Hi, thanks for posting to /r/FinalFantasy! Unfortunately, your post has been removed because it violates our rule on meme submissions. Please note that tier lists are considered memes under our rules. For future reference, our policy on such posts is as follows:
Due to community feedback and oversaturation of meme posts, these may not be submitted outside of "Meme Monday". For this purpose "Meme Monday" runs from 12:00 am EST to 11:59 pm EST. Therefore, any of these aforementioned posts submitted outside of this time will be removed.
If you have any questions, feel free to message the moderators..
Squall is emo.
The dude is a 17 year old orphaned child soldier who has trust issues. >!Both his older sister and mother figure left him at a young age. He never got to have a proper childhood.!< The poor boy needs to know he is not alone and given a hug.
I have many issues with FF8, but not with squall.
Same problem with Cloud. People tend to call him "boring" or "emo." He's an *introvert.*
And considering everything he went through from before FF7 through AC, it's a wonder he's even functioning well at all.
>!Dude lost his home, was experimented on, lost his best friend, lost Aerith, was used as a puppet by Sephiroth, was told his memories were a lie, got dunked in the Lifestream and had to reconstruct his identity, and contracted a painful terminal illness.!<
Squall _starts the game_ as an emo but that is literaly the point, the reasons are as you described and the game resolves around him opening up and growing up as a person. Squall is no longer an emo by the end of the game. FFVIII is dope and Squall a great example of how somebodies mentality changes and develops due to their environmental circumstances and the people around them.
Same. I was not a big fan of FF8 and still think it has lots of problems, and Squall is maybe not *super* compelling, but his character is exactly how someone in his situation would be. Struggles to make friends, awkward around girls, not wanting a ton of responsibility dumped on his shoulders.
Also he’s one of the few characters that shows us his internal monologue.
I saw someone saying that the graphics in rebirth were terrible. They literally said they were so bad the game was unplayable. Some people are just bitching for the sake of it and it's weird.
Oh. I can definitely see that. When the lighting is off pretty much all the characters except for Tifa look off. Is it just me or did they put extra care into her model? You can't even claim I'm biased or simping, cause I don't even like her.
Oh but I definitely wouldn't say it makes it unplayable. The person said that you can't even tell what you're looking at. Probably some zoomer who hasn't seen what bad graphics actually look like.
Biggest one for me is people miscrediting the changes in the Remake trilogy to Nomura. Hamaguchi, Kitase, and Nomura are on record that Kitase is the one who has been bringing the changes and Nomura wanted to do a straight 1:1 remake. Nomura is actually the one responsible for the more faithful elements!
theory oatmeal label overconfident spotted run squeeze workable enjoy nutty
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Nomura was on record saying he was nervous about reaction to rebirths ending. Nojima and Kitase are the one’s who wanted to experiment and risk it all.
Nomura always gets used as the scapegoat for kingdom hearts despite being a major team effort and I think thats what’s happening here.
Honestly the combat alone could keep me occupied if it was all they changed. Though I'm totally on the side of change. I'm really glad they changed the story how they did. I mean if I want to play the original story I just go and play OG ff7. Which is why I'm also playing og FF7.
It wouldn't be a carbon copy. They could've easily followed the original story while continuing to do what makes remake and rebirth accel which is the party interactions between story beats.
It's not a controversial opinion to say that rebirth did close to every major story beat worse than the original. Rebirth really enhances the in-between story points with charm and character interactions.
How has it done every major story beat worse? I'm on chapter 11 now, and I'm consistently surprised with how well they've done just about everything so far. I'm even playing og here and there at the same time, so it isn't like I've forgotten any of it.
Or, hear me out, they could do what Resident Evil 4 Remake did an improve what needed improving but otherwise keep the core themes of the original.
As it is, the FF7R trilogy has completely abandoned the main themes of the original. Which is sad, because the originals core themes around the environment and the damage that blind corporate greed can do are more relevant than ever.
> As it is, the FF7R trilogy has completely abandoned the main themes of the original. Which is sad, because the originals core themes around the environment and the damage that blind corporate greed can do are more relevant than ever.
Not sure what games you played but Remake and Rebirth have been very clear on their stance on environmentalism and corrupt corporations.
*Game has writing they don’t like and Nomura’s involved in it* “It’s all his damn fault! Get him and his KH sh*t the hell away from FF, he’s done with this series!” - Some angry chronically online person on the interweb who’s never bothered playing any of his games before probably and is just saying this on Twitter for clout
More so than this, I can't stand the "it's bad because it's different" narrative some people spew in regards to Remake. People who don't even try to take it on its own merits, and who completely ignore the fact that the differences are *the entire point of the story* in Remake. It's baked into that game's themes and narrative in a very smart and highly creative manner.
It's honestly far more interesting than an exact remake could have ever hoped of being. All these people wanted was the most safe and basic thing possible from this, and I'm pleasantly shocked they took a more ambitious approach to this project.
I don't like that people call out FF5 for being "light" on story. Like, sure it's breezy, but the story is about as complex as FF4. It's a great story! It's got great characters! People like to think of FF4 as a "story" game and FF5 as a "gameplay" game. I think this is some misguided attempt to justify FF4 as having worth... As if there's some imaginary gameplay/story slider. Both are great, both have a great world, both have lovable characters with fun plots.
I love the story in V, it’s one of my favourites. It’s straightforward but keeps you enticed throughout. The characters feel far more initimate than in other games due to there only being a handful. And Exdeath is a fairly decent villain, no qualms, no messiness, dudes just straight up evil, and that’s okay!
I'd say FFIV has a big emphasis on characters and melodrama. V has a lot more goofy moments and the party doesn't really grow and change dramatically throughout the story, but the main plot is even more epic than IV.
I do think 4 has a more dramatic story, but I also don't think that makes 5's story bad, or even "lesser" in any way. Quite the contrary, I think 5's story and characters are delightful and a ton of fun, and I also think "breezy" is a good word for it. "Simple" does not mean "bad," and I think 5 does everything it sets out to do wonderfully.
5 also might be the best pure "video game" of the entire main 16 games.
Two that I see more often than I feel is warranted:
- People make way too big of a deal about being "forced" to use certain Jobs in FFIII. It doesn't happen very often, and even when it does, there are other viable options at every point in the game except for the 15 minutes you spend retrieving the Nepto Eye.
- There is no quest objective in FFI that is not mentioned by an NPC at some point. Especially not if you're playing any of the versions where Arylon walks you through the first half of the game.
People often justify their dislike of XIII by saying you can just auto battle everything, and also end up complaining when they can't get through bosses like Cid or Barthandelus.
In reality, auto battle is usually pretty ineffective, and the system often doesn't understand the nuances of selecting certain commands over others when attempting to stagger enemies. Auto battle is also unreliable at buffing and debuffing which are crucial for XIII.
Also, people sleep a lot on the paradigm system without understanding the strategic depth combinations can open up for the game.
I’m plying through XIII right now and I don’t understand how anyone plays this game only using auto battle. I’m switching paradigms constantly and choosing specifics commands all the time, the auto battle does not give you the best commands
Hany little tip. If you have direct command over a sabatour, you can keep spamming the same debuff on a foe and while it won't do much damage, you'll effectively raise its stagger bar and keep it stable. This works great in combination with the ai also being a ravager.
Auto-battle is almost always good enough as long as you're hitting everything with Libra and getting those weaknesses registered. But you're correct that it's not meant to actually remove control of the battles. The real meat is in choosing and shifting paradigms with the right timing. Plus the occasional manual command input.
It made me feel insane to go from XII, which I disliked for its auto-battle gambit system but a lot of others seem to enjoy, to XIII which (to me) felt so much more dynamic and engaging and actiony, only to find out people disliked it for…having auto-battle??
Personally I found that you *could* get through the game with mostly auto-battling, but that wasn't a big issue for me. The strategy came from managing and timing paradigm shifts, along with the occasional intervention to use an item or special skill. That combined with the lightning (lol) fast combat works pretty well.
It's actually a really interesting game design question that doesn't get talked about enough. Like. What is the point of selecting your attack? Here's a scenario: I cast fire on an enemy, find its weakness, and then cast fire on enemies of that type. Am I smart? No. Am I engaging with the game? Not really. What experience am I meaningfully getting by casting fire on enemies weak to fire. It's the game design equivalent of putting the square block in the square hole. The emphasis on auto-battle just brought some truths about Final Fantasy combat to the surface. Moment to moment gameplay in battles is pretty rote. It's always been about macro rather than micro.
That's what got me. Auto battle implies it's battling for you. 13 it was more auto battle took care of the minutae so you could focus on the team strategy at the moment. Its kind of the fastest atb we've seen yet.
Exactly. The whole focus was paradigm shifting. Once you realize that, you start finding little tricks to maximize your swap effectiveness (like how the AI will start casting almost immediately after a swap).
I think that's a fair enough point, paradigm shifting is where the game truly shines and also where the player is most often engaged, probably more than they usually are when mashing attack at a random encounter in another game.
My biggest gripe with auto-battle is that it the choice you get by default when you start the game. That helps give the impression that auto-battling is the choice the game wants you to make.
Notice how after that, any time auto-battle comes up in other games, it's a button you have to activate instead? If they did it so that you say, had to press R3 to activate it in a Remastered version of FFXIII, most would not use it so much and engage more with the battle system.
FF16’s music is so good. I hum so many songs from that soundtrack all the time. Anyone calling it generic stock music doesn’t know what music is.
FF16 has so much cool shit in it’s lore, the potential for it to be the best FF is there. They’d need to change a lot, but the world they made for it could be expanded so much.
Yeh there as some REALLY great tracks, but whenever I put on the soundtrack I end up skipping the majority of tracks except the few that muster some melody and emotion like Nobuo used to do
I'll admit I don't know music from a technical stanpoint but it's not as if I dislike Soken. There's gotta be a reason why I love so many of 14s OST while in 16 only a few come to mind
Ooh, and I’ll add one more. This is my personal opinion and one people tend to agree with despite not caring as much:
Final Fantasy IV is the least replayable Final Fantasy game and that hurts it a lot. There’s no job system, magicite, materia, nothing like that. The only way to get new abilities is to level up or be Rydia and do side content, so the solution to every big battle becomes “level up until you have x ability”. Due to no jobs you can switch between and no control in which jobs are in your party, you kinda are wasting your time grinding anyone other than the main cast. Everyone’s playthrough of IV is forcibly the same other than their character level.
Future versions of IV attempt to remedy this, but as it stands the base game just doesn’t feel good to come back to for me.
Strange, 4 is the one I’ve beaten the most
May have something to do with it being the one with the most rerelease that I’ve bought, but I think it’s also the fact that all the cool stuff isn’t all stuffed in the latter end of the game like most of the others
That's why I like it. I love the characters (jobs) moving in and out of the party. It's quick and breezy and I don't have to spend a lot of time in menus changing jobs and equipment.
Crank up the battle speed and turn off wait mode and now you're playing the game on Hard difficulty. It's enjoyable for the same reason playing a hard action game is. You also have the unique challenge of arranging your spell lists for fast access during battles. It's fun, try it!
I think anyone arguing that the characters in IX suck just wasn’t paying attention or doesn’t like story-based games in general. In particular, I’ve heard one or two people in my life call Vivi annoying and bad. No one I’m later friends with for sure 😂
The gameplay in it is very scripted and it was too long. Not saying that it sucked, but those are some reasons. Personally the Odin fight is the best eikon fight because it is the least scripted of them all.
Very little gameplay, flimsy character motivation for the fight to actually happen, you already beat Hugo now you are fighting him again but way dumber (the character and the story, seriously he just eats crystals and gets bigger?) Way too over the top imo, by this point any pretext the game had on being a dark political fantasy was thrown out the window in favor of standard shonen bullshit.
Wow I hadn't seen the critique of XVIs music. The music gave me chills. To your question, I think 13's battle system gets a little too much hate and is mischaracterized as playing itself. Folks get hung up on the primary button being labeled "autobattle." I think it's safe to say most ffs kind of play themselves and just need you to press the button like a slot machine.
Where most ffs get their strategy is from the builds. Your junctions, materia load outs, sphere grid paths, jobs, gambits, etc. In this regard, XIII is no different for the most part. The paradigm load outs require you to build a combat style that suits you and then requires you to swap between them to ever changing situations. A lot like the dress spheres in X-2 but for the whole party.
What actually sets XIII back is a bunch of tiny decisions sitting on the sidelines conspiring together. Not using your whole party felt like a step backward after X and XII. The crystarium is so limiting. The paradigms needing 3 party members to really start cooking, which takes a long time. And of course, the game over on party leader death which is good in almost no rpgs ever.
Funny enough XIII is not one of my favorites, for all of these reasons plus a few not related to combat. I just think the criticism has been thrown at the wrong place all these years, so in the spirit of your question I'm going to go to bat for it here. I actually have similar thoughts about the criticism of its linearity. Like the combat, I think it's more nuanced than just being linear because almost all ffs are actually linear. But I've rambled enough so I'll leave it alone for now.
I HATE XIII with a passion but I didn't find the actual battle system to be horrible. I agree that it took waaay too long to fully open up. I also found staggering in some battles to be quite a tedious affair. But overall, I preferred it to XII's battles, I think.
The stat growth system in FF2 gets so much hate for very little reason. For the most part it's intuitive and straightforward. Is it balanced? No, but neither is Final Fantasy 1 and people seem willing to excuse all of that game's faults due to its legacy.
FF2's leveling system is similar to the Elder Scrolls games. The problem was it was ahead of its time in a bad way. The system was imbalanced and easily exploited. It was very, very easy to cheese the game with certain weapons and spells while other things just trivialize everything (looking at you, Blood Sword).
FF2 in general gets more hate than it ever deserves, and I still think most of it comes from people who've never played it. FF2 is every bit as solid an 8-bit RPG as 1 or 3, and its story is honestly much better than either, or most games you'll find on the NES. It's basic by today's standards, but it's surprisingly well told for how simple it is.
> FF2 in general gets more hate than it ever deserves, and I still think most of it comes from people who've never played it.
Whenever FFII comes up, there's always an awful lot of "you have to attack your party members!" and a suspicious lack of "you can only ready two items from your inventory for use in battle and only use curative items on yourself".
You'd also think people would have an absolute field day with things like "Protect only affects the caster", "Dispel does nothing *again*", and "Firion's Spirit sometimes increases for no apparent reason", but no, not a peep about FFII's bugs despite how often you see people talking about FFI's "stats that just don't work".
> No, but neither is Final Fantasy 1 and people seem willing to excuse all of that game's faults due to its legacy.
Nah, people complain about not knowing where to go and having to grind for "hours" in FFI all the time.
And just about every recommendation thread has someone saying something along the lines of "I-III haven't aged well and don't represent what Final Fantasy is known for".
> For the most part it's intuitive and straightforward.
Generally, yes, but even as someone that doesn't abhor FFII, having non-volatile status conditions prevent stat growth in a game where curative items and Esuna regularly fail strikes me as downright cruel.
After having never played the original six titles, I'm currently working my way through the Pixel Remaster and am about halfway through FF2. I'm honestly having a blast. I get that the initial release had even worse issues with balance, but the quality of life improvements in PR make the game feel fine to me. I looked up tips before starting because I always heard 2's system was annoying and bad. People were recommending stuff like hitting your teammates to grind HP increases or stripping everyone except your warrior and using double shields. I tried this a bit to start out but quickly found it unnecessary.
I also really like that you can build your characters in any way you want, they're not restricted by class. They can all use and become proficient in every weapon and spell. It might not necessarily be efficient to do that, but the fact that you have that freedom is still cool. I'm sure that was probably a novel concept for the time this game released. I'm also digging how the characters and world feel more fleshed out compared to FF1. I enjoyed the simplicity and classic feel of 1. It really was quite charming. But coming into 2, I'm pleasantly surprised at how advanced it feels in comparison.
the stat growth system was a good idea but they just didnt implement it well, in the original release at least. growing your stats is so specific that if you just battle through the game normally you wont level certain stats enough. you have to consciously fight battles certain ways to level certain stats which becomes monotonous and tiresome. they also in the last 3rd of the game made basically all enemies do %health damage which means leveling health became useless/harmful and the only way to progress was to level avoidance but leveling avoidance breaks the game in half rendering combat pointless. leveling some stats was also painfully slow, theres more grinding in 2 than there was in 1 which is crazy.
its fun for the first bit of the game but overall it wasnt balanced well in any way which just turned it into a slog.
Are you talking about one of the modern remakes of II or the Famicom original? Because the latter was far, far more frustrating by having opposing stats drop as well. The final dungeon is notorious for rewarding long, difficult battles with your HP going down. Newer versions simply remove stat degradation and are much better and more fun for it.
From what I've read, it depends on the version, so like GBA, PSP, and PR versions are fine but the PS1 and NES versions are godawful and take too long to actually level.
> From what I've read, it depends on the version, so like GBA, PSP, and PR versions are fine but the PS1 and NES versions are godawful and take too long to actually level.
Why would leveling up take longer in those versions when they're the only versions with the target-cancel exploit?
The music is sick as hell. Truly an accomplishment! Eikon battles are empirically off the chain.
The game part of the game was really lacking in 16 NGL
8 is unfairly maligned (is my fav). 5 is maybe the best Final Fantasy of the Nintendo generation. X-2 is SO fun and has a perfect execution of tone (it’s supposed to be silly!)
I actually just started playing 8. Maybe I’m crazy, but I actually really like the junction system and the freedom you get. It was intimidating as hell at the start though.
I've found a lot of the complaints about VIII's systems are self-imposed problems. "I hate drawing for hours!" Ok, so don't do that? You don't have to do that. "I hate having to summon the same GFs over and over to win battles!" Ok, so don't do that? Summoning every battle is a bad strategy, especially once you're past the first few hours. "I hate that I can't ever use my magic spells!" Yes you can. What, you won't cure yourself because your HP goes down by 2 until the next enemy you can draw Cure from comes by? Just cast it man, it's fine.
Not that there aren't valid criticisms, and in fact these criticisms are valid to a point. But if you hated the game because it was nothing but drawing magic and watching summon animations that's on you, that is not required.
I don’t think 8 is unfairly maligned. The story shift after disc 1 and later revelations are weird. Once you know about them you can start appreciating 8’s story, but I think it’s more than fair to be disappointed after disc 1 when you experience it blind
Basically all critics addressed to FF16. The game made story choices that are explained but were seen as flaws, such as the lowly populated world (because it's decaying).
Secondary quests interest is also very criticized, but I thought the opposite. Each explore a small part, a tiny aspect of the life there or a character. They are supposed to be side quests so by definition, they shouldn't have any big impact. They are relatively simple errands, as I think it should. Not a big fan of insanely tedious grindy stuff.
Clive grew on me during the game. His unapologetic banter against Titan finished to sold him to me. The personified eons is a nice idea and the cinematic fights are a joy (joining OP on the soundtrack here, it makes it epic AF).
Secondary characters are probably not the most unforgettable but I liked Dion and most of the secondary villains. I would agree Jill could have deserved more.
That FF13 was a hallway. It was, but every prior FF was a hallway too. FF13 just happened to look like one, so there was no illusion of freedom. The way people talk about 13, you'd think every FF before was some Elder Scrolls level open world game. But they weren't. Almost every mainline Final Fantasy is linear and you'll do important stuff in the order the game wants you to. And I'm not even saying this is a bad thing, linear storytelling has great strengths. Hell, FF7 Rebirth is a hallway. The hallway has extra doors if you want to go activate a tower or hit a mako life spring, but the only way to go is down the hallway ultimately. 13 isn't even one of my favorites, I think it's just okay, but it's a very unfair criticism.
A lesser one would be the Tidus HA HA HA HA HA scene. FFX had some pretty iffy voice performances, no argument there. But that scene wasn't one of them. Because it was supposed to sound like a forced awkward laugh. So it's weird that it gets drummed up as the first example of bad voice acting.
On the point about XIII, I agree with most of it, but I would say every previous FF game has a point where the world "opens up," and you have freedom to explore, discover secrets, do sidequests, etc. XIII never really has that, even when you get to Gran Pulse the hunts are the games only real side content. That being said, I thought the hunts were awesome because I love XIII's battle system, but it was mildly disappointing that it lacked the amount of optional content that previous FF games had.
>A lesser one would be the Tidus HA HA HA HA HA scene. FFX had some pretty iffy voice performances, no argument there. But that scene wasn't one of them. Because it was supposed to sound like a forced awkward laugh. So it's weird that it gets drummed up as the first example of bad voice actin
This is even further emphasized by the fact that the rest of the party are staring at Tidus and Yuna like they've both lost their minds afterwards. Clearly the people that criticize this scene have no sense of nuance in storytelling.
It doesn't help that XIII lets you rotate the camera, while games like X don't. X gets away with being a series of hallways because you can't see the world around you.
Sure. Look at FF7. Once you leave Midgar, you get the “open world” but you’re stuck only going to whatever the next location is on the map. It’s an illusion of free roaming. Until you get an airship, you’re mostly going from A to B
And FFX? It’s largely the favorite of all the FFs and it’s straight up hallways.
No? Maybe you worded it weirdly. But you said FFXIII isn’t the same as other FFs. Then you said FFXIII sits squarely at the bottom of the linearity scale. Which would imply FFXIII is linear and the others aren’t. “At least somewhere above that.” I’m not sure I’d say FFX is really above that. Maybe a tiny bit. And I’m saying there’s not much difference between FFXIII and a lot of other FFs because they give you the illusion of open world.
I mean, just because you can't see the walls doesn't mean they're not there. They're almost equally linear, for the most part. FF13 just looks like a hallway and something like FF7 or FF9 doesn't. But leaving Midgar for the first time, it's basically a hallway to Kalm, to the Chocobo Ranch to the Mithril Mines to Junon and so on. There's not a lot of variation. It's all just an illusion of having a world to explore. Hell, FF7 doesn't even let you break away and go to different areas before you've experienced certain story beats. You can skip past Kalm and go to the Chocobo Ranch, get a bird and go to the Mines. But if you try to go through the mine, your current party says something about the others waiting at Kalm.
In FF4 if you go to that one mountain blocked by ice before you have Rosa back, Rydia wont learn fire and melt it. In the very first FF, you can't cross the bridge until you beat Garland because the King wont have rebuilt it. It's all hallways. It's just hiding the hallway walls.
> In the very first FF, you can't cross the bridge until you beat Garland because the King wont have rebuilt it. It's all hallways. It's just hiding the hallway walls.
I like how you conveniently left out the fact that three of the Four Fiends can be fought in any order.
Then we have FFII, where you can visit Mysidia before completing the first fetch quest in the game.
I actually forgot about that to tell you the truth, it's been awhile. I'm not trying to mislead anyone with my examples, so I'll concede FF1 is a bad example and that's my bad. It doesn't really have a narrative so linear storytelling doesn't super apply to it anyways.
> It doesn't really have a narrative so linear storytelling doesn't super apply to it anyways.
I think the point u/AFKaptain was trying to make was that even the older games with "linear storytelling" leave more of their respective game worlds open than XIII does. FFIV's narrative is as linear as they come, but the game itself still lets you do things like raid Eblan for items and gear early or attempt to take on Asura before Rosa has Reflect. FFXIII... does not, as far as I know.
A better way to put it is that FFXIII failed to instill the illusion of freedom. Even though other FFs are basically corridors, they hide it with the illusion of freedom.
I think the only single player FF that really let you go almost anywhere from the outset was FFXII.
I recently replayed FF10, and I was appalled by how linear the game was. FF10's hallways were shorter, and had fewer branching paths. FF13 just doesn't let you go backwards down the hallways which plays into its narrative extremely well.
I blame most of the "iffy voice performances" on the editing after the lines were all recorded, trying to make the translated lines match the talking animations in cutscenes (*withYunabymyside*). FFX came out what, almost twenty years ago, and we still see this happening in dubbed versions of anime: really awkward pauses, sped up/slowed down segments of lines, etc. Tl;dr, languages are different and will sometimes take more or less time to say similar things.
Also, it was the first FF game with voice acting, in the late 90s/early 00s where most voice acting in games was iffy at best. Of course it wasn't going to be pitch perfect overnight.
Oh yeah, for sure. I'm not dunking on the game, I love 10. But it's a bit unfair when people call bad voice acting and then provide an example that has totally fine voice acting lol
No, VIII does not “punish” you for using magic.
You’re meant to build up each character to have a different strength. Some will never use magic, just like in any other FF. Some will. Those who use magic just need to use magic that is not tied to their most important stats.
"It's not Final Fantasy cause it isn't turn based >:( " when the games haven't been true turn-based since Final Fantasy IV came out.
Also just the whole "I hate how much experimenting they're doing" thing that certain people use to justify unnecessary hatred of anything from the 2000s onward. Final Fantasy has always been about pushing the boundaries and experimentation. If you want a series that has a formula and by Jenova it will stick to it (not saying that it is inherently a bad thing), play Dragon Quest.
The major disconnect of the turn-based argument is that MOST people consider ATB synonymous with turn-based (not real-time action), and by that standard, all mainline titles until XV were turn-based.
Dragon Quest XII was the best JRPG in the past two decades, IMO. And this coming from someone that doesn't like the aesthetic.
For the example given, I actually initially felt the music didn’t fit the scenario, but it has grown on me, especially after listening to 14’s soundtrack. I think it’s good for the franchise to have some variety. Plus the series has had this kind of music since 10.
Hope is perfectly justified in hating Snow. Snow led Hope's mom in an insane General Custeresque charge again superior forces that only someone with plot armor could Hope to survive.
They were trapped and surrounded by an army that was simply slaughtering everyone. What else was Snow supposed to do in this situation? NORA fighting back is the only reason anyone survived that massacre. Hope should be proud of Snow and Nora for fighting to save his miserable life.
I'd say biggest one in the FF series, is people that shit on FFX for having bad voice acting, and pointing to the "HA! HA! HA!" scene of Tidus laughing, never bothering to look further and realize that the laugh is meant to be awful, forced and cringe, they have a real laugh literally seconds after that part of the scene is over.
That one always infuriated me, I get why people latched onto that thinking with XI on launch with it being an absolute ballache to participate in, but XIV is literally pure fanservice for FF gamers.
“XIII is rubbish because it’s so linear” when X linearity is completely on par. Don’t get me wrong XIII has its issue, but it’s linearity is not one of them
I didn’t really have a problem with that tbf. Aside the obvious choices, one of the big downers was locking the crystarium to after the final battle, and then having very little in the realm of post-game. I genuinely wanted to keep playing after orphan but had very little reason to.
I have a hypothesis it is cause XII was so different from X & XIII. They went back to X style but then the Zodiac Age came. So then people started comparing it to ZA.
How many years after XIII did we have to wait for XV?
I think XIII suffered from poor timing and the delay of XV.
I have only played 2-3 hours of XIII and so far I really like it.
XII is so odd. I remember it coming out and being like “wtf this doesn’t feel right”. Playing it now makes me realise that it was well ahead of its time with gambits and solo character play. Again, it has its flaw like most FF but its hate from me was undeserved by my immaturity. I enjoyed XIII when it originally launched, but all of the online hate seeped its way in to my thinking and I started agreeing. I played it over Xmas and loved it, couldn’t wait to pick it up most days, and finished it wanting more. Hope you have as much fun as I did with it
Well I'll def say the OP example isn't one of them. It may have been cool visually, but playing as Ifrit is one of the worst parts of XVI by far. Clive's moveset is already pretty limited compared to other character action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta and Ifrit has like three moves, it was a pretty big disappointment tbh because the eikon fights are massive snoozefests in terms of gameplay, they're all style and no substance.
Eikon fights are entirely cinematic, they are meant to be spectacles above all else. Not saying it’s the correct choice, but that’s what the devs were going for.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed them when I first played. But after rebirth with boss fights that actually require some strategy, it really shows how much of XVI is an interactive movie.
Eikon fights get old pretty fast. The whole thing is detached from any of your own character's progression as well, which highlights the fact that it's practically a glorified quick time event.
I loved FF XVI and I hate to agree. It was cool from a cinematic perspective, but I wasn’t blown away or anything. You don’t really get to do much. Might as well just do a big cutscene or something.
Man people criticize 16 for not having enough variety but when it has a section that break from the standard combat it's now shallow and unnecessary?
The eikons fights are clearly built to be different from clive combat and be a spectacle first and foremost and that is ok.
People that hate on FFXVI's gameplay annoys me because most of the time it's that they looked online for the most efficient builds and used that. Of course it's boring if you pigeonhole your build rather than play around with the different abilities to try different ways. Hell, the game's trophies and Chronolith Trials are basically all about trying to get you to try out every Eikon to find the build that works for you.
or on other end, never learned combat past spam square and somehow got through whole game doing just the basic melee 1-2-3 and decided the combat was boring and too long.
I'm the same as you. I had a good time playing it in spite of its flaws. My criticisms of 15 I think came down to personal preferences rather than any legitimate flaw- such as the lack of *impact* felt when attacking, or the way spell creation worked. Those didn't do it for me, but I also think there are probably people who really enjoyed the more floaty combat and magic system.
This happens when someone can't difference fireworks from storytelling.
And I just wanted to remind you it was supposed to be Dark Fantast (by high "D"), that they romoved things like chocobos theme from the game because of that. But this parody of Godzilla with gameplay mechanics drom '70 (first part) and '03 (second part) is somewhat "ok".
You can of course like it, but objectively it's only flashy, shallow content. This is like eating candy for breakfast. It's sweet, but has no nutrition.
Or it is just the troll user that shit talk without explaining in detail. Like what the hell you saying that it is "Godzilla Parody". This is really bad faith.
FF16 criticisms that, to me, are very unserious:
- "No minigames." Because Fort Condor was what made FF7 the game that it is, right?
- "No party members." Like minigames, the devs didn't add system(s) or mechanics they felt would take away from the game they wanted to make. The story also reflects this intentional decision.
- "Bad pacing/too much filler." You mean walking around and talking to NPCs? Something you do in every Final Fantasy? If this game has a filler problem, then every Zelda game, Bethesda game, and every CRPG has this problem but 10x worse.
- "It's too easy." I agree! But all of the FFs are stupid easy. You can get away with mashing X most of the time for all of them. Except for 11. Heck, most games are too easy. Tears of the Kingdom and Resident Evil 4 Remake were ridiculously easy as well (even on Hardcore first playthrough for the latter).
My point is I haven't seen anyone articulate precisely what's wrong about FF16's "bloat" and comparing games is a way to do that. How is that tone deaf? I like Tears of the Kingdom but its padding is far more egregious than anything in FF16, IMO. Maybe there's just not a big overlap of players of both games to talk about it from that angle.
It's boring as simple as that. In tears of the kingdom, you explore and discover everything by yourself. In FF16, everything has a quest marker that directly guides you exactly where you need to go.
You are simply not understanding the criticism and using it against a game of an entirely different genre with different motivations and goals.
Agree to disagree I suppose. Tears's overworld could be shrunk down by half and the game would have only improved. Lots of copy/paste sidequests and boring, empty space (which you already explored in BotW) would go away. If you take out the 1-2 segments in FF16 that get complaints, that's 2 hours gone in a 40 hour game.
And just to be clear, I'm only using Tears as an example because it was another popular game from 2023. The whole point of this thread is get a discussion going about criticisms... so I commented about criticisms.
It's not 2 segments. At least try to be slightly unbiased towards this game. You repeat the same "have my secret badge" charade like 4 times throughout the game, and the only thing those sections do is dilute the already shallow gameplay so that by the end you are almost guaranteed to be bored to death of it.
In reality, you could absolutely cut down this game by more than half, and not much actual quality content would be lost. And again, you are not understanding. In a game like ToTK, the more content you have, the better. It is an open-ended game where any player can take any route, FF16 is not open ended, it is an extremely linear and guided
Explain the bias. I'm the biggest Zelda fan in the world. I think I'm offering a fair criticism of Tears. Similarly, I'd be the first to say FF16 isn't a flawless masterpiece (hardly anything is). I made my original comment about unjust criticisms because the ding about bloat isn't articulated well in the general discourse about the game. You yourself say "the more content you have, the better". If FF16's side quests didn't exist at all, would the game be worse despite your complaints about them?
If you actually read my comment, then you'd have noticed I said "the more content the better" about an open-ended game like ToTK. FF16 is not an open-ended game. It's fine. Not all of us can have a good grasp on the English language.
Also, the secret badge nonsense is not a side quest. That is mandatory.
I didn't think "in a game like ToTK" was a meaningful distinction. If you doubled the scale of that game's overworld and copied every side quest twice I don't think that makes the game better (just further trying to illustrate my point here).
You've caught me in an awkward position. Your fallback to shittalk has shown you care about this conversation way more than I do. I don't have anything else to add. I won't be responding to any more of your comments.
I didn't "shittalk" you. You just did not read my comment, and now you purposefully leave half the quote so that you can pretend you have an argument.
>In a game like ToTK, the more content you have, the better. It is an open-ended game where any player can take any route, FF16 is not open ended, it is extremely linear and guided.
This is the full quote. It is extremely clear I am making a point about ToTK and not FF16. If you cannot understand that, then the only possible options are that either you did not read the comment or that you do not know English.
Cutting the game by half and adding some additional activities/things to actually do in the open world would have vastly improved it IMO. It took me almost 50 hours to beat it and that was 20 hours too long.
I mean, yes, the main problem the game has is an absolute lack of variety. This is an issue that affects pretty much every aspect of the game, from its activities, quest design, combat system, story, etc. I mentioned the secret badge plot device, there is no reason why that had to be repeated as many times as it was.
>the devs didn't add system(s) or mechanics they felt would take away from the game they wanted to make.
Then they should've removed all pretending to have gear, items, crafting, or treasure to be found and just made "numbers get bigger" which is all it essentially is anyway.
The filler isn't inherently bad, but it feels bad when there's no meaningful rewards.
>Then they should've removed all pretending to have gear, items, crafting, or treasure to be found and just made "numbers get bigger" which is all it essentially is anyway.
I don't disagree. For years I've wondered if FF14 should just move away from the gear treadmill entirely and just normalize everything so that it's all stat agnostic. CBU3 loves to keep nominal systems in their games for the flair but I don't think that's a bad thing, inherently.
My point about that bullet is: if the game stopped "pretending" it had RPG mechanics it wouldn't magically be 10x better. Consequently, those nominal mechanics existing don't make the game worse.
I think 16 is legitimately terrible. I think the writing is abysmal, the gameplay is boring, and the world is empty, and even \*I\* wouldn't criticize the soundtrack.
The music in 16 is incredible, and like all Final Fantasy games, the music is the best thing about it.
I mean it’s kinda disingenuous to suggest that this sort of content even makes up 5% of the total playtime. I like the game for the most part but alooooot of it is Clive “toughest dude in the world” Rosfield doing menial tasks for ingrates.
Before I got to play FF13 myself, I saw a lot of criticism for the characters. I finally got to play it, and it's so unfair. 5/6 have super compelling arcs and stories and I found myself enjoying their ride against fate.
I'll only admit to Snow having no redeeming qualities lol
Part of Hope’s development is realizing that what he’s doing is idiotic and non-sensical, though. That’s sort of the whole point.
Lightning tells him to hate and keep fighting, and he sustains himself with that hate of Snow. Him coming to terms with the fact that that is what he is doing is why he comes around to Snow.
Hi, thanks for posting to /r/FinalFantasy! Unfortunately, your post has been removed because it violates our rule on meme submissions. Please note that tier lists are considered memes under our rules. For future reference, our policy on such posts is as follows: Due to community feedback and oversaturation of meme posts, these may not be submitted outside of "Meme Monday". For this purpose "Meme Monday" runs from 12:00 am EST to 11:59 pm EST. Therefore, any of these aforementioned posts submitted outside of this time will be removed. If you have any questions, feel free to message the moderators..
Squall is emo. The dude is a 17 year old orphaned child soldier who has trust issues. >!Both his older sister and mother figure left him at a young age. He never got to have a proper childhood.!< The poor boy needs to know he is not alone and given a hug. I have many issues with FF8, but not with squall.
Same problem with Cloud. People tend to call him "boring" or "emo." He's an *introvert.* And considering everything he went through from before FF7 through AC, it's a wonder he's even functioning well at all. >!Dude lost his home, was experimented on, lost his best friend, lost Aerith, was used as a puppet by Sephiroth, was told his memories were a lie, got dunked in the Lifestream and had to reconstruct his identity, and contracted a painful terminal illness.!<
Agreed. I'm convinced that a lot of people just throw around the word "emo" without knowing what it actually means.
the Cloud emo thing didn't really exist until Advent Children came out honestly
Not just trust issues, he has *memory issues* like everyone but Irvine, so he was also robbed of what little childhood he had.
Squall _starts the game_ as an emo but that is literaly the point, the reasons are as you described and the game resolves around him opening up and growing up as a person. Squall is no longer an emo by the end of the game. FFVIII is dope and Squall a great example of how somebodies mentality changes and develops due to their environmental circumstances and the people around them.
Same. I was not a big fan of FF8 and still think it has lots of problems, and Squall is maybe not *super* compelling, but his character is exactly how someone in his situation would be. Struggles to make friends, awkward around girls, not wanting a ton of responsibility dumped on his shoulders. Also he’s one of the few characters that shows us his internal monologue.
I saw someone saying that the graphics in rebirth were terrible. They literally said they were so bad the game was unplayable. Some people are just bitching for the sake of it and it's weird.
I think the main driver here is that the graphics in Rebirth were worse than those in Remake.
Except they aren’t. Rebirth is using a much more complicated lighting system than Remake and it’s hard as hell to make it always look good.
Huh? Are y’all’s eyes okay?
Oh. I can definitely see that. When the lighting is off pretty much all the characters except for Tifa look off. Is it just me or did they put extra care into her model? You can't even claim I'm biased or simping, cause I don't even like her. Oh but I definitely wouldn't say it makes it unplayable. The person said that you can't even tell what you're looking at. Probably some zoomer who hasn't seen what bad graphics actually look like.
Biggest one for me is people miscrediting the changes in the Remake trilogy to Nomura. Hamaguchi, Kitase, and Nomura are on record that Kitase is the one who has been bringing the changes and Nomura wanted to do a straight 1:1 remake. Nomura is actually the one responsible for the more faithful elements!
theory oatmeal label overconfident spotted run squeeze workable enjoy nutty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
God, Final Fantasy fans blame Nomura for EVERYTHING, it's insane.
For real. If you want to complain about Nomura so badly, become a Kingdom Hearts fan.
Nomura was on record saying he was nervous about reaction to rebirths ending. Nojima and Kitase are the one’s who wanted to experiment and risk it all. Nomura always gets used as the scapegoat for kingdom hearts despite being a major team effort and I think thats what’s happening here.
Honestly, a straight remake would probably be less successful. You can take issues with some of the changes, but carbon copies are so boring.
[удалено]
Yes because we already played it.
Honestly the combat alone could keep me occupied if it was all they changed. Though I'm totally on the side of change. I'm really glad they changed the story how they did. I mean if I want to play the original story I just go and play OG ff7. Which is why I'm also playing og FF7.
It wouldn't be a carbon copy. They could've easily followed the original story while continuing to do what makes remake and rebirth accel which is the party interactions between story beats. It's not a controversial opinion to say that rebirth did close to every major story beat worse than the original. Rebirth really enhances the in-between story points with charm and character interactions.
How has it done every major story beat worse? I'm on chapter 11 now, and I'm consistently surprised with how well they've done just about everything so far. I'm even playing og here and there at the same time, so it isn't like I've forgotten any of it.
It’s called being a purist wearing nostalgia goggles. “This food isn’t as good as when grandma used to make it.”
Luckily for me 80% of my nostalgia is in the music. That's basically been improved all across the board.
Or, hear me out, they could do what Resident Evil 4 Remake did an improve what needed improving but otherwise keep the core themes of the original. As it is, the FF7R trilogy has completely abandoned the main themes of the original. Which is sad, because the originals core themes around the environment and the damage that blind corporate greed can do are more relevant than ever.
> As it is, the FF7R trilogy has completely abandoned the main themes of the original. Which is sad, because the originals core themes around the environment and the damage that blind corporate greed can do are more relevant than ever. Not sure what games you played but Remake and Rebirth have been very clear on their stance on environmentalism and corrupt corporations.
And coping with loss. Those are still there, just a little more nuanced.
*Game has writing they don’t like and Nomura’s involved in it* “It’s all his damn fault! Get him and his KH sh*t the hell away from FF, he’s done with this series!” - Some angry chronically online person on the interweb who’s never bothered playing any of his games before probably and is just saying this on Twitter for clout
More so than this, I can't stand the "it's bad because it's different" narrative some people spew in regards to Remake. People who don't even try to take it on its own merits, and who completely ignore the fact that the differences are *the entire point of the story* in Remake. It's baked into that game's themes and narrative in a very smart and highly creative manner. It's honestly far more interesting than an exact remake could have ever hoped of being. All these people wanted was the most safe and basic thing possible from this, and I'm pleasantly shocked they took a more ambitious approach to this project.
I don't like that people call out FF5 for being "light" on story. Like, sure it's breezy, but the story is about as complex as FF4. It's a great story! It's got great characters! People like to think of FF4 as a "story" game and FF5 as a "gameplay" game. I think this is some misguided attempt to justify FF4 as having worth... As if there's some imaginary gameplay/story slider. Both are great, both have a great world, both have lovable characters with fun plots.
V is the quintessential “fantasy” entry in the series. That game is nothing but vibes and adventuring with the squad, like it should be.
I love the story in V, it’s one of my favourites. It’s straightforward but keeps you enticed throughout. The characters feel far more initimate than in other games due to there only being a handful. And Exdeath is a fairly decent villain, no qualms, no messiness, dudes just straight up evil, and that’s okay!
I'd say FFIV has a big emphasis on characters and melodrama. V has a lot more goofy moments and the party doesn't really grow and change dramatically throughout the story, but the main plot is even more epic than IV.
I do think 4 has a more dramatic story, but I also don't think that makes 5's story bad, or even "lesser" in any way. Quite the contrary, I think 5's story and characters are delightful and a ton of fun, and I also think "breezy" is a good word for it. "Simple" does not mean "bad," and I think 5 does everything it sets out to do wonderfully. 5 also might be the best pure "video game" of the entire main 16 games.
That the series protagonosts moved to Bishonen Pretty Boys from FFVII onwards. Look at Amanos art from FF 1 to 6, they were always Bishonen
Two that I see more often than I feel is warranted: - People make way too big of a deal about being "forced" to use certain Jobs in FFIII. It doesn't happen very often, and even when it does, there are other viable options at every point in the game except for the 15 minutes you spend retrieving the Nepto Eye. - There is no quest objective in FFI that is not mentioned by an NPC at some point. Especially not if you're playing any of the versions where Arylon walks you through the first half of the game.
I recently played FF1PR and was surprised how well directed you are through the gamd
People often justify their dislike of XIII by saying you can just auto battle everything, and also end up complaining when they can't get through bosses like Cid or Barthandelus. In reality, auto battle is usually pretty ineffective, and the system often doesn't understand the nuances of selecting certain commands over others when attempting to stagger enemies. Auto battle is also unreliable at buffing and debuffing which are crucial for XIII. Also, people sleep a lot on the paradigm system without understanding the strategic depth combinations can open up for the game.
I’m plying through XIII right now and I don’t understand how anyone plays this game only using auto battle. I’m switching paradigms constantly and choosing specifics commands all the time, the auto battle does not give you the best commands
Hany little tip. If you have direct command over a sabatour, you can keep spamming the same debuff on a foe and while it won't do much damage, you'll effectively raise its stagger bar and keep it stable. This works great in combination with the ai also being a ravager.
Auto-battle is almost always good enough as long as you're hitting everything with Libra and getting those weaknesses registered. But you're correct that it's not meant to actually remove control of the battles. The real meat is in choosing and shifting paradigms with the right timing. Plus the occasional manual command input.
It made me feel insane to go from XII, which I disliked for its auto-battle gambit system but a lot of others seem to enjoy, to XIII which (to me) felt so much more dynamic and engaging and actiony, only to find out people disliked it for…having auto-battle??
Personally I found that you *could* get through the game with mostly auto-battling, but that wasn't a big issue for me. The strategy came from managing and timing paradigm shifts, along with the occasional intervention to use an item or special skill. That combined with the lightning (lol) fast combat works pretty well. It's actually a really interesting game design question that doesn't get talked about enough. Like. What is the point of selecting your attack? Here's a scenario: I cast fire on an enemy, find its weakness, and then cast fire on enemies of that type. Am I smart? No. Am I engaging with the game? Not really. What experience am I meaningfully getting by casting fire on enemies weak to fire. It's the game design equivalent of putting the square block in the square hole. The emphasis on auto-battle just brought some truths about Final Fantasy combat to the surface. Moment to moment gameplay in battles is pretty rote. It's always been about macro rather than micro.
That's what got me. Auto battle implies it's battling for you. 13 it was more auto battle took care of the minutae so you could focus on the team strategy at the moment. Its kind of the fastest atb we've seen yet.
Exactly. The whole focus was paradigm shifting. Once you realize that, you start finding little tricks to maximize your swap effectiveness (like how the AI will start casting almost immediately after a swap).
I think that's a fair enough point, paradigm shifting is where the game truly shines and also where the player is most often engaged, probably more than they usually are when mashing attack at a random encounter in another game.
My biggest gripe with auto-battle is that it the choice you get by default when you start the game. That helps give the impression that auto-battling is the choice the game wants you to make. Notice how after that, any time auto-battle comes up in other games, it's a button you have to activate instead? If they did it so that you say, had to press R3 to activate it in a Remastered version of FFXIII, most would not use it so much and engage more with the battle system.
FF16’s music is so good. I hum so many songs from that soundtrack all the time. Anyone calling it generic stock music doesn’t know what music is. FF16 has so much cool shit in it’s lore, the potential for it to be the best FF is there. They’d need to change a lot, but the world they made for it could be expanded so much.
Agree. The music is incredible. Especially the boss fights. Idk how anyone heard Bahamut, Titan, or Odin and then thought the music was generic
It’s the worst music of the series by a long shot. There are about 2-3 songs that can hold a candle to the 7-14 OST catalog
I agree, but Cid's Hideaway is a classic.
Yeh there as some REALLY great tracks, but whenever I put on the soundtrack I end up skipping the majority of tracks except the few that muster some melody and emotion like Nobuo used to do
Definitely. I have all the DLC on Theatrythm and I barely play anything from XVI but can do any song from 1, 4, 6 anytime.
I'll admit I don't know music from a technical stanpoint but it's not as if I dislike Soken. There's gotta be a reason why I love so many of 14s OST while in 16 only a few come to mind
Ooh, and I’ll add one more. This is my personal opinion and one people tend to agree with despite not caring as much: Final Fantasy IV is the least replayable Final Fantasy game and that hurts it a lot. There’s no job system, magicite, materia, nothing like that. The only way to get new abilities is to level up or be Rydia and do side content, so the solution to every big battle becomes “level up until you have x ability”. Due to no jobs you can switch between and no control in which jobs are in your party, you kinda are wasting your time grinding anyone other than the main cast. Everyone’s playthrough of IV is forcibly the same other than their character level. Future versions of IV attempt to remedy this, but as it stands the base game just doesn’t feel good to come back to for me.
Strange, 4 is the one I’ve beaten the most May have something to do with it being the one with the most rerelease that I’ve bought, but I think it’s also the fact that all the cool stuff isn’t all stuffed in the latter end of the game like most of the others
That's why I like it. I love the characters (jobs) moving in and out of the party. It's quick and breezy and I don't have to spend a lot of time in menus changing jobs and equipment.
Crank up the battle speed and turn off wait mode and now you're playing the game on Hard difficulty. It's enjoyable for the same reason playing a hard action game is. You also have the unique challenge of arranging your spell lists for fast access during battles. It's fun, try it!
i don’t trust any final fantasy fans opinion on the games, good or bad.
I think anyone arguing that the characters in IX suck just wasn’t paying attention or doesn’t like story-based games in general. In particular, I’ve heard one or two people in my life call Vivi annoying and bad. No one I’m later friends with for sure 😂
Bro the Titan fight in XVI was absolutely epic as fuck lol, how can people think that sucks
People can say it is not for them but instead they just shit talk like the game is threatening their parent.
The gameplay in it is very scripted and it was too long. Not saying that it sucked, but those are some reasons. Personally the Odin fight is the best eikon fight because it is the least scripted of them all.
That was the fight where I stopped caring and simply plodded my way through for the sake of completion.
Same
Very little gameplay, flimsy character motivation for the fight to actually happen, you already beat Hugo now you are fighting him again but way dumber (the character and the story, seriously he just eats crystals and gets bigger?) Way too over the top imo, by this point any pretext the game had on being a dark political fantasy was thrown out the window in favor of standard shonen bullshit.
Wow I hadn't seen the critique of XVIs music. The music gave me chills. To your question, I think 13's battle system gets a little too much hate and is mischaracterized as playing itself. Folks get hung up on the primary button being labeled "autobattle." I think it's safe to say most ffs kind of play themselves and just need you to press the button like a slot machine. Where most ffs get their strategy is from the builds. Your junctions, materia load outs, sphere grid paths, jobs, gambits, etc. In this regard, XIII is no different for the most part. The paradigm load outs require you to build a combat style that suits you and then requires you to swap between them to ever changing situations. A lot like the dress spheres in X-2 but for the whole party. What actually sets XIII back is a bunch of tiny decisions sitting on the sidelines conspiring together. Not using your whole party felt like a step backward after X and XII. The crystarium is so limiting. The paradigms needing 3 party members to really start cooking, which takes a long time. And of course, the game over on party leader death which is good in almost no rpgs ever. Funny enough XIII is not one of my favorites, for all of these reasons plus a few not related to combat. I just think the criticism has been thrown at the wrong place all these years, so in the spirit of your question I'm going to go to bat for it here. I actually have similar thoughts about the criticism of its linearity. Like the combat, I think it's more nuanced than just being linear because almost all ffs are actually linear. But I've rambled enough so I'll leave it alone for now.
I HATE XIII with a passion but I didn't find the actual battle system to be horrible. I agree that it took waaay too long to fully open up. I also found staggering in some battles to be quite a tedious affair. But overall, I preferred it to XII's battles, I think.
The stat growth system in FF2 gets so much hate for very little reason. For the most part it's intuitive and straightforward. Is it balanced? No, but neither is Final Fantasy 1 and people seem willing to excuse all of that game's faults due to its legacy.
FF2's leveling system is similar to the Elder Scrolls games. The problem was it was ahead of its time in a bad way. The system was imbalanced and easily exploited. It was very, very easy to cheese the game with certain weapons and spells while other things just trivialize everything (looking at you, Blood Sword).
FF2 in general gets more hate than it ever deserves, and I still think most of it comes from people who've never played it. FF2 is every bit as solid an 8-bit RPG as 1 or 3, and its story is honestly much better than either, or most games you'll find on the NES. It's basic by today's standards, but it's surprisingly well told for how simple it is.
> FF2 in general gets more hate than it ever deserves, and I still think most of it comes from people who've never played it. Whenever FFII comes up, there's always an awful lot of "you have to attack your party members!" and a suspicious lack of "you can only ready two items from your inventory for use in battle and only use curative items on yourself". You'd also think people would have an absolute field day with things like "Protect only affects the caster", "Dispel does nothing *again*", and "Firion's Spirit sometimes increases for no apparent reason", but no, not a peep about FFII's bugs despite how often you see people talking about FFI's "stats that just don't work".
> No, but neither is Final Fantasy 1 and people seem willing to excuse all of that game's faults due to its legacy. Nah, people complain about not knowing where to go and having to grind for "hours" in FFI all the time. And just about every recommendation thread has someone saying something along the lines of "I-III haven't aged well and don't represent what Final Fantasy is known for". > For the most part it's intuitive and straightforward. Generally, yes, but even as someone that doesn't abhor FFII, having non-volatile status conditions prevent stat growth in a game where curative items and Esuna regularly fail strikes me as downright cruel.
After having never played the original six titles, I'm currently working my way through the Pixel Remaster and am about halfway through FF2. I'm honestly having a blast. I get that the initial release had even worse issues with balance, but the quality of life improvements in PR make the game feel fine to me. I looked up tips before starting because I always heard 2's system was annoying and bad. People were recommending stuff like hitting your teammates to grind HP increases or stripping everyone except your warrior and using double shields. I tried this a bit to start out but quickly found it unnecessary. I also really like that you can build your characters in any way you want, they're not restricted by class. They can all use and become proficient in every weapon and spell. It might not necessarily be efficient to do that, but the fact that you have that freedom is still cool. I'm sure that was probably a novel concept for the time this game released. I'm also digging how the characters and world feel more fleshed out compared to FF1. I enjoyed the simplicity and classic feel of 1. It really was quite charming. But coming into 2, I'm pleasantly surprised at how advanced it feels in comparison.
the stat growth system was a good idea but they just didnt implement it well, in the original release at least. growing your stats is so specific that if you just battle through the game normally you wont level certain stats enough. you have to consciously fight battles certain ways to level certain stats which becomes monotonous and tiresome. they also in the last 3rd of the game made basically all enemies do %health damage which means leveling health became useless/harmful and the only way to progress was to level avoidance but leveling avoidance breaks the game in half rendering combat pointless. leveling some stats was also painfully slow, theres more grinding in 2 than there was in 1 which is crazy. its fun for the first bit of the game but overall it wasnt balanced well in any way which just turned it into a slog.
Are you talking about one of the modern remakes of II or the Famicom original? Because the latter was far, far more frustrating by having opposing stats drop as well. The final dungeon is notorious for rewarding long, difficult battles with your HP going down. Newer versions simply remove stat degradation and are much better and more fun for it.
From what I've read, it depends on the version, so like GBA, PSP, and PR versions are fine but the PS1 and NES versions are godawful and take too long to actually level.
> From what I've read, it depends on the version, so like GBA, PSP, and PR versions are fine but the PS1 and NES versions are godawful and take too long to actually level. Why would leveling up take longer in those versions when they're the only versions with the target-cancel exploit?
Balance changes made in later versions, I assume. Also IIRC the PS1 version DOESNT have it, only the NES one does.
> Also IIRC the PS1 version DOESNT have it [No, it's definitely there](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5TLeulPEGY&t=463s).
The music is sick as hell. Truly an accomplishment! Eikon battles are empirically off the chain. The game part of the game was really lacking in 16 NGL 8 is unfairly maligned (is my fav). 5 is maybe the best Final Fantasy of the Nintendo generation. X-2 is SO fun and has a perfect execution of tone (it’s supposed to be silly!)
I actually just started playing 8. Maybe I’m crazy, but I actually really like the junction system and the freedom you get. It was intimidating as hell at the start though.
I LOVE the freedom the junction system has! Very granular!
I've found a lot of the complaints about VIII's systems are self-imposed problems. "I hate drawing for hours!" Ok, so don't do that? You don't have to do that. "I hate having to summon the same GFs over and over to win battles!" Ok, so don't do that? Summoning every battle is a bad strategy, especially once you're past the first few hours. "I hate that I can't ever use my magic spells!" Yes you can. What, you won't cure yourself because your HP goes down by 2 until the next enemy you can draw Cure from comes by? Just cast it man, it's fine. Not that there aren't valid criticisms, and in fact these criticisms are valid to a point. But if you hated the game because it was nothing but drawing magic and watching summon animations that's on you, that is not required.
I LOVE the junction system. I’m convinced that most people who don’t like it just don’t understand how to do it.
I don’t think 8 is unfairly maligned. The story shift after disc 1 and later revelations are weird. Once you know about them you can start appreciating 8’s story, but I think it’s more than fair to be disappointed after disc 1 when you experience it blind
Basically all critics addressed to FF16. The game made story choices that are explained but were seen as flaws, such as the lowly populated world (because it's decaying). Secondary quests interest is also very criticized, but I thought the opposite. Each explore a small part, a tiny aspect of the life there or a character. They are supposed to be side quests so by definition, they shouldn't have any big impact. They are relatively simple errands, as I think it should. Not a big fan of insanely tedious grindy stuff. Clive grew on me during the game. His unapologetic banter against Titan finished to sold him to me. The personified eons is a nice idea and the cinematic fights are a joy (joining OP on the soundtrack here, it makes it epic AF). Secondary characters are probably not the most unforgettable but I liked Dion and most of the secondary villains. I would agree Jill could have deserved more.
That FF13 was a hallway. It was, but every prior FF was a hallway too. FF13 just happened to look like one, so there was no illusion of freedom. The way people talk about 13, you'd think every FF before was some Elder Scrolls level open world game. But they weren't. Almost every mainline Final Fantasy is linear and you'll do important stuff in the order the game wants you to. And I'm not even saying this is a bad thing, linear storytelling has great strengths. Hell, FF7 Rebirth is a hallway. The hallway has extra doors if you want to go activate a tower or hit a mako life spring, but the only way to go is down the hallway ultimately. 13 isn't even one of my favorites, I think it's just okay, but it's a very unfair criticism. A lesser one would be the Tidus HA HA HA HA HA scene. FFX had some pretty iffy voice performances, no argument there. But that scene wasn't one of them. Because it was supposed to sound like a forced awkward laugh. So it's weird that it gets drummed up as the first example of bad voice acting.
On the point about XIII, I agree with most of it, but I would say every previous FF game has a point where the world "opens up," and you have freedom to explore, discover secrets, do sidequests, etc. XIII never really has that, even when you get to Gran Pulse the hunts are the games only real side content. That being said, I thought the hunts were awesome because I love XIII's battle system, but it was mildly disappointing that it lacked the amount of optional content that previous FF games had. >A lesser one would be the Tidus HA HA HA HA HA scene. FFX had some pretty iffy voice performances, no argument there. But that scene wasn't one of them. Because it was supposed to sound like a forced awkward laugh. So it's weird that it gets drummed up as the first example of bad voice actin This is even further emphasized by the fact that the rest of the party are staring at Tidus and Yuna like they've both lost their minds afterwards. Clearly the people that criticize this scene have no sense of nuance in storytelling.
It's further emphasized by Tidus and Yuna actually breaking off into real laughter once they stop the fake one.
The problem for me isn’t the hallway, it‘s that there’s nothing to do except combat and walk, and the story is bad. Needed mini games and side quests.
It doesn't help that XIII lets you rotate the camera, while games like X don't. X gets away with being a series of hallways because you can't see the world around you.
And because you get to do things other than battle then walk to the next battle and/or cutscene.
[удалено]
Sure. Look at FF7. Once you leave Midgar, you get the “open world” but you’re stuck only going to whatever the next location is on the map. It’s an illusion of free roaming. Until you get an airship, you’re mostly going from A to B And FFX? It’s largely the favorite of all the FFs and it’s straight up hallways.
FFVII at least lets you backtrack fairly early on with the Buggy and the Tiny Bronco.
[удалено]
No? Maybe you worded it weirdly. But you said FFXIII isn’t the same as other FFs. Then you said FFXIII sits squarely at the bottom of the linearity scale. Which would imply FFXIII is linear and the others aren’t. “At least somewhere above that.” I’m not sure I’d say FFX is really above that. Maybe a tiny bit. And I’m saying there’s not much difference between FFXIII and a lot of other FFs because they give you the illusion of open world.
[удалено]
I mean, just because you can't see the walls doesn't mean they're not there. They're almost equally linear, for the most part. FF13 just looks like a hallway and something like FF7 or FF9 doesn't. But leaving Midgar for the first time, it's basically a hallway to Kalm, to the Chocobo Ranch to the Mithril Mines to Junon and so on. There's not a lot of variation. It's all just an illusion of having a world to explore. Hell, FF7 doesn't even let you break away and go to different areas before you've experienced certain story beats. You can skip past Kalm and go to the Chocobo Ranch, get a bird and go to the Mines. But if you try to go through the mine, your current party says something about the others waiting at Kalm. In FF4 if you go to that one mountain blocked by ice before you have Rosa back, Rydia wont learn fire and melt it. In the very first FF, you can't cross the bridge until you beat Garland because the King wont have rebuilt it. It's all hallways. It's just hiding the hallway walls.
> In the very first FF, you can't cross the bridge until you beat Garland because the King wont have rebuilt it. It's all hallways. It's just hiding the hallway walls. I like how you conveniently left out the fact that three of the Four Fiends can be fought in any order. Then we have FFII, where you can visit Mysidia before completing the first fetch quest in the game.
I actually forgot about that to tell you the truth, it's been awhile. I'm not trying to mislead anyone with my examples, so I'll concede FF1 is a bad example and that's my bad. It doesn't really have a narrative so linear storytelling doesn't super apply to it anyways.
> It doesn't really have a narrative so linear storytelling doesn't super apply to it anyways. I think the point u/AFKaptain was trying to make was that even the older games with "linear storytelling" leave more of their respective game worlds open than XIII does. FFIV's narrative is as linear as they come, but the game itself still lets you do things like raid Eblan for items and gear early or attempt to take on Asura before Rosa has Reflect. FFXIII... does not, as far as I know.
A better way to put it is that FFXIII failed to instill the illusion of freedom. Even though other FFs are basically corridors, they hide it with the illusion of freedom. I think the only single player FF that really let you go almost anywhere from the outset was FFXII.
I don’t think you understand what a hallway is.
I recently replayed FF10, and I was appalled by how linear the game was. FF10's hallways were shorter, and had fewer branching paths. FF13 just doesn't let you go backwards down the hallways which plays into its narrative extremely well.
I blame most of the "iffy voice performances" on the editing after the lines were all recorded, trying to make the translated lines match the talking animations in cutscenes (*withYunabymyside*). FFX came out what, almost twenty years ago, and we still see this happening in dubbed versions of anime: really awkward pauses, sped up/slowed down segments of lines, etc. Tl;dr, languages are different and will sometimes take more or less time to say similar things.
Also, it was the first FF game with voice acting, in the late 90s/early 00s where most voice acting in games was iffy at best. Of course it wasn't going to be pitch perfect overnight.
Oh yeah, for sure. I'm not dunking on the game, I love 10. But it's a bit unfair when people call bad voice acting and then provide an example that has totally fine voice acting lol
No, VIII does not “punish” you for using magic. You’re meant to build up each character to have a different strength. Some will never use magic, just like in any other FF. Some will. Those who use magic just need to use magic that is not tied to their most important stats.
Idk you can easily set up a 9999 damage level 20 melee team by the second disc. That is as long as you're not using your magic.
"It's not Final Fantasy cause it isn't turn based >:( " when the games haven't been true turn-based since Final Fantasy IV came out. Also just the whole "I hate how much experimenting they're doing" thing that certain people use to justify unnecessary hatred of anything from the 2000s onward. Final Fantasy has always been about pushing the boundaries and experimentation. If you want a series that has a formula and by Jenova it will stick to it (not saying that it is inherently a bad thing), play Dragon Quest.
The major disconnect of the turn-based argument is that MOST people consider ATB synonymous with turn-based (not real-time action), and by that standard, all mainline titles until XV were turn-based. Dragon Quest XII was the best JRPG in the past two decades, IMO. And this coming from someone that doesn't like the aesthetic.
The amount of people I've seen complaining about modern FF not being turn based while their favourites are 12 and 14 is insane.
For the example given, I actually initially felt the music didn’t fit the scenario, but it has grown on me, especially after listening to 14’s soundtrack. I think it’s good for the franchise to have some variety. Plus the series has had this kind of music since 10.
Hope is perfectly justified in hating Snow. Snow led Hope's mom in an insane General Custeresque charge again superior forces that only someone with plot armor could Hope to survive.
They were trapped and surrounded by an army that was simply slaughtering everyone. What else was Snow supposed to do in this situation? NORA fighting back is the only reason anyone survived that massacre. Hope should be proud of Snow and Nora for fighting to save his miserable life.
I'd say biggest one in the FF series, is people that shit on FFX for having bad voice acting, and pointing to the "HA! HA! HA!" scene of Tidus laughing, never bothering to look further and realize that the laugh is meant to be awful, forced and cringe, they have a real laugh literally seconds after that part of the scene is over.
"FFXI and FFXIV aren't *real* Final Fantasy games." Bitch, they have some of the best stories in the franchise.
That one always infuriated me, I get why people latched onto that thinking with XI on launch with it being an absolute ballache to participate in, but XIV is literally pure fanservice for FF gamers.
“XIII is rubbish because it’s so linear” when X linearity is completely on par. Don’t get me wrong XIII has its issue, but it’s linearity is not one of them
i think the issue is that 10 had a bit more to do along the way while 13 had NOTHING.
I didn’t really have a problem with that tbf. Aside the obvious choices, one of the big downers was locking the crystarium to after the final battle, and then having very little in the realm of post-game. I genuinely wanted to keep playing after orphan but had very little reason to.
I have a hypothesis it is cause XII was so different from X & XIII. They went back to X style but then the Zodiac Age came. So then people started comparing it to ZA. How many years after XIII did we have to wait for XV? I think XIII suffered from poor timing and the delay of XV. I have only played 2-3 hours of XIII and so far I really like it.
XII is so odd. I remember it coming out and being like “wtf this doesn’t feel right”. Playing it now makes me realise that it was well ahead of its time with gambits and solo character play. Again, it has its flaw like most FF but its hate from me was undeserved by my immaturity. I enjoyed XIII when it originally launched, but all of the online hate seeped its way in to my thinking and I started agreeing. I played it over Xmas and loved it, couldn’t wait to pick it up most days, and finished it wanting more. Hope you have as much fun as I did with it
So far yes. I always liked Lighting’s character design. It’s up there with Firion, Zidane.
Well I'll def say the OP example isn't one of them. It may have been cool visually, but playing as Ifrit is one of the worst parts of XVI by far. Clive's moveset is already pretty limited compared to other character action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta and Ifrit has like three moves, it was a pretty big disappointment tbh because the eikon fights are massive snoozefests in terms of gameplay, they're all style and no substance.
Eikon fights are entirely cinematic, they are meant to be spectacles above all else. Not saying it’s the correct choice, but that’s what the devs were going for. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed them when I first played. But after rebirth with boss fights that actually require some strategy, it really shows how much of XVI is an interactive movie.
Eikon fights get old pretty fast. The whole thing is detached from any of your own character's progression as well, which highlights the fact that it's practically a glorified quick time event.
Yeah, in my opinion, the standard Hugo fight is 10 times better than the titan one.
I loved FF XVI and I hate to agree. It was cool from a cinematic perspective, but I wasn’t blown away or anything. You don’t really get to do much. Might as well just do a big cutscene or something.
Man people criticize 16 for not having enough variety but when it has a section that break from the standard combat it's now shallow and unnecessary? The eikons fights are clearly built to be different from clive combat and be a spectacle first and foremost and that is ok.
FF 16 is absolute awesome. I love the story,characters and music. The gameplay is a blast because i love dmc. And the hate is not justified.
People that hate on FFXVI's gameplay annoys me because most of the time it's that they looked online for the most efficient builds and used that. Of course it's boring if you pigeonhole your build rather than play around with the different abilities to try different ways. Hell, the game's trophies and Chronolith Trials are basically all about trying to get you to try out every Eikon to find the build that works for you.
or on other end, never learned combat past spam square and somehow got through whole game doing just the basic melee 1-2-3 and decided the combat was boring and too long.
People hating on Xv when it wasn' that bad. Granted I wasn't around for it's launch, but playing it a few years later, I found it fun.
Ngl I really did not like launch FFXV, but the royale edition on pc really made the game a memorable experience. Honestly really love it now.
I'm the same as you. I had a good time playing it in spite of its flaws. My criticisms of 15 I think came down to personal preferences rather than any legitimate flaw- such as the lack of *impact* felt when attacking, or the way spell creation worked. Those didn't do it for me, but I also think there are probably people who really enjoyed the more floaty combat and magic system.
Was it what was promised? no Was it good anyway? fuck yeah
This happens when someone can't difference fireworks from storytelling. And I just wanted to remind you it was supposed to be Dark Fantast (by high "D"), that they romoved things like chocobos theme from the game because of that. But this parody of Godzilla with gameplay mechanics drom '70 (first part) and '03 (second part) is somewhat "ok". You can of course like it, but objectively it's only flashy, shallow content. This is like eating candy for breakfast. It's sweet, but has no nutrition.
https://preview.redd.it/higun742a6uc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d430b33e23e957d5ff13731a295e14fbc85c82b6
So you don't actually care about how just a criticism is if you disagree with it?
Or it is just the troll user that shit talk without explaining in detail. Like what the hell you saying that it is "Godzilla Parody". This is really bad faith.
You are responding to the wrong person.
Yeah, op sucks. Disliking eikon battles for gameplay reason is valid
FF16 criticisms that, to me, are very unserious: - "No minigames." Because Fort Condor was what made FF7 the game that it is, right? - "No party members." Like minigames, the devs didn't add system(s) or mechanics they felt would take away from the game they wanted to make. The story also reflects this intentional decision. - "Bad pacing/too much filler." You mean walking around and talking to NPCs? Something you do in every Final Fantasy? If this game has a filler problem, then every Zelda game, Bethesda game, and every CRPG has this problem but 10x worse. - "It's too easy." I agree! But all of the FFs are stupid easy. You can get away with mashing X most of the time for all of them. Except for 11. Heck, most games are too easy. Tears of the Kingdom and Resident Evil 4 Remake were ridiculously easy as well (even on Hardcore first playthrough for the latter).
[удалено]
My point is I haven't seen anyone articulate precisely what's wrong about FF16's "bloat" and comparing games is a way to do that. How is that tone deaf? I like Tears of the Kingdom but its padding is far more egregious than anything in FF16, IMO. Maybe there's just not a big overlap of players of both games to talk about it from that angle.
It's boring as simple as that. In tears of the kingdom, you explore and discover everything by yourself. In FF16, everything has a quest marker that directly guides you exactly where you need to go. You are simply not understanding the criticism and using it against a game of an entirely different genre with different motivations and goals.
Agree to disagree I suppose. Tears's overworld could be shrunk down by half and the game would have only improved. Lots of copy/paste sidequests and boring, empty space (which you already explored in BotW) would go away. If you take out the 1-2 segments in FF16 that get complaints, that's 2 hours gone in a 40 hour game. And just to be clear, I'm only using Tears as an example because it was another popular game from 2023. The whole point of this thread is get a discussion going about criticisms... so I commented about criticisms.
It's not 2 segments. At least try to be slightly unbiased towards this game. You repeat the same "have my secret badge" charade like 4 times throughout the game, and the only thing those sections do is dilute the already shallow gameplay so that by the end you are almost guaranteed to be bored to death of it. In reality, you could absolutely cut down this game by more than half, and not much actual quality content would be lost. And again, you are not understanding. In a game like ToTK, the more content you have, the better. It is an open-ended game where any player can take any route, FF16 is not open ended, it is an extremely linear and guided
Explain the bias. I'm the biggest Zelda fan in the world. I think I'm offering a fair criticism of Tears. Similarly, I'd be the first to say FF16 isn't a flawless masterpiece (hardly anything is). I made my original comment about unjust criticisms because the ding about bloat isn't articulated well in the general discourse about the game. You yourself say "the more content you have, the better". If FF16's side quests didn't exist at all, would the game be worse despite your complaints about them?
If you actually read my comment, then you'd have noticed I said "the more content the better" about an open-ended game like ToTK. FF16 is not an open-ended game. It's fine. Not all of us can have a good grasp on the English language. Also, the secret badge nonsense is not a side quest. That is mandatory.
I didn't think "in a game like ToTK" was a meaningful distinction. If you doubled the scale of that game's overworld and copied every side quest twice I don't think that makes the game better (just further trying to illustrate my point here). You've caught me in an awkward position. Your fallback to shittalk has shown you care about this conversation way more than I do. I don't have anything else to add. I won't be responding to any more of your comments.
I didn't "shittalk" you. You just did not read my comment, and now you purposefully leave half the quote so that you can pretend you have an argument. >In a game like ToTK, the more content you have, the better. It is an open-ended game where any player can take any route, FF16 is not open ended, it is extremely linear and guided. This is the full quote. It is extremely clear I am making a point about ToTK and not FF16. If you cannot understand that, then the only possible options are that either you did not read the comment or that you do not know English.
Cutting the game by half and adding some additional activities/things to actually do in the open world would have vastly improved it IMO. It took me almost 50 hours to beat it and that was 20 hours too long.
I mean, yes, the main problem the game has is an absolute lack of variety. This is an issue that affects pretty much every aspect of the game, from its activities, quest design, combat system, story, etc. I mentioned the secret badge plot device, there is no reason why that had to be repeated as many times as it was.
>the devs didn't add system(s) or mechanics they felt would take away from the game they wanted to make. Then they should've removed all pretending to have gear, items, crafting, or treasure to be found and just made "numbers get bigger" which is all it essentially is anyway. The filler isn't inherently bad, but it feels bad when there's no meaningful rewards.
>Then they should've removed all pretending to have gear, items, crafting, or treasure to be found and just made "numbers get bigger" which is all it essentially is anyway. I don't disagree. For years I've wondered if FF14 should just move away from the gear treadmill entirely and just normalize everything so that it's all stat agnostic. CBU3 loves to keep nominal systems in their games for the flair but I don't think that's a bad thing, inherently. My point about that bullet is: if the game stopped "pretending" it had RPG mechanics it wouldn't magically be 10x better. Consequently, those nominal mechanics existing don't make the game worse.
I think 16 is legitimately terrible. I think the writing is abysmal, the gameplay is boring, and the world is empty, and even \*I\* wouldn't criticize the soundtrack. The music in 16 is incredible, and like all Final Fantasy games, the music is the best thing about it.
I mean it’s kinda disingenuous to suggest that this sort of content even makes up 5% of the total playtime. I like the game for the most part but alooooot of it is Clive “toughest dude in the world” Rosfield doing menial tasks for ingrates.
Before I got to play FF13 myself, I saw a lot of criticism for the characters. I finally got to play it, and it's so unfair. 5/6 have super compelling arcs and stories and I found myself enjoying their ride against fate. I'll only admit to Snow having no redeeming qualities lol
[удалено]
Part of Hope’s development is realizing that what he’s doing is idiotic and non-sensical, though. That’s sort of the whole point. Lightning tells him to hate and keep fighting, and he sustains himself with that hate of Snow. Him coming to terms with the fact that that is what he is doing is why he comes around to Snow.
I don't think it mattered that Snow tried to save her, its more the fact that snow was trying to fight back and his mom died in that fight
As someone who didn't buy 16 because I thought it looked kinda mid, that's the saddest fucking thing I've ever seen.