Is there a cheat to make stealing stuff bearable? Because that would actually be amazing. I actually kinda like draw grinding in FF8, but stealing from bosses in 9 was just the worst thing.
I’m afraid that there is no stealing cheat. If you want to know all the cheats available, you can read about them here.
If there is a mod that replaces the sprites, I haven’t found it. I did some searching around, but the best I could find was people suggesting to play the SNES version instead, which isn’t that helpful. Too bad Square didn’t take the Lucasarts remake approach and make the old graphics toggleable.
Not…really? Like, 5 and 6 look like hot garbage, but under the hood they’re still based on the GBA ports which are perfectly serviceable. 4 is based on the DS port which has the weird 3D graphics and totally rebalanced gameplay, but beyond that it’s fine. 7, 8, 9, and the 13 games are all fine, and 3 is garbage no matter which version you play. I have never once heard anyone say the music was fucked up, or any other technical complaint outside of issues that the games had long before porting (13-2 having framerate drops in large open areas, etc).
I remember FF13 in particular having some resolution troubles reminiscent of Dark Souls 1’s release, which ended up getting an unofficial fix courtesy of the same guy who did DSFix for Dark Souls. It might have gotten officially fixed at some point, but I never bought it on PC because FF13 killed all my enthusiasm for anything made past FF12.
The ports of 5 and 6 are technically based on the GBA version, but I think they’re essentially ported from the Android/iOS versions, which themselves were based on the GBA port, so you get the interfaces meant for touchscreens and graphics that were probably less egregious on phone screens.
I know for 5’s mobile (and presumable PC) ports they changed a bunch of stuff that had managed to remain unfixed for 5 releases/20 years. Mostly good changes (Geomancers are now sometimes useful, Berserker targetting), some bug fixes (Sword Slap actually works as intended, and Power Drink finally does something). Sadly they also fixed !Tame, which was supposed to work only Magical Creatures but instead worked on everything but Magical Creatures.
My main issue I have with the 7-9 remasters is that they can’t really redo backgrounds so they look like hot garbage.
Hopefully we’ll get Dragon Quests PC ports now that they’ve finished porting all the Final Fantasies on PSX SNES PS2 oh right they’re porting original mobile games now cool
Might be a day where I get the Final Fantasy games on Steam (despite still having most of the PSX releases of them). At the very least, I want to get 9 for being in my top 3. It used to be at the top, but…well.
For me, order right now is XV in first, XIV in second and IX in third. It was first for me for a long time, because it sold me in it’s writing, the theatrical theme of it just seemed to resonate with me, and it captured that fantasy world that I was always thinking of when I considered a game about fantasy, something VII and VIII never really captured (I was always more for a medieval-esque fantasy, so it fit in more snugly to my ideal). Not that they were bad. Hell, 7 was my first experience of Final Fantasy (British, go figure), and the series drew me in from there after that (though they bought the coffin with X-2 I felt, and nearly buried it with XIII’s mess).
But the setting of XIV is just so immersive and breathtaking at times that I find myself lost in it more often than I should find myself lost in any place at any one time. Add in the ability to switch jobs at the drop of a hat (neutering the need for alternate characters but I still end up making more anyway) and just the amount of things you can do in it and it really kept me attached for quite some time. Sadly, finances forced me to drop the sub, but I still hope to get back into it again in the future (maybe once Stormblood hits).
And XV. Boy Band Roadtrip Simulator (soon to be Power Rangers Roadtrip Simulator) has just captivated me into another world with writing, acting and gameplay that, honestly, I would never have expected after the mess that was the origins of how it came to even exist (remember XIII Versus was a thing? And how FFXIII is almost universally hated as a series?) I just hope that it continues on a trend of good Final Fantasy games in the future.
And I guess, since the mobile stuff came up, I want to give thanks to Record Keeper for giving me a nostalgic kick through all the FF games I either want to play but can’t (busted PS2, faulty PSX discs) or can’t tolerate enough to play the actual games for (looking at you, XIII…and sadly IV because the PSX design of “select once to move spell, select twice to use, and also ATB because we hate you” drove me 100% away from that game).
Edit: Almost forgot to mention FFV is 4th because job system and FOUR JOB FIESTA BABY!
3 Likes
Nier Automata actually made me re-evaluate my opinion on FFXV a little because it’s pretty much what XV should have been like. I still had a lot of fun.
FFV is a fantastic shout though. The first time I cleared it was Four Job Fiesta and it was an actual blast.
1 Like
Combat in XV is simultaneously too slow and too fast at the same time. Parry timings are so screwy that you can’t hit them in time or move cancel out into one. And that in turn makes combat go on forever.
Well, XV did take a SKRAJILLION years to make, so the fact it works at all is a miracle, and that fact that it’s not a Duke Nukem Forever-type disaster is a blessing.
The combat does look like trash, though.
2 Likes
The combat isn’t actually terrible and I thought it was fairly fun. It mostly just shits itself when there’s too many enemies. It’s not really designed well for large groups and gets more frantic.
1 Like
Yeah a lot of of the 1v1 fights during that game are a lot of fun. The first fight against Aranea is one of my favorites because its basically just the two of you fighting in mid air and dodging each other. It might as well be from an anime.
1 Like
this is too beautiful for mortal men to view
it must be sealed away
oh wait, I know a use for pitioss now
1 Like
I haven’t gone back to it in a while but the GBA port of FFVI is amazing, especially with that one patch that changes the graphics/music to be more like the SNES version.
Also recently I played some of XII and the combat is really fun, but it is really frustrating early on when you’ve got to go through the desert on a quest because of this one particular enemy that can kill you very easily if it spots you. That and I don’t know what the best way to set up the gambits is.
I never bothered with gambits once during my playthrough, they’re basically there to cut down on micro managing. As for the desert, what enemy?
The werewolves. Sometimes I’d get too close and aggro them and that would mean instant death.
Oh yeah them, they’re a meant to be avoided and ran from enemy in the early game. Although they are based are a power leveling gimmick.
This year is the 30th anniversary of the franchise, how about that.
2 Likes
To celebrate, they’ll release Final Fantasy G, where Gilgamesh finally gets his due and becomes a full playable character for his own game, wherein he travels from game to game, hoping each time that the next leap will be the leap back to FFV.
6 Likes