yeah, it's got good combat, but the characters and plot suck.

>>3916086
Better than Expeshition 33.

>>3916086
Bro 8 is my favorite, i'm cool with shit characters, in fact...id say thats part of the charm of the PS/PS2 era of FF

>>3916086
Why?

>>3916082
Recently played it for the first time myself and had a completely different experience. It felt like a proto ffx13 in the sense that it was a completely linear game with boring characters. It didn't have all the glaring flaws, but all the worst design decisions I saw in 13 were already present in 10. Combat also felt like a chore as you had to swap in members every battle to get proper exp ontop of turn manipulation trumping most every other strategy for the majority of the game.

>>3916139
No the Turn Manipulation is integral to the battle system, for so long up to this one we switched from old school turn based to ATB, which is fun, but getting solid math, time to think about your decisions, that's why it's so genius that Tidus is a time mage, your MC's main role is manipulating the biggest part of the system, so you use your MC the most and it makes you feel like "Yeah this is the guy I'm playing as" theres so much shit that is secret genius about this games design

I don't like FFX. The maps are extremely linear and every fight has a very obvious solution (if an enemy is tough use Armor Break, if an enemy uses magic use Reflect, etc).

>>3916086
Someone’s mad lmao.
I mean I don’t even play the games and I can tell from first looks they all seem good, all of the games excluding 13 and 12 for some reason

>>3916161
>every fight has a very obvious solution
What's the problem?

Are fights actually tough puzzles in other FFs or something lmao

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>>3916082
I'm about to do my first playthrough on my deck. I spent a whole day installing a cluster fuckton of mods and fixes which ended up being a huge pain in the ass, but it was worth it.

>>3916082
It's pretty fun. The boss AI has some minor complexity to its decisions compared to whatever the fuck they were doing prior to X.
It's probably also why people can challenge themselves in beating it without leveling up just by finding holes in enemy patterns.
That said a regural player just skips all that because the game is pretty easy and showers you with skip buttons for anything challenging but that has always been the case.

>>3916228
Based on how /v/ and /vrpg/ talks about the game, it seems the regular player brute forces the game in dumb ways.

>>3916233
Well it's easy to overlevel or spam Aeon overdrives to erase everything even as a beginner. Then you can play it as an "advanced" player and abuse Zanmato or Rikku to powergame any fun out of the system. You have to restrict yourself to make the game challenging and tons of people never bother.

>>3916234
It's easier to just learn to play the game. Or at least time efficient. And more fun.

>>3916237
For most people learning to play the game means abusing every easy solution. And it is time efficient as well. I guess it's just different philosophies in the end but the enemies were very obviously tuned by thresholds you would have particular abilities for.

>>3916238
I don't see how grinding and getting overdrives is time efficient, unless you fast forward, but we'll just agree to disagree.

>>3916240
Building up specifically Aeon overdrives before a boss is not time consuming at all by using a couple of Boosts. And then you can easily line them like artillery shots to skip most bosses.
Grinding is not efficient I agree. But my thoughts were more on the side of overleveling since it passively happens due to the game being lenient with exp.

>>3916243
>Building up specifically Aeon overdrives before a boss is not time consuming at all
It is a chore that takes time. Better to give the xp to characters.

>>3916250
Exp isn't mutually exclusive.
Anyway this argument is starting to drift further and further from the point I was trying to make which was that the underlying systems in FFX are more solid than most players will realize without a fault on their own.

>>3916253
>underlying systems in FFX are more solid than most players will realize
Agreed.

>>3916189
>Are fights actually tough puzzles in other FFs or something lmao
Most Final Fantasy games have several different ways to beat the enemies efficiently. In X there's always one method that is objectively the correct one, like a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

>>3916237
Anima requires no time investment and absolutely obliterates bosses.

Final Fantasy 10 was the game where I felt Square went too far with the steamlining. The game is just too braindead. Good ost though.

>>3916257
X has some enemies that will incentivize character switching but you are completely brushing over the many many enemies that don't and require character combos. Basilisk variants, Chimera variants, Mushrooms, Ogres, Plants.
Tons of enemies that are not a character's specialty mixed in the encounters to make the puzzle a bit more complex than what you want to imply.

>>3916257
So your problem isn't
>>3916161
>every fight has a very obvious solution

See how I have to coax out the actual points from these dummies.

>>3916262
>Basilisk variants
Equip stoneproof weapon, then beat it to death.
>Chimera variants
Inflict silence, then beat it to death.
>Mushrooms
Kill it with fire.
>Ogres
Power break, then kill it with fire.
>Plants
Use a summon.

>>3916082
i really hate this piece of shit
always have from the moment i saw the stupid commercials on the TV with that stupid fucking song back in the day

>>3916280
Way to completely miss the point as well as be wrong about most of these. At least you engaged with their listed weaknesses and even without being optimal you came up with a strategy to beat them in a different way. Isn't that was you said was impossible to do in X?

>>3916262
>>3916280
My preferred strategies

>>Basilisk
Sleep
>>Chimera
Provoke and NulShock
>>Mushrooms
Silence
>>Ogres
Darkness, Bio
>>Plants
I don't remember if I ever found any tricks for these

>>3916283
>even without being optimal
How is an attack that kills in one or two turns not optimal?

>>3916292
That's way better yeah.
Initially with Plants I meant the smaller ones but the big ones share an idiotic weakness to petrification so whatever.
These strats are solid though.
>Basilisk
Sleep is great as well as Provoke+Stoneproof
>Chimera
Nothing more to add. Silence won't work on half their moveset since it's not Black or White magic
>Mushrooms
You mostly want to avoid their annoying spore counter so I prefer sleep over silence (ironic)
>Ogres
Really high resistance to Darkness unless you use Darkness Buster with a Darktouch weapon. Bio to avoid the counters is perfectly valid. Sleep+Fire also works, as well as Sentinel/Guard since they only ever target a single character
>Plants
Weirdly resistant to most things other than Threaten iirc. Low accuracy makes evasion very viable. Sentinel/Guard works well here too
>Ochu type plants
Those could be in the mini-boss tier but again the point is that there is no character that specifically deals with them. Your strategies can range from Sleep to Demi or simply Stonetouch if we are allowing it for the sake of "efficiency"

>>3916298
If you are killing Ogres with one or two attacks I can see why you don't find the system engaging.

>>3916082
8's story is retarded, too. Not just the draw/junction/level scaling system.

So you fuck off.

>>3916301
Ooh someone's touchy, it's like deep down you know you were filtered by kino

>>3916082
>8 fans know it sucks
You're a retard.

>>3916292
>any enemy
Use Auron low health haste build spam

>>3916309
Squall suddenly going "I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT RINOA" after selling her "whatever" and to fuck off for most of the game is bad writing

and Ultimecia is in the top 3 of lamest written badguys in the serries

>>3916313
Uhmm

>>3916321
>what is character development

>>3916261
I'm not sure I see how it's any more braindead than any of the PS1 or SNES entries. The series isn't exactly known for challenging gameplay or deep mechanics.

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Playing this in Japanese and I'm noticing stuff I never did before.
Did Rikku always have a unique cry when hit by a lightning spell?

>>3916363
if it existed

Where is that one autist who thinks that playing FFX's postgame for thousands of hours is peak game design?

>>3916382
>thousands of hours
It's 60-100 tops

I'll never get FFX hate man. I never felt like the relative nonlinearity of previous FF games ever did anything to the experience. It was never capitalized on in a meaningful way for me. The gameplay and story and characters of FFX are so well realized

>>3916417
FFX is peak FF, top three of the series. Only flaws are the asinine “postgame” that the player is free to ignore, and that they removed the free world map, reducing the game to a hallway and the airship to a menu.

>>3916417
I've played 6-12 but it was a long time ago.
I genuinely don't remember ever doing anything out of order or exploring and coming across something great in the over-world outside of endgame. I wonder if people do shortcuts and get overpowered stuff by playing smart though.

>>3916426
Same, I also played 1 and 3 and my experiences were quite linear. Following the story, naturally.

I think some people just want an open world RPG like Elder Scrolls.

>>3916082
X is genuinely awful and not that different from XIII. Definitely the beginning of the end
>muh VIII is bad
Filtered

>>3916417
>>3916425
The game is extremely linear and extremely easy. In hindsight X was just the beginning of the end for Final Fantasy as a whole.

>>3916540
>In hindsight X was just the beginning of the end for Final Fantasy as a whole.
No hindsight necessary, I realized this at the time it came out. I still love the game, but dropped the series after that. Bittersweet.

>>3916498
>Filtered

aka "I have no argument"

>>3916498
>>3916540
Sorry but I just don't get what you're talking about at all. It doesn't feel more linear or easier than most other FF games.

>>3916564
NTA. The difficulty is no different than the other first ten FFs, but it’s clearly more linear. As I posted earlier, the game is a hallway, there is no world map to explore, and the airship is a fast travel menu.

>>3916568
I don't think previous world maps made their games any less linear

>>3916568
to be fair there aren't that many difficult FFs out there. Just the following:
2 - because of under the hood mechanics the game doesn't tell you
8 - because of under the hood mechanics the game doesn't tell you and level scaling the game doesn't warn you about
13 - weird new combat system

7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15 and 16 were fun

>>3916498
it's a lot better than 13 because it actually has a real introduction arc in its story and the gameplay starts before 20hrs
>>3916540
every ff is totally linear and every game after 5 is piss easy. 10 is unique that there's not even dungeons really.
at least it has the temple trials to break up the tedium of walking 10ft to next cutscene
>>3916605
3 has some rng bs and forced grinding, 5 has a few bosses you could easily lose to before you figure out the gimmick

>>3916804
>10 is unique that there's not even dungeons really.
>at least it has the temple trials
Trials are dungeons, they just lack the random encounters.

There's the Inside Sin area, but I doubt it's a highlight of the game for anyone, despite being nonlinear "dungeon". Or omega ruins.

Adding some longer dead ends with chests to areas in FFX to make it less linear would add absolutely nothing.

>>3916804
>every ff is totally linear.
Wrong.

If your counterargument to FFX being easy and linear is "every other FF is like that," not only are you just wrong, deflecting to other games is not addressing the criticisms. If you've played them all as I have, from NES FFI to FFXV, it's pretty obvious FFX is markedly more linear, story focused, and very easy until the endgame.

The story is not good, it's just melodramatic and you are easily emotionally manipulated. Still better than XIII though. The posters who recognize X as a protoXIII are accurate.

>>3916375
A unique line of dialogue or just a unique scream..?

>>3916498
This

>>3916082
>is this slept on?
Most lists I see have it in the top 3, pretty often at the top.

>>3916193
I'm sure they exist, but what are the aspects of the remaster that make it worth playing over emulation, if you have to mod it to hell and back to fix it.

>>3917031
Scream

I find it funny how people say X is the easiest while people die to Seymour, Spectral Keeper and Yunalesca all the time. I don't remember dying to much at all while playing the rest.

>>3917047
I don't feel like typing it all out.
>Version differences
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_X_version_differences
>Untitled Project X
https://wiki.special-k.info/SpecialK/Custom/UnX
>Mod fixes
https://www.nexusmods.com/games/finalfantasyxx2hdremaster/search?keyword=Fix

I also used a lot of texture and fmv upscaled with PS2 faces and a PS2 inspired reshade preset.

>>3917050
I still get a bit nervous against the seymor, yunalesca and the dragon (evrae?) battles. One time I finished Seymour with two characters because he petrified and crushed one of them. His second form and yunalesca have completely destroyed me. Sin itself got me once.

Other than X, right now I remember dying to FF3's bird boss before switching to dragoons. A dragon in the final dungeon of FF7. A malboro in FF8.

>>3916082
FFX is one of the most well-designed and balanced turn-based RPGs ever made. It only breaks near the end of the game when it intentionally opens up. You get Quick Hit around the time you fight Yunalesca if you don't grind for it. Mix requires specific knowledge to exploit, and still isn't worth doing until endgame when you can travel around the world and catch and bribe monsters for materials. All the endgame content is designed around min-maxing and using the non-Zanmato "exploits" the game gives you. The only flaw is that the story bosses past Yunalesca are piss easy.

>>3916375
Yes. It's story-related. You learn why she's afraid of thunder when you're in the Thunder Plains. FFX was localized by Alexander O. Smith. It shouldn't omit anything.

>>3917062
>The only flaw is that the story bosses past Yunalesca are piss easy.
The game is tuned for people who don't do optional stuff. I got the last skills like quick hit, zombie strike, and holy just before the final bosses.

>>3917068
The original Japanese version only has the Omega Ruins and airship treasure chest locations and is more balanced around the final Seymour and Jecht fights. The international version has content that requires min-maxing, and gives you efficient ways to do so. Engage in even some of that content and the rest of the game becomes extremely easy.

>>3917072
Didn't it also have the cavern of the stolen fayth?

>>3917076
It did but more importantly it had Anima, Magus Sisters, and Monster Arena. It still had ways to break the endgame open.

>>3916086
>yeah, it's got good combat,
I really don't get the praise. It feels very dumb. Every area you just get the same handful of enemies types that each require a specific character or skill to take them out, and since you can freely swap anyone in or out on any given turn, there's zero actual strategy. It's just toddler-tier pattern recognition. "Oooh, a red flan! I gotta get Lulu and hit it with ice magic! Hahah, me so smart!!!"

And why the fuck is the encounter rate so fucking high? It feels like they're trying to make up for the fact that you spend most of the game watching cutscenes and walking down short hallways, so they had to slow down the actual "gameplay" segments by stopping you to fight a battle every 5 steps. And once you get the flee ability like two hours into the game, any threat is completely gone.

And the sphere grid is probably one of the worst FF progression systems on record. It's basically just busywork that forces you to manually increase your stats by playing a braindead little board game instead of them just going up automatically with levels. You're pretty much always going to have enough spheres and there are no meaningful choices to make until the late game when you can start actually customizing, so it's all just a waste of your time. Again, I think this was something they added to distract you from the fact that you're going to spend most of your playtime watching cutscenes.

>but the characters and plot suck.
I think they're actually one of the game's strong points, but it suffers from "modern" game decompression. Everything moves way too slowly. Everything is strung out over so many hours and so many redundant cutscenes that it starts to feel trite and predictable, which makes the characters seem extra stupid. You could probably condense this game to be 30 hours long with 1/4 the dialogue, and it would be a thousand times better.

>>3917082
>You could probably condense this game to be 30 hours long with 1/4 the dialogue, and it would be a thousand times better.
fr fr no cap

>>3917080
Yeah it's tuned for mandatory content. Any optionals brings it closer to easy mode, which partly why I don't do them. That, and the game already being about 40 hours as it is.

>>3917082
>You could probably condense this game to be 30 hours long with 1/4 the dialogue, and it would be a thousand times better.
This is just generally true about any JRPG made after the turn of the century. After the 5th console gen, JRPG devs got it into their heads that "more words = better", as well as realizing how braindead the average player was, so they needed to really harp on every single plot point and character detail, while leading you by the nose to every bit of content, otherwise you might not understand the brilliant story they're trying to tell.

I miss when you actually had to pay attention to dialogue, read between the lines, and explore in order to get the whole picture. Devs are deathly afraid of spending any time on content that careless players might overlook, so that's why we all have piss-easy movie-games now.

I don't get the problem people have with X's story and none of you are actually going into why you think its bad. Its pretty fantastically written.

>>3917076
Yes, but that's tuned for pre-Mt. Gagazet. when I originally played the game in 2002, I completely missed that location on my first playthrough for some reason.

>>3917082
>You're pretty much always going to have enough spheres and there are no meaningful choices to make until the late game when you can start actually customizing, so it's all just a waste of your time.
this is exactly my problem with it. It was better in the hd remaster where you could use the grid on expert mode so you could start customizing from the beginning instead of having to slog through the linear paths for 80% of the game. but even then are we pretending that previous Final Fantasies hadn't already figured out character customization in better ways? FF5's job system, FF7's materia, or even FF8's junctions were all way less clunky than having to spend worthless consumables on a tedious board game every so often.

>>3916804
>every ff is totally linear
I think it's important to acknowledge the difference between "linear" and "on rails". Yes, most FFs have a defined path you must follow to completion, but there's typically a lot of free exploration and optional content along the way. FF10 is effectively a one way path with zero chance for discovery or deviation for 80% of its length.

>>3917082
>And the sphere grid is probably one of the worst FF progression systems on record. It's basically just busywork that forces you to manually increase your stats by playing a braindead little board game instead of them just going up automatically with levels. You're pretty much always going to have enough spheres and there are no meaningful choices to make until the late game when you can start actually customizing, so it's all just a waste of your time. Again, I think this was something they added to distract you from the fact that you're going to spend most of your playtime watching cutscenes.
The Expert Grid specifically lets you deviate from the path from the start and create different builds. It's never been a linear progression system. Wakka can dip into Auron's path early on using the Standard Grid. You get spheres that allow any character to learn any previously learned spell. Giving Yuna the -Ga spells makes her a more powerful caster than Lulu as her magic stat is naturally higher on her path.

>>3917108
I missed it too the first time. I've done the cavern, baaj and omega ruins once, but I still haven't touched the rest of the side content.

>>3917103
>Its pretty fantastically written.
Every character is extremely one-dimensional, and everything is so slowly paced that by the time anything interesting happens between them, any player with half a brain predicted it hours earlier. It's the same tired tropes you see in tons of Japanese media, and while that's actually true of most JRPGs, the difference is in the pacing. If you tell a simple story with relateable themes in a concise manner, it can be enjoyed no matter how obvious it is. But when you try to stretch it all so thin over a 40-50 hour game, any player with even basic comprehension skills is going to start to feel bored and insulted.

Yuna's whole "girl who grew up too fast and carries the weight of the world on her shoulders" schtick is old hat, as well as Tidus's "happy-go-lucky protag who can make sad girl smile" BS. It could have been charming if it was more streamlined, but holy fuck every character is pretty tiresome by the time their arcs wrap up.

>>3917120
I see what your problem is.

>>3917120
Man, one dimensional is definitely not the word I'd use. I think you just wanted to hate this game. Your character descriptions are strikingly disingenuous

>>3917111
>It's never been a linear progression system.
For most of the game, yeah, it is. They basically acknowledged that by adding the "expert" mode in the remake.
>Giving Yuna the -Ga spells makes her a more powerful caster than Lulu
Okay, and? There had to be better ways to do that than the tedium of the sphere grid.

I feel like this is actually an instance where the equipment ability system could have really shone. Since you have to fight battles to earn the spheres anyway, it all boils down to grinding. They should have let the player find or craft pieces of equipment that could teach abilities outside of a character's native skillset, especially since actual equipment is pretty pointless for most of the main story anyway. Or maybe, since you can freely swap characters in and out of battle, make it so that using any given character results in spheres that can be used to teach their abilities to other characters.

FF10's progression system suffers from a similar problem to 8's, in that they felt pressured to do something different, but didn't have a good idea, so the result was a boring clusterfuck that takes extra steps to accoplish something that happened far more organically in older games.

>>3917120
The only weird part of FFX is the wedding -> Bevelle escape. Everything else is very concise and paced well.

>>3917126
>equipment is pretty pointless for most of the main story anyway
What are you smoking? It becomes relevant as soon as you get to Thunder Plains.
You are free to dislike anything. But trying to argue you dislike things other people like for objective reasons just makes you sound idiotic. The sphere grid is linear at the start but even at that stage it offers some sidepaths you could ignore or invest levels in and it leaves that choice to you.

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>>3917126
>Or maybe, since you can freely swap characters in and out of battle, make it so that using any given character results in spheres that can be used to teach their abilities to other characters.
This is how you do it. Completely get rid of the fucking grid and the power/speed/magic spheres. Have all leveling and stat boosts happen automatically, as it fucking should. Whenever a character participates in battle, you get spheres with their energy, maybe proportionately to how much they participated in battle.

Then, those spheres can be used to teach their abilities to other characters. Better abilities cost more spheres, so you could spend now and give Yuna Fire/Thunder/Blizzard, or hang on to them and teach the -agas later on. No need for a fucking retarded-ass game of Candyland.

>>3917130
>It becomes relevant as soon as you get to Thunder Plains.
Because that's basically the only point in the game where you're weak enough that strong elemental attacks are a bother, which is why I said "most". And as if it isn't insulting enough, the game gives you a store with everything you need to buy right there. Hmmm, you're in a place called "Thunder Plains" and every enemy uses Thunder attacks, and the store you just saw has a million pieces of equipment called "Thunder-" something or other. It's not like you needed to plan ahead or anything. It's just mindless, unskilled busywork, same as the sphere grid. Beyond that point, you can really start to ignore it until later in the game when you can craft much better, omni-purpose equipment.

>>3917126
>teach their abilities to other characters.
>>3917143
>teach their abilities to other characters.
Diminishing the whole aspect of playing around with swapping and turns, and making characters less unique would be a dumb design decision. As expected from an armchair game designer.

>>3917143
>Have all leveling and stat boosts happen automatically
No thanks? Tons of other games have that and I liked choosing exactly how what and if I leveled up. I get you didn't like it but holy shit stop forcing your taste on other people as if it's gospel. Your ability ideas couldn't sound more mind-numbing.

>Because that's basically the only point in the game where you're weak enough that strong elemental attacks are a bother
Weird backpedaling or whatever. Elemental attacks could be dangerous even before, that's why the game tosses the Null spells early. But the real reason is that by Thunder Plains you start customizing armor and you gain a lot more control of what your equipment does outside of buying stuff from merchants. You also don't ignore it for the rest of the game like you said, when bosses start inflicting annoying statuses like berserk, confusion and zombie and the many fights with Seymour that are made way easier by having some elemental immunities.

I get it you hate the game. More power to you, but your "reasons" are all dumb shit that amount to "it didn't jive with me".

>>3917126
>For most of the game, yeah, it is.
Nope. You get unlock keys as early as at the start of Mi'hen Highroad, a few hours into the game, and they consistently drop from there.
>Okay, and?
And it allows customization you wouldn't get with a standard 1 - 99 level system. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's linear. You're just writing words without meaning at this point.

>>3917161
>ou get unlock keys as early as at the start of Mi'hen Highroad, a few hours into the game, and they consistently drop from there.
not at any level high enough to actually cross over, though. The only spheres you can unlock are pointless little one-way detours that basically just give a little extra HP or whatever. You're not going to be doing any cross-grid customization until your practically at the endgame, which is the only point where it matters, anyway. It makes all the busywork of the sphere grid completely pointless up to then.

>>3917149
>Diminishing the whole aspect of playing around with swapping and turns, and making characters less unique would be a dumb design decision
So wait, is the sphere grid "le ebin total customization" or "le linear defined character path"? Talk about backpedaling, whew.

>>3917150
>and I liked choosing exactly how what and if I leveled up.
But there's nothing to choose? There are no meaningful forks in any progression path until the endgame. You wouldn't be choosing what to level up, but rather choosing not to level things and passing them by, which makes no sense because the game gives you more than enough spheres to have everyone get everything on their path.

it feels like you guys are defending a system you don't actually understand, based on the conflicting bullshit you're spouting.

>>3917172
It's not about attribute spheres you troglodyte. It's about getting abilities early. I don't need to detour and grab Extract Power for Auron when I want Magic Break early. I might want to detour and grab that part with Strength nodes for Yuna though, because it makes Aeons better, or I don't because I don't use Aeons much and getting Reflect early is better.
You are reducing everything as if you never have to make any choices when it's obviously not the case.

>>3917176
>You are reducing everything as if you never have to make any choices
Correct. You do not.

>>3917229
Glad we can agree then.

>>3917229
>>3917239
Got a chuckle out of me

>>3917246
The glory of non verbal communication.

>>3916082
My playstation broke when I was a teen just getting into the game somewhere when sin shows up on the beach. I never bothered to try to emulate because I was busy with school or work or moved onto other games. I just picked up the game on steam and am gonna go through it. I had terrible luck with both this game and then lost odyssey which gave me red ring of death partway through.

>>3917582
Enjoy. Or don't, who knows.

>>3917229
there's actually a lot of choice on the sphere grid, its not all good choices but there are quite a few stupid things you could do and choices for what to do with the ability or magic spheres you get

also of course, the choice of what to level after you finish off the personal trees

>>3917659
I specifically remember Wakka and Rikku having detours for bonus strength and agility, at the cost of postponing getting abilities like Mug.

Then there's the HP, MP spheres and such. I gave HP to Auron to make him tankier, MP to Tidus and Wakka, where Kimahri got it too before he went to Lulu's path where both Kimahri and Lulu took the Magic bonus sphere.

With Skill spheres I gave Rikku the ability to Flee. Comes in handy because she usually gets the first turn thanks to her high agility.

>>3917693
I'm startint to realize how low the bar is for you people. You think a straight line with a little cul-de-sac you can loop into and come back out in the exact same place is somehow "non-linear", or amounts to any sort of meaningful difference.

>>3917698
It's just a fun leveling system. Nobody said it was the second coming of Christ and equipment can often make more of a difference to the roles you designate to your party. But since your suggestion was to just gain stats automatically or buy abilities with spheres (like Aeons) I will laugh at you.

>>3917698
I never said it was non linear.

>>3917701
>pointless busywork is fun
yikes

>>3917723
When you have to exaggerate that much to make your point you should know it's not a genuine argument.

>>3917626
Fun so far, just got to blitzball. Also besaid has such a great soundtrack.
Game had a few cutscenes greenscreen error but it looks kinda annoying to install mod fixes and so far it hasnt crashed so whatever

>>3917948
>you're in high school and FF10 just came out
>it's winter in Alaska
>you're sleeping in your room
>your window is open to the cold air
>your blanket is pulled up tight and you're comfy and cozy
>your feet are sticking out from under the covers, as a heat exchanger
>your computer in your room is playing this on repeat all night on your 5.1 speakers
mfw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOmTBSgTLwE

>>3917948
>Game had a few cutscenes greenscreen error
Yeah the HD version is ass. If it persists bite the bullet and install the mod. The cutscenes are nice. Imagining you missing the sending in Kilika sounds sad.

>>3916086
Yuna, Auron, and Wakka are some of the best characters in the franchise. Lulu and Rikku ar acceptable. Tidus is a dork but every FF has one of those.

>>3918258
With Tidus, it was a mistake to let players name him and think he's their self insert instead of having character.

>>3918258
>Kimahri no even mentioned
Lmao

FF10 was objectively the point where Final Fantasy turned into hallway/cutscene moviegame slop for retards. 25 years ago it might have wowed people with its graphics, but these days it doesn't even have that going for it.

It's weird that so much of the fandom praises 10 while pissing and moaning about 13 or 16 for being the exact same brand of bullshit. But at least those games still look impressive and have better voice acting.

>>3918386
I love 10, but it was also clearly beginning of the end. I dropped the series after that. Dunno what 13 or 16 were like, not my problem.

10 is a classic that will forever be appreciated.

>>3918396
And eventually remade (properly)

>>3918386
>the point where Final Fantasy turned into hallway/cutscene moviegame slop for retards.
Arguably, this started with 7. The marketing for 7 leaned heavily into the CGI cutscenes and cinematic presentation, and the game was such a huge hit as a result that Square immediately began restructuring with that in mind:
>in the wake of FF7's success, Square opens new studio in Hawaii with emphasis on cinematics and rendering
>splits core FF development team in two to begin development on FF8 and 9 simultaneously
>begin pumping lots of money into graphics/cinematics division
>like way too much
>not enough into actual game design/programming
>encounter staffing issues as multiple games near deadline unfinished
>FF8, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears are all famously incomplete, but still have nice graphics because that's all they funded properly
>FF8 in particular doesn't even have enough gameplay to fill its completed environments
>Square CEOs too busy funding movies and coca-cola commercials to care
>forced to shuffle programming staff around internally, games resort to text-dumping storyline they had no time to finish
>FF10 is an on-rails movie game with zero exploration
>FF Spirits Within is a literal movie
>they were already planning another movie for 2004 that got scrapped after Spirits Within flopped
It's pretty evident that Square was actively trying to move away from being a game studio and the failure of Spirits Within tripped them up and they never recovered.

Amidst it all, the really impressive thing is that, regardless of what you think about FF9, it's actually a complete, finished product. It's no wonder it's sort of an homage/love-letter to classic-era Final Fantasy, because the staff probably understood it was going to be the dying gasp of the company's game development legacy.

>>3918401
>It's no wonder it's sort of an homage/love-letter to classic-era Final Fantasy, because the staff probably understood it was going to be the dying gasp of the company's game development legacy.
I hate it when some random guy projects their hindsight views on developers.
>it just so happens they probably thought the same way i think i would've thought in their shoes!

>>3916082
I really enjoyed FFX's story and characters, but I just cold not get behind the gameplay. The combat becomes a chore quickly, I'm not a huge fan of the sphere grid, and the actual cool things to do in the world of the game are locked behind a ridiculous postgame. Tidus is one of my favorite characters in gaming but I just don't enjoy the actual gameplay as much as I'd like to.

>>3916082
X was great. Mid-battle character switching and equipment switching go underappreciated.

>>3918896
It was a good way to add some depth to combat, and keep the characters on screen so I didn't forget them until they show up in a cutscene lol

>>3918898
I kind of had a moment with it where Wakka happened to have a mix of all 4 elemental immunities split between SOS/Proof armors from random drops, and managed to completely save the situation on a bad Seymour fight.
And when bosses started dispelling my buffs switching around and "protecting" my valuable buffed members was pretty fun.

>>3918900
>switching around and "protecting" my valuable buffed members was pretty fun.
Those occasions made me feel clever. The yunalesca fight was basically designed for it, with swapping zombified characters for the insta death boss turn.

>>3918932
Right, that's very upfront as well.
In my case it was Flux and how he kept doing the pattern of Mass-Dispel -> Ultimate attack. Only Auron could survive it with the proper buffs and I had to switch him for Rikku for the Dispel part.
Another similar one was the beast outside the cave before Zanarkand. Figuring out how to stop it from healing itself with reflect makes you feel smart but the fucker kept trying to put reflect on my party so it could bounce back at it. I had to "hide" some party members often.

>>3918945
Bosses start throwing those reflect tricks later on.
Another fun boss is the al bhed tank in lake macalania, that disables magic. I buffed with Tidus' Cheer and Lulu's Reflex, and then healed with Yuna's Pray. It felt like the boss was tailor made for those abilities that otherwise don't get many chances to shine.

anyone here ever do challenge runs? I did wakka-only once and it got pretty tedious at points

>>3918991
>anyone here ever do challenge runs?
Yes, try to not cry by the end. Difficult rating: impossible

>>3918991
Yeah, the most fun I've had was only activating ability nodes and nobody going over to another person's grid (Kimahri gets Copycat).
I also tried to not use summons and Rikku's overdrives and damaging items like shinning gems.
Everything was pretty doable until the final boss which I gave up and used the Sunburst mix for.
Auron: Cornerstone of many strategies and random encounters due to Guard + Counter.
Lulu: Damage dealer. Doublecast + Demi made capturing manageable.
Yuna: Remained as a good support but Pray, Null Element and Auto-Life near the end instead of Cure spells.
Wakka: Not the monster he is in regular runs. Still the guy to rely on when you absolutely cannot afford to miss a vital Sleep or Dark infliction (Those Evil Eyes are deadly).
Rikku: Still super good just because of speed. A menace with status effect weapons.
Tidus: Haste + Cheer and Provoke bot. Part of nearly every fight that needs Cheer (a ton of them).
Kimahri: Mostly paired with Lulu for copying her black magic or Tidus for copying Cheer for faster stacks. Still a bit disappointing.

>>3919006
>only activating ability nodes
Interesting... does low accuracy become a problem?

>>3919015
Basically the enemies Wakka likes to deal with and later on wolves and lizards are hard to hit with anyone but Wakka. But the way you play is by locking an encounter down before doing any damage dealing so it's not that bad. You just never want to waste turns on misses so you leave them for last.
Bosses and the rest of the enemies though you rarely miss, just like a regular run.

>>3918266
... you just didn't get it.
And to be fair it's real subtle, real sneaky. Really clever too.

In other RPGs, in older RPGs, older FFs especially even, you get to name your characters, and so you'd name one Dickbutt and another Cockenbawls and have yourself a giggle when an NPC would plead for Dickbutt to save the village or the love interest to say, "I need you... Cockenbawls..."

Hilarious.

And so back then if you had played any other RPGs, when FFX asks you to give a name to Tidus you don't think anything of it, enter in a name, or use Tidus as the default, and move on waiting for the opportunity to recruit a new party member and give them a name. In another RPG, the second Auron joined you'd have been given a prompt to name him... but that prompt never comes. When Auron steps in on the scene here's a lot of action going on with Sin's attack so it's real easy to forget that you even bothered to name Tidus in the first instance.

... and so the game continues. The next time you get a prompt to name something is when Yuna summons Valefore, the Aeon. Huh. Now isn't that weird. In fact, in a standard playthrough where you're just plowing to the final Jecht fight... you're only naming the Aeons. And what are Aeons? ... summoned beasts of the fayth. What's Tidus? A summoned human from Dream Zanarkand that's entirely brought forth by the fayth.

That's why you name Tidus. It's why you name the Aeons. That shared quality of being products of the fayth.

>>3918386
>FF10 was objectively the point where Final Fantasy turned into hallway/cutscene moviegame slop for retards.
True. But it was an entertaining moviegame and the combat was tight.

>25 years ago it might have wowed people with its graphics, but these days it doesn't even have that going for it.
They still hold up damn well.

>It's weird that so much of the fandom praises 10 while pissing and moaning about 13 or 16
To be fair I never played 16, and you're dead on correct when you say a lot of FF10's DNA is in FF13. The difference is, however, that Tidus functions as a fish out of water character so Tidus will just encounter something unusual--that is equally unusual to us, the player--ask a question and receive an answer, and we get these answers in bite-sized chunks instead of in a lore dump or info dump. Without Tidus? ... like wtf would the player do? They don't know what Sin is, they don't know what a fayth is, they don't know what sendings are... like the world of Spira has a lot of alien shit going on in it, and all the fucking characters are used to this alien shit and have no natural reason to bring up what is plainly mundane to them but wondrous and alien to us.

... and that's exactly the problem FF13 runs into. Cocoon? PSI-COM? Fal'cie? L'cie? ... wtf? All this shit is being thrown at us rapid fire. There is no Tidus to ask a reasonable question to clue us players in on the stakes of what's going on or why we should care about any of this shit. It's so bad that I'm almost certain that QA testers complained and so Square-Enix begrudgingly made the Datalog system so that the players could find out what the fuck it was they were doing, why they were doing it, and shit and each one of those datalog's is a lore dump and info dump. That's not how you tell a compelling story or make people want to engage with your world.

>for being the exact same brand of bullshit.
It's not the exact same, hence the difference in reception.

>>3920455
>... you just didn't get it.
>he's an aeon
I don't believe that's the reason Tidus isn't named in the game's script.
But it would be funny if Yuna's rival summoners called forth a Tidus with their own nickname for it.

>>3916082
I would like this game a lot more if it was just a boss rush. The random encounters are tedious. Seymour's boss fight was great, though.

>>3920455
Hey, you might be onto something. It's the same way in FF8. The rename screen only appears for G.F.s.
The exception is Squall and Rinoa.

>>3916082
>is one of the top 5 most popular, most acclaimed, most talked about jrpgs of all time "slept on"?

the virgin "gotta swap every character so they all get AP" vs. the chad "pick my 3 favorites and keep the other niggas on the bench for the entire game"

>>3920987
>"pick my 3 favorites and keep the other niggas on the bench for the entire game"
I'm curious, which ones would be your favorites? Or do you just pick the best characters.

I'm thinking about how restrictive it would be for abilities, and how each party composition would get them the most efficiently. Getting Auron's Breaks sithout him would be a pain.

>>3920997
it doesnt matter who you pick, you can go literally anywhere on the sphere grid anyway. its especially irrelevant if youre using the expert sphere grid that starts everyone in the middle. the only difference is overdrives and ultimate weapons, and you need yuna for aeons. objectively the best team is yuna for OP summons, rikku (best overdrive) and wakka (most powerful overdrive). but I just go with my favorites or who Im feeling that playthrough. my favorite team is yuna/rikku/lulu cause Im a waifu fag but tidus/wakka/auron is a really fun team too. if you want to do all the post game content with only 3 characters you should go with wakka/tidus/rikku since theyre the only ones you can use for the underwater bosses... or just cheese everything with zanmato.

>>3920997
Ill add too that if you dont want to go with a strong aeon build you should just avoid yuna and lulu IMO because their ultimate weapons are magic based and magic damage is pretty shit by the time you hit late game. you could also just customize a generic weapon as good as an ultimate but they dont look nearly as cool and feels soulless (and also requires a ton of farming) so I never do that.

>>3921006
It's true, everything is doable. I just started thinking how it would go on a standard grid just running through the game, because it may not even be such a big hassle that it first sounded like.

Tidus, Yuna, Wakka could be efficient and versatile from start to finish. Alternatively Wakka could be changed to Lulu or Kimahri. Kimahri is actually a strong choice under these circumstances. Rikku can do everyone's job with a little stealing.

But I like all characters and playing them so this isn't a run I consider doing.