Return of the Revenge of the Son of Saying Hi to Josiah!

[shauni]

I'm not against JRPs, I still like them, my tastes have just changed.

I used to really enjoy Final Fantasy but anything after 10 I've not really been able to get into.

I think I prefer my JPGs "on the go" on the 3Ds, like the early FF remakes and Chrone Trigger Etc. I REALLY wanted to like Lighting, Snow and the rest of them in the last FF game I played, but I just found them really annoying as people.

[Josiah]

Hi! The FFXIII gang goes through a ton of character development over the course of the game, which most of them changing quite a bit compared to their initial impressions. Personally, I really enjoyed watching that growth and thought it was extremely well done though some characters *cough*Hope*cough* can come across as rather annoying and/or naïve early on. I have rather mixed feelings about XII though, which certainly wasn't one of my favorite FF games. Regardless, FFXV is looking interesting, and very different from past installments. After finishing the demo, I can safely say that while I'm not totally sold on the new direction, I'm not against it either. The FF series is always reinventing itself, and it'll be interesting to see how XV turns out.

[Silver]

So shauni have you picked up Fantasy Life yet?

[Josiah]

Hi! I'm a member of one other web forum, which is a homebrew tabletop RPG of sorts. One of the members has taken to occasionally running some of our quest logs through Babblefish, translating them into a different language and then back, with pretty funny results. The latest is especially hilarious and actually manages to make some sense. If you want something weird and amusing to read, I recommend giving it a look. If you're curious, my character in that story is the one whose name somehow ended up as The Or-PRINCE.

[Silver]

So on the one hand, I have absolutely no interest in XV from a gameplay perspective, I don't like the character designs, and I think Nomura is about the worst thing to happen to Square and boycotting anything he put his hands on seems like the correct thing to do but on the other hand

Four stupid idiots going on a road trip is pretty much the best concept for a video game ever so

[Josiah]

Hi! What's wrong with Nomura? I can understand not liking his art style (I like it, but art preferences are very much up to personal taste), but he's designed a lot of awesome games (not just art, game design and/or story) including Final Fantasy VIII, the Kingdom Hearts series, FFVII Crisis Core, and The World Ends With You, among others. The guy's a great game designer.

As for FFXV, I'm going pretty much entirely off the demo an the occasional preview (which I haven't been following religiously), but here's my thoughts...
Graphics/Art: The graphics are amazing from a technical standpoint. As for the art, what was featured in the demo (both location and character designs) struck me as a little too "normal" (similar to the real world), but things in trailers looked a bit more fantastical so I'll chalk that up to the location where the demo takes place.
Music: I miss Uematsu, but the music was great. Can't really complain about a score by Yoko Shimomura.
Exploration: The demo take place in a big open area that you can run and jump around. Battles take place on the field with no wipes. Honestly, it reminds me a bit of a cross between Assassin's Creed and FFXII in terms of exploration. I don't have any strong feelings about that either way. Open areas are fine (though I hope in the full game you can ride chocobos or drive the car or something to move around faster), but I'm hoping it doesn't go as far in that direction as Elder Scrolls or Fallout.
Combat: You can tell that the demo is scaled back a bit in terms of combat and character development but what they have players like a simplified version of Kingdom Hearts. There's less reliance on reflexes than in KH, but it's moderately fun to play. Some additional moves and abilities and some difficulty tweaks (the demo tends to be pretty easy) could make it fairly awesome.
Story: Other than some fun back and forth between the characters as a little teaser movie at the end, the demo tells you virtually nothing about the main plot, character backstories, or the like. So no comment there, other than that the FF series has rarely disappointed me in that regard.
Misc: There's a lot of nice little touches in the demo, but also a lot of areas that clearly need work (the menus and map kinda suck). Still, that's the type of stuff I'd expect to be rough in a demo.
Overall: So far, I haven't seen anything to make me think XV will be the best yet or anything like that, but I don't have any big misgivings either and am hopefully optimistic about the whole thing.

[Silver]

What's wrong with Nomura? Well, mostly I absolutely hate him as a story writer, I don't know how he ever got put in charge of writing anything, but if you look up "Train Wreck" in the dictionary you should find Kingdom Hearts... I could go into detail but basically he somehow managed to make an inconsistent story full of plot holes while using the same plot twists over and over again.

As a character designer he's hit and miss, TWEWY was fine but have you actually looked at the FFX characters? I will never ever forgive him for that belt dress. Additionally, I don't understand how a director can spend eight years working on one project, delaying every other game he's supposed to be working on to do it (except All the Bravest, but I'm pretty sure we don't talk about that one), and not have anything to show for it. We didn't start getting definitive information about XV until he was taken off the project...

His name is literally no where on Bravely Default or FFXIV, and as those are objectively the best titles Square's put out recently, I am lead to believe that removing him from the equation wherever possible increases a game's quality.

[shauni]

So shauni have you picked up Fantasy Life yet?

That is the one where you can change "class" isn't it? Like you can be a lumber jack then change to a Knight.

Its a game I fancy playing just not gotten around to getting it yet though. So many great games so little time.

I bought myself Dragon's Dogma the other day at the suggestion of a friend. Little disappointed with the mute main character and the "pawns" companion system (they talk over each other, it drives me mad), but its got an interesting mechanic where you can latch onto your foe and chop at them. Just need a few days to get into if.

Then again I've got a tone of other games like Bioshock Infinite as well. Might give that a shot first, keep being told is amazing.

What I really want is a the new tomb raider. Only game in the line up I'm really looking forward to. Going to get it on Xbox 360 though, not upgrading to next gen yet for one game when I can get it on a console I already own.

I do fancy a New 3Ds though....

At the rate I'm going, I've got another few years before I run out of "new" stuff to play and have to upgrade to a ps4/ xbox 1.

[Luke]

Hello old friends,

How have you all been? It's been so long! It's tough to remember the days where I'd be glued to my seat and would post on here until I literally passed out at my keyboard, they were so long ago! Last time I was on here was back when I was still in grade school, now since then I have been living on my own and working a full time job at TELUS. Life has shown me some absolutely incredible things that I will take with me until the day I die, and it has also shown me some of toughest times of heartbreak. I feel as if I could write a novel on what has happened in my life in these short few years. I hope that everyone's time that they've spent in the last couple years has been fruitful, and that all of you are doing well!

[Josiah]

Hi! Welcome back, Luke! Glad you're doing well. For the very short update, I'm now teaching at University of Hawaii while making a visual novel on the side. Things are good, for the most part.

For Nomura's story writing... Kingdom Hearts' plot is a bit convoluted, but that's likely because it was originally planned as one or two games and then had to get expanded when it became a franchise. Regardless, I still find the story pretty enjoyable, crazy plot twists and all. And I'm really looking forward to taking down Xenohart in KHIII. Looking past KH though, what about other stories he's done like FFVIII and TWEWY? Those were really good (being a writer, I could nitpick a bit, but I'd still vouch for them overall).

On his art, I'll grant that Lulu's belt dress was not one of his better designs, but I think X's character designs were otherwise pretty good. Well, maybe not Seymour, but I think Tidus, Yuna, Auron, Riku, and the rest looked good.

As far as the delays on FFXV go, I wouldn't blame that entirely on him. I mean, most of his games have come out in a reasonable amount of time. From what I've gathered some of the main factors contributing to the delay include: a complete engine change (going from Crystal Tools to Luminous mid-development), the platform switch (though it ad already been in development for ages at that point), a lot of the team getting pulled away to help finish XIII on schedule, and the CEO of Square Enix's desire to put more focus in mobile development. I think it was less Nomura's departure and more making Versus XIII into XV that led to a faster development pace.
On a side note, he didn't delay everything during that time, we did get some more Kingdom Hearts games. Even though none of them were KHIII.

As for All the Bravest... Yeah, let's just pretend that never happened.

SE has definitely has its issues lately but I think most stem from its CEO, who loves to jump on the latest game industry fads (mobile, nationalization, etc.) to the detriment of the company's core. I mean, the guy was shocked that Bravely Default was successful in the US because he didn't think JRPGs were popular anymore.

[Silver]

I will give you that the CEO did likely cause a lot of the problems, especially relating to forcing budget into mobile games... but I will not give you that Tidus and Riku's designs were good. Yuna and Auron, maybe. Or that eight years in development is in any way an acceptable thing.

Also, he didn't write the story for TWEWY or FFVII. The writer for TWEWY was Sachie Hirano, and for FFVII it was Kazushige Nojima and Yoshinori Kitase. He did the art for both games and produced TWEWY, but he was not a writer.

Oh yeah, and good to hear from you, Luke! I'm a bit jealous. I'm currently looking for a full-time "real" job, but for now I'm working part time at a movie theater. Finished college and got engaged, though!

[Josiah]

Hi! I like Tidus and Riku's designs (well FFX Rikku, not FFX-2 Rikku), but I'll chalk that up to personal preferences. Eight years in development is also pretty bad, I agree there. I'm just not sure how much of the blame for that can be laid on Nomura. Some, sure. But I think the CEO's budgeting and the necessity for extra staff on FFXIII contributed a lot to that.

As for writing... Nomura didn't do the "writing" for FFVII or FFVIII...but he did create the original story (well, for VII it was him and Sakaguchi). In game development, it's quite common to have a designer, producer, or director (Nomura's usual roles along with character designer) create the basic plot and characters and then have a separate writer fill in the gaps and do the actual dialogue. It's actually the same with pretty much every game Nomura has been heavily involved with. Going off a quick review, the only actual writing credit I can find for him is for KH Coded and even that's shared with someone else, so he probably didn't do much actual writing. Anyway, from what I can tell he came up with at least the basic story for FFVII (with Sakaguchi), FFVIII, The KH series, TWEWY, Crisis Core, and FFXV. Looks like he probably had some role in Advent Children's story too, though a lesser one.
So any praise and/or complaints about the stories can probably be divided between Nomura and the actual writer(s) for a given game. Regardless though, your main complain against him as a writer is KH (which I argue is still very enjoyable despite all the crazy plot twists). That hardly offsets the awesome stories of FFVII, VIII, Crisis Core, and TWEWY.

At worst you can say that you sometime dislike his stories. Ditto with his character designs, you already said those were hit or miss for you and you're probably ok with at least half of them. So I think calling him the worst thing to happen to Square and saying you should boycott his games is going way too far. Honestly, without Nomura Square very well could have floundered after Sakaguchi left.

[Stevenson]

Aloha! Personally, I find Tidus's design to be absolutely awful. It looks like three clothing stores just kind of threw up on him, and he was so traumatized by the experience that he just punched a basketball net and sewed it to his sleeve when he got stuck. I admit that it's personal preference, but I believe history sides with the anti-Tidus people.

I know I haven't been very active, but, well, I've been busy studying and going through some personal stuff. Real glad that I have this board to come back to, though.

[shauni]

I like Riku's design, and her redesign actually.

TBF I think I'm the only person I know who loved 10-2 though so I guess my tastes are....out there.

As for Kingdom hearts



I will grant I have no idea whats going on, and there are so many spin off it makes my head spin. But come on, you can play him as a Lion!

I'm just sticking to 1 and 2 and the new 3.

Wish Sora's feet weren't so huge though

[Josiah]

Hi! I'd recommend picking up KH1.5 and 2.5 HD remixes Shauni. Aside from getting the Japanese Final Mix versions of the games (which add some cool extra content, especially in KH2), you also get two of the best side games (Chain of Memories and Birth by Sleep), plus movie versions of the two least good side games (Re:Coded and 358/2, which weren't bad but weren't on the same level as the others). You should also get Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS since it's really good and sets the stage for KH3.

I liked FFX-2. I have some issues with it, but I enjoyed it overall. Not a fan of Rikku and Yuna's main outfits though.

On a different topic, anyone remember that Japan tour idea I mentioned last year? Well I'd still love to do it...