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[Norondor]

i fail to see how numpad movement is in any way worse than wasd or even in any way different also windowing has been standard for years

the release was double garbage, but it's honest to goodness gotten better in every way, and the later storylines (not nation storylines, not ROTZ) are probably up there with the better ones in the rest of the series

[Rico]

I'm going to have to call you out on being casual friendly when I've genuinely wanted to play the game two or three separate times and have never made it past level 10 because the beginning of the game is terrible and there have been no interface improvements at all.

Do you know why people got hooked on WoW? Because when you played it you actually had abilities to use!

[Norondor]

Yeah, you have a lot of abilities to use but that amounts to a rigid rotation of one to three buttons 99% of the time, unless you are a healer. The rest of your abilities don't even need to be on your bar because they are for another spec or just useless, e.g. Disarm Traps or Detect Undead or two thirds of your abilities as a Paladin at any given time. In essence, your "be in combat" command consists of pianoing across your keyboard's number row.

Most of the melee jobs in FFXI effectively have a lot of long-cooldown abilities instead of all their damage coming from mashing 2-2-2-3. This means you have less to do but i don't think that's actually bad, aaaaaand in fact i feel like WoW's design is at odds with itself in a really nasty way, since the entire game takes place in the interface but you die to things outside of it all the time. It's not a coincidence that it's so fucking hard for people not to stand in fires, they're not trained that the world is anything but purely graphical window dressing for interface quest until they hit the level cap.

[Norondor]

(Despite this, all my commonly-used abilities in FFXI are macroed on ctrl/alt+1-10 exactly like i would do them in WoW)

[Rico]

my apparently too subtle point was that if I wanted to do nothing but auto attack monsters to death for hours before I could do anything I would, I dunno, play a SNES Final Fantasy with frame skip and a bound together.

[Norondor]

No, i got that, but what i'm saying is that i like final fantasy games, and if you made a game that could to any degree be accurately described as a co-op final fantasy game i would probably be into that.

[Brentai]

The people have spoken and they demand more facerolling.

[Thad]

i fail to see how numpad movement is in any way worse than wasd or even in any way different also windowing has been standard for years

I've always hated the reasoning, "Well this is how *I* play, so I don't see how it's a problem that you don't have the option of playing the game the way YOU would like to."

Particularly on key remapping which, hey Japan, IS REALLY FUCKING TRIVIAL TO IMPLEMENT.

[Norondor]

There actually is a WASD setting, non-intuitively called "Compact" under the assumption that anyone not playing on a small laptop keyboard would gravitate to numpad movement (which, again, works really well since this is a PS2 game, and the buttons all map to one hand that way). You can reassign all your keys, too, an option i think they added a couple months after US release. I'm just saying, is all.

[Bal]

Can I target things with the mouse? Or look around with it? Or be allowed to touch it?

[Norondor]

not very bloody well i'll tell you that much

the ability to poke things in the world was really patched-in and is acts a bit weird, presumably because in the other two versions of the game there's literally no such code in the game's UI and it's somewhat spotty. sometimes enemies have bigger clickable bounding boxes than you'd think and things that are close to the camera often take up the whole entire screen and you can't click around them.

you can, however, use it as a virtual analog stick by clicking and dragging; left mouse for left stick to walk around, right mouse for right stick to adjust camera. Clicking both at the same time engages auto-run.

I never use it since by default, movement is 8462, autorun is 7 and camera/menu control is on arrow keys, under my right thumb. If you don't have enormous meaty paws it probably wouldn't work nearly as well.

[Thad]

Got bored at work; read entire fucking thread.

Some things, in keeping with my latest exploration of FF7:

You know, I would gladly replay FFVII with a new translation. I'm surprised that The Internet hasn't made a patch yet, but on the other hand, it would probably be full of Cloud-kun and Aerith-chan and such.

The PC version actually has a non-ridiculous translation

Bullshit.  Yes, they fixed "This guy are sick" and "Off course!/No, way!"  The script is still a goddamn error-riddled mess that will get you killed on the first boss.

That said: there IS a utility for hacking the script, and a fan translation is underway.  I, too, worry about over-literal nonsense, but translator DLPB actually E-Mailed a response to my blog post to assure me that he's not going to be as literal with the dialogue as he is with the characters' names.

How would they do a fan translation of Xenogears?  Was there a PC port to work with, or would they release edited Playstation .iso files?

I'd still quite like to see a Xenogears hack/translation.

Anyhow, no, no PC version, but if Q-gears (login required) ever gets finished, that should make Xenogears and FF9 portable.  Basically it's a custom version of the FF7 engine -- like Exult is for the Ultima 7 engine.



...anyhow.  I should probably put the last part of my FF7 Retrospective up soon.  It's basically done.

[Brentai]

I don't see the point of retranslating Xenogears.  The official translation is pretty damn competent IMO, it's just the original text that makes no sense.

[Thad]

"Pretty damn competent" for a game that can't spell its characters' names consistently.

It's definitely got its moments (MAD SKILLZ!), and maybe the original script really IS just as incoherent.  But it's a clear product of 32-bit-era, still-trying-to-figure-out-how-the-fuck-to-translate-large-scripts-competently Square.

Plus it seriously needs a Speed Up Text button.

[Brentai]

I find that it helps if you narrate the entire game in funny voices.

[Thad]

I narrate EVERYTHING in funny voices.

[Norondor]

Meanwhile i've been playing FF14 now that patch 1.19 is out. Mor Dhona is so Uematsu-y it hurts.

Final Fantasy XIV - Mor Dhona Battle Theme

[Thad]

Welp, posted the Grand Finale.

Thoughts?

[Norondor]

Q: Hello. I started playing after release, but I quit after hitting rank 30. I plan to come back. In your eyes, what do you think is the main feature of the game in its current state? It would help a lot if you can clear that up for players that are planning to return to the game.

A: To be honest, I consider that we're about half way to the point where we can confidently call it "FINAL FANTASY". However, if we are talking about 1.19, I would have to say chocobos and Ifrit will be the main content. Everyone should get that FF-feeling with this content.

probably about right

[Büge]

Welp, posted the Grand Finale.

Thoughts?

I think I have to agree with your conclusion: FFVII is a very adolescent game. Unfortunately, since it had such a spectacular impact on the demographic (I hesitate to use terms like 'cultural touchstone,' but...) it meant that it would become one of those generation-defining artifacts, and you'd probably still find fans of it who were too young to have actually played the game in 1997.