What are you playing?

[Guest]

And FF has had the staying power because of muh FF7 nostalgia

There were six instalments of Final Fantasy before VII and maybe one good additional one (IX) after VII. The staying power of the series has little to do with VII, even if VII introduced Final Fantasy to a whole new audience

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

I'm talking from the baka gaijin perspective. We only got half of those old games (sometimes less depending on where you're from), but they didn't have that big of an impact.
Then came the PS1 and everyone was wowed by FF7.

[rabidtictac]

Final Fantasy 1 was huge on NES.

Final Fantasy IV and VI were big on SNES.

The main reason "everyone" was wowed by FF7 is because a lot of people started gaming with ps1. It was like imprinting. FF7 was the first thing they saw, so it became the best.

When I was a kid, I thought Chrono Trigger was the best game ever made. I started gayming with SNES and it was one of the first rpgs I played. I still think it's good, but I wouldn't say it's the best anymore. The game is pretty short and piss-easy (for a classic era jrpg.)

All boomer gamers must fight hard to rid themselves of nostalgia, lest they become Movieblobs. Not saying you have to hate the old games you played, but gaming is a pretty deep pool and you'll find a lot of really great stuff if you don't limit yourself.

[Guest]

I'm talking from the baka gaijin perspective.

Which is completely irrelevant to my point.

There wouldn't have been a Final Fantasy VII for fanboys to wank over and say it's the best game evar if there hadn't been Final Fantasies I-VI to come before it. A series that managed six successful instalments despite the fact that, unlike Mario or Zelda, there were no recurring characters, no recurring settings and no continuing plot. They were all self-contained.

Even if the series' success was entirely due to Final Fantasy VII, it would not have continued to be successful after VII, given that VIII-XV likewise feature completely different characters, plot, settings etc. I understand this mindset very well, when I was a kid Final Fantasy VII was the only Final Fantasy I played or cared about, I never played FFVIII or any of those others because they didn't feature the same characters. It wasn't until I was older that I played, and enjoyed, other Final Fantasies

Now, if everyone were like me, the popularity of Final Fantasy in the West would have begun and ended with Final Fantasy VII

[Guest]

I'm talking from the baka gaijin perspective.

Which is completely irrelevant to my point.

Oh he knows that. He's well fucking aware.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Don't make assumptions about my headspace, guest.

JRPG sequels having wholly different continuities isn't really a foreign concept, even if a lot of them try to pay lip service by ensuring you this games takes place hundreds of years before/after [previous entry in the series].

[Guest]

JRPG sequels having wholly different continuities isn't really a foreign concept

Because Final Fantasy pioneered the idea. Anthology video game series didn't really exist before Final Fantasy or, if they did, they weren't well known

even if a lot of them try to pay lip service by ensuring you this games takes place hundreds of years before/after [previous entry in the series].

That would still count as a recurring setting

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

A recurring setting it may be, but the actual overlap is usually something only for the biggest of losers.
I mean, (most?) Seiken Densetsu games take place in the same world, but they don't really have that much more in common with each other than say any given FF title with an actual fantasy setting.

Though where Final Fantasy can really alienate people is in the game mechanics department, specifically when it comes to leveling up and improving/customizing characters (something which saner JRPGs don't make nearly as obtuse). 'Cause they always have to reinvent the wheel.

"But actually, there's Heroes of Mana which takes place just a couple years/decades before Seiken Densetsu 3 aka Trials of Mana and even features some of the same chara..." Shut up, Strawman. Nobody cares about RTS games on a fucking handheld.

[Guest]

Don't make assumptions about my headspace, guest.

I don't have to. You're very predictable.

[rollflasher]

Sonic Heroes

I really love this game and I think it’s good, but not great.

Funny enough, I also have some history with this game since my hype for Heroes as a kid was astounding, so when I got the chance to play it for the first time I had a blast. Thing is…I sucked at the game and as a kid I thought it was because I usually fared like that in most games, but as I got older the game continued to be frustrating and as a teenager seeing reviews about it and other 3D Sonic games, I came to the conclusion that Heroes wasn’t really a good game, but here’s the kicker.

All that time I only played the PS2 version of Heroes.

Years later I found out about the difference between the different ports of the game and decided to give it a second chance, apparently the PC version was the most accessible one for me and fortunately it wasn’t as broken as the PS2 one, so I downloaded and gave it a try.

And man does it make a difference.

While the game’s slippery controls is an issue on all platforms, the game played so much better in PC that I could actually enjoy myself and beat it, and after that my image of the game became much more positive.

Great level design, the team mechanic is fresh and really incentivises to interact with Sonic stages in a brand new way, one of the things I love to do the most in this game is mastering switching to the point that it becomes natural and suddenly you feel that 3 characters control as one, at least for me there’s something incredibly awesome on succesfully pulling that off.

As always the soundtrack is amazing and Heroes’ is probably Jun Senoue at his purest. Every single track displays his style in all of its glory and I think this gives it a pretty strong identity making it stand out from the rest. Also hot take, this game has easily the best final boss theme in the series, and yes, I’m putting What I’m Made Of above Open Your Heart and Live And Learn, it’s not that this song is necessarily better than the others, it’s just that I don’t think ANY other song really nails the feeling of a final battle as much as this one does.

The story…is not good, I’m just gonna say that. The plot is bare-bones, the Eggman getting upstaged trend was already getting tired by this point and there’s not much to write home about it beside Metal’s return and Shadow’s survival. Besides that, the characters fight each other for stupid reasons and there is some slight flanderization going around in this game.

That being said, I do think it has some redeemable qualities. As cheesy as this game’s script is, I think this is a better approach at making a lighthearted Sonic game than the Pontaff games, because while this game has memeable quotes such as the SUPERPOWER OF TEAMWORK! I do appreciate that this game’s tone still focuses on action and the characters still feel genuine in their characterization. I never really understood why a lot of franchises think that making a lighthearted story must involve the characters being forced into cracking jokes and leaning more into humor so I definitely prefer Heroes’ approach at making a more family friendly Sonic story by making things simple and focusing on classic action.

Don’t get me wrong, this game’s plot is still not good and those are mostly saving graces, they’re still not enough to make a difference.

Overall, I think Heroes’ biggest weakness as a whole is how repetitive it is. The game is incredibly fun on a single playthrough, but having to play it 4 times to get the final story is a deal breaker since all the teams go through the exact same stages but with minor alterations, it’s only Team Chaotix that truly changes things with its missions.

This wouldn’t be such a problem if Heroes was like SA1, where all the characters played differently and thus each campaign felt distinct from one another despite them re-using stages constantly, but in this game the teams play almost the exact same except for the Team Blast and some minor moveset alterations. And this is a shame, since it really drags down a game that has a lot of brilliant ideas that unfortunately overstay their welcome because of the monotony this causes.

I think the worst part is that IIRC, Heroes had to be redone from scratch halfway during development, since this game was originally going to be a Gamecube exclusive but after taking the decision to port it into other systems, they were forced to change the engine of the game to one that was easier to port, this means that maybe the repetitiveness of this game is a direct result of that, this would also explain why Heroes has this feeling of unpolish in some areas. Really this is a big shame, because Heroes could have been a much better game if its development went through as it was originally planned.

Anyway, my best advice for this game is to take a break every time you finish one campaign and try the next one another day, that’s the most you can do to mitigate the issue of this game being repetitive.

Good game, but it’s rough around the edges and could have been so much better than what we got.