sounded different again.

What is your point exactly? If you present it by itself clearly, without anything else, then maybe I will understand it. At the moment I can't see that you have had one, but if you'll enlighten me I'd be more than happy to listen.

Didn't you get the memo? Shinra originated in Final Fantasy X-2!

A lot of things originated from that game, including the term 'boobies' to stand for FFX-2, as well as a lame pop song. Let's not discuss that game any further.

LittleCactaur said:
When I look at how much I love FFVII, and what they would have to do to it to update it makes me cringe. The new graphics would be nice of course, but voice actors would be brought in to add more life to the characters. While some games nail the characters perfectly, some voice actors plain old suck, so they'd have to hire either celebrity talent or take a chance on unknowns that could potentially be hit or miss. The new voices wold also completely change your perception of the characters, probably in a bad way. Voice actors could ruin the whole thing.

What? Ever heard of professional voice actors? There are plenty of professionals out there that can handle voice acting for an RPG. The problem you're most likely referring to is the case of voice actors being expected to record voices in one sitting, seperate from each other, which leads to crap quality voice acting in games. If you do it right (MGS3, KH) then voice acting can be just fine with or without "celebrity talent". The case of "nobodies" is irrelevant: no high profile studio is just going to pick someone up off the street without going through a voice acting studio.

Don't forget that Advent Children will have voice acting, so you're going to have to deal with the FFVII characters receiving voices of some sort whatever happens.

LittleCactaur said:
They would also have to add in new sidequests and update story information to make the expierience fresh. With the sequels and prequels coming out, they might end up warping the original storyline to make it fit better with the new additions to the FFVII family, and while these alterations would most likely be minor, theirs always the chance they could change something big and fuck it up.

While I'm on the same side you're on, I'm not on it for the same reasons. Any attempt Square makes at remaking its number 1 popular title in its history would not be half-assed and "fuck it up". So don't worry about that.

Nephtis said:
Look Finalseph 7, FFVII was made to stand alone in your theory, and frankly your theory makes less sense with every post. I initially thought you didn't want the sequels, then you sounded different again.

Will you chill out? You're not listening to what he's saying.

Nephtis said:
A lot of things originated from that game, including the term 'boobies' to stand for FFX-2, as well as a lame pop song. Let's not discuss that game any further.

Excuse me, but Final Fantasy X-2 is awesome and if you can't see that you obviously take yourself and life way too seriously. Boobies rock!

Rahul said:
Excuse me, but Final Fantasy X-2 is awesome and if you can't see that you obviously take yourself and life way too seriously.

FFX-2 sucks ass...but it's still better than Xenosaga Episode 2.

I enjoyed it, good graphics, not despicable music, good animations, great combat system, lots of freedom to do a lot of shit. Wether the story sucks or not depends on the person, but even so a bad story doesnt make a sucky game in my opinion

Actually, my opinion of FFX-2 is a lot lower than it was when I reviewed it.
I was cutting them some slack because a direct sequel in an RPG is kind of hard to do.

Then I played Shadow Hearts: Covenant. Not only did Aruze make a direct sequel to Shadow Hearts, they made it so you could enjoy it without playing the previous game, yet building on it at the same time. Also updating the look of previously appearing characters (something that was just lazy in FFX-2), and keeping the story dark and serious, but with plenty of humour. Actually good humour, something FFX-2 never hit, because it never really went beyond slapstick.

With the combat system, they're both on pretty even ground, but I'd still rate SH:C higher, because it did something FFX-2 didn't. It kept it simplistic enough for beginners, but offered a mass of challenges for the more advanced player who wanted them.

Given Square's development talent and Aruze being somewhat of a new kid in the biz, there is no excuse for FFX-2, none. It's sole selling point is the combat system and the name FFX-2. I give it an F now.

But remember, my gaming tastes can be rather odd, I liked SaGa Frontier 2 after all, and I love Chrono Cross.

Rachel said:
It kept it simplistic enough for beginners, but offered a mass of challenges for the more advanced player who wanted them.

But FFX-2 does that too.

The reason FFX-2 is awesome is not because it's a brilliant sequel to FFX. It's because it's a tongue-in-cheek exposition of modest self-referentialism and overkill gratuitous fan badgering. It's the Spice Girls where FFX was the Take That. I approve of the attempt wholeheartedly mainly because it leans more towards Kojima's take on game design than it does to the rigid RPG traditionalism that JRPGs have consistently held on to.

Which is also why you prefer SH:C over FFX-2. Nevertheless, under my terms, they are not comparable.

The only reason I consider them comparable is that they are both direct sequels in the RPG genre (something we hardly ever see, because storywise, it's hard to do.)

But SH:C doesn't just give you a challenge in the sense of sidequests. You can actually tune the combat system to make it a bit easier, alot easier, or make it an absolute bitch that requires exact timing. It's fully up to who is playing.

But also, FFX-2 had a great combat system, the problem is, the developers just didn't exploit what they had to the fullest. They could have made it alot more rewarding for the advanced players, and they didn't. Instead, it's just an assload of monotonous battles with enemies who have little actual difficulty and just alot of HP.

Rachel said:
The only reason I consider them comparable is that they are both direct sequels in the RPG genre (something we hardly ever see, because storywise, it's hard to do.)

But SH:C doesn't just give you a challenge in the sense of sidequests. You can actually tune the combat system to make it a bit easier, alot easier, or make it an absolute bitch that requires exact timing. It's fully up to who is playing.

But also, FFX-2 had a great combat system, the problem is, the developers just didn't exploit what they had to the fullest. They could have made it alot more rewarding for the advanced players, and they didn't. Instead, it's just an assload of monotonous battles with enemies who have little actual difficulty and just alot of HP.

Your conclusion here doesn't sound like an F to me, more like a C for "effort but imperfect implementation". An F implies that 100% of the game scores badly on your scale, yet you call the combat system "great"?

Beyond that, I'm not interested in the battle system. It was good and fast, but overall not the relevant identifier in the long run that made FFX-2 a memorable experience.

No, if it were totally bad, it would be F-. Nothing irks me more than seeing something with great potential not being exploited to the fullest.

Meh.

I have decided to play this game, until I finish it. Although if it sucks so much that it causes me pain to switch on my PS2 to play it I will stop. Boobies Rahul? Yes boobies are good, but I didn't like the idea of fusing the casual man's eye-gawking material with an RPG series that I love. It seems wrong, and I've been told by many that the story was really bad.

Someone said before (I can't be bothered scrolling back now) that the story doesn't ruin the game; to me it can quite easily do so. Since I'm not Mr. McBattle, the main reason I play Final Fantasy games is for the story. While I don't mind battling, I am a story fan, and I will enjoy it far more when I continue to study them through cinema studies.

If FFX-2's story is crap, and I mean really lame and stupid, I will probably stop playing, mostly because I value the story so much. If the story is amusing, then I won't have a problem, unless it begins to ruin the whole FFX thing for me. But we'll see, after exams I'll stick it in and watch girls in hotpants run across my television.

Just don't expect FFX. Go into it with an open mind and you will be presented with something quirky and silly, but with serious undertones. The story discusses the political and sociological effect of having Sin removed from the equation, and how Spira is reacting to that situation. It's not all happy happy joy joy -- the Yuna reinvention is superfluous to the background story of other events related to the Zanarkand disaster of thousands of years ago.

I continued playing because I wanted to find out those facts. The giddy girls and overzealous voice acting notwithstanding, it has some elaborately funny scenes and its own share of vapid dramatic exaggeration. But even FFX was haunted by the "laughing scene", and FFVIII had Squall uncomfortably cradling a witch-girl in deep space to the tune of a Chinese vocalist.

If you choose to hate it for its daring, then it remains more of a statement about how seriously you take yourself rather than how flexible you are in the face of being made fun of by Square Enix itself.

Ah well, I'll be able to take a look at the end of this month or so.

cloudstrife09 said:
will they make another exact remake of ff7 like they did for ff1 and 2? I don't care if it is for another system, I was just wondering... :unsure:

Since it's going to have better graphics (or so i'm told) then definately.

Hence the whole idea of a "remake" like they did for FF1 and 2... Read thru the thread a little and see what the current conversation holds... We're notorious for getting off topic quickly...