iyellatcloud
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
--
Days in Journal
7 days
Last played
February 15, 2024
First played
August 16, 2018
Platforms Played
This is one of my favorite games to replay and I can see myself going back to it again and again without getting bored, but equally, whenever I go back to it its flaws stand out clearly to me. Two major issues in particular:
- FFV is my favorite game of all time (thanks largely to its superlative take on the job system), and the job system here is possibly even better, with tons more depth and customization. But the more I play this game the more I realize that a great job system is only half the battle: the game's difficulty curve has to be carefully curated in order to make tinkering with your jobs feel rewarding. FFV did a much better job of that than this game, which had a backwards difficulty curve with strange spikes. I think the main issue is that with a few exceptions, the enemies in this game are all human and therefore play by the same rules as you (i.e. they have primary classes, secondary skillsets, movement abilities, reaction abilities and passive abilities). But rather than having coherent builds, their ability sets seem to be determined at random. It isn't noticeable at the beginning, but by the endgame you will have crazy focused builds like teleporting wizards who evade 97% of physical attacks, and barehanded ninjas who can yell at themselves to go faster, and you'll be facing mages who jump on you for pitiful damage, or dragoons (lowest magic stat in the game) who waste their turns healing for single-digit HP instead of attacking you.
- The story is probably the best of any JRPG I've played. Or at least, I realized that it was the best after I read a plot analysis online, because the translation was utter steaming garbage. There are technically worse translations, but they tended to be early JRPGs with tropey stories you could get the gist of anyway; this web of political intrigue and double and triple-crossing deserved better. I honestly think any English-speaker with a Japanese dictionary could have done a better job - from how unwieldy a lot of the dialogue was, it seems almost like it was translated by one guy with a Japanese-English dictionary with no knowledge of either language.
Despite the two issues above, I would say that this is actually one of the RPGs I've played that comes closest to a 10/10 in both story and game mechanics. It is well worth playing and replaying.
- FFV is my favorite game of all time (thanks largely to its superlative take on the job system), and the job system here is possibly even better, with tons more depth and customization. But the more I play this game the more I realize that a great job system is only half the battle: the game's difficulty curve has to be carefully curated in order to make tinkering with your jobs feel rewarding. FFV did a much better job of that than this game, which had a backwards difficulty curve with strange spikes. I think the main issue is that with a few exceptions, the enemies in this game are all human and therefore play by the same rules as you (i.e. they have primary classes, secondary skillsets, movement abilities, reaction abilities and passive abilities). But rather than having coherent builds, their ability sets seem to be determined at random. It isn't noticeable at the beginning, but by the endgame you will have crazy focused builds like teleporting wizards who evade 97% of physical attacks, and barehanded ninjas who can yell at themselves to go faster, and you'll be facing mages who jump on you for pitiful damage, or dragoons (lowest magic stat in the game) who waste their turns healing for single-digit HP instead of attacking you.
- The story is probably the best of any JRPG I've played. Or at least, I realized that it was the best after I read a plot analysis online, because the translation was utter steaming garbage. There are technically worse translations, but they tended to be early JRPGs with tropey stories you could get the gist of anyway; this web of political intrigue and double and triple-crossing deserved better. I honestly think any English-speaker with a Japanese dictionary could have done a better job - from how unwieldy a lot of the dialogue was, it seems almost like it was translated by one guy with a Japanese-English dictionary with no knowledge of either language.
Despite the two issues above, I would say that this is actually one of the RPGs I've played that comes closest to a 10/10 in both story and game mechanics. It is well worth playing and replaying.