Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
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Originally Posted by Daarkseid
Actually, it's that I know of alot of people who list FFVII as their least favorite, if for no better reason than it represented Squaresoft's betrayal of a beloved game company(Nintendo) or because of its movement to 3D graphics or FMV use. I've seen it posted regularly on this board, actually and tends to be a scapegoat amongst classical gamers as the moment "gaming" began to suck(or at least with the FF series).
The only reasons I could really accept for disliking VII is if the gameplay wasn't great or the story sucked. VII's story is easily the most well written in the series, and I initially disliked the fact the game wasn't set in more medieval fantasy settings(like previous FF games). Gameplay wise, its pretty weak because of a dissapointingly low difficulty level, which probably inspired the addition of the Emerald and Ruby weapons; this actually represents the moment that the FF series became engineered for two separate gamer demographics.
The casual gamer is welcomed to an RPG that is quick and easy to get into, and can be completed with relative ease and without some of the skill conventions developed by previous RPG gamers, such as leveling and developing battle strategies to win. Also characters require only three equipment pieces and only two are really necessary, and then theres no cross character equipment, so armor and weapons are easily identified to be used with what character. The only consideration givin to the RPG or FF fan was extras, like side quests, a character building system of some complexity(materia) and then of course the Weapons as challenges requiring full use of the hardcore arsenal provided in said side-quests and materia.
All true FF games since then have been divided between the casual and hardcore gamer, and this is probably the only real reason I have for disliking where the series went.
I agree. Even back before I had a PSX I picked this game up for PC (one of the few that was ported over - and actually the PC port is *better* than the PSX game - considering they fixed typos, the graphics are slightly better, and they added in a few new monsters and such - though of course keyboard is never as good as joystick but at least the save system was pretty nice, being able to have something like 100 save files :D). I enjoyed it quite a bit. One of these days I need to go back and finish it. Hopefully I still have the save where I mastered most of my Materia before the second disk :D
Anyways, my only real complaint about this game was Aeris' death - not that I am against main characters dying but she dies so freaking early in the game. It's like, you invest all this time in skilling her up and then, oh oops.. you never get to use her again. I mean, even the process for getting her best weapon and limit break (right? been awhile so I hope I have the right word) are insanely annoyingly long and hard for the first disk only to use them for like.. a couple hours before you waste all that effort forever. I dunno, it has just always felt like Square intended to bring her back later in the game but changed their minds. Therefore a lot of her "content" was left somewhat unbalanced for the limited time you get to play her.
Other than that, a great game overall. I wish Square would really remake it like they did for that short FMV PS3 preview (which as they stressed over and over.. was JUST a tech demo and NOT a game).
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
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Originally Posted by vegeta1215
Bah, the last boss in FFVII was so easy it was pathetic. For being chalked up as such a badass, Sephiroth was so disappointing.
I did like the game overall though. I wish there were a way to re-watch the FMV scenes once you finish the game - being able to watch the FMVs and hear some of the better music is my only motivation for replaying the game.
You can if you have the PC version - just root around on the CDs and play them in Media Player. They're even prettier if they're not squished into a 640x480 resolution. Of course, knowing me and my efforts to help people, you've probably got the PS version, right? :rolleyes:
Warlock: You may not know it, but if you hack around in the PC version, yu can find a few references which suggest that Aeris was originally supposed to die a bit later. I'll see if I can find the link for it, it's pretty damn interesting.
(Suppose we can call this thread 'FFVII discussion' now, can't we ;))
EDIT: Found it. This scene takes places at the end of the snowboarding sub-game that I was always crap at, and shows that, at some point during the game's development, Aeris did not die so early. Hmm..!
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
One of the reasons that people thought they could revive Aeris was that if you Gameshark her back in, she has dialogue.
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
I also heard that people thought you could bring Aeris back on the Japanese FFVII because if you used an action replay code you could get the 'underwater' materia which, in the Japanese version, had no effect. So people figured you would use it to go into the pool and get her. But then in the American version they added the weapons, and so of course you can use the underwater materia to fight Emerald without a time limit.
The problem though I would say though for bringing Aeris back is her later limit breaks are way too strong. For those of you who don't know, here level 4 limit break heals everyone to max HP and makes them invincible for the entire battle. Imagine using that against Emerald Weapon.
PS: It doesn't surprise me that there are a few lines that don't normally get played in the game. There is a decent chance that whoever wrote that scene was the one who worked on the snowboard minigame. That person might not have a full understanding of the story, other than knowing that unique lines can be supplied for the various characters. Therefore, he may have inlcuded the line for Aeris, thinking she would be alive at the time. Since in all the testing she would have been dead, that line would never have come up, and therefore there wouldn't be anything pointing to it needing to be removed. As for the translation, remember that the person doing the translation doesn't do it through the game - they have a big table of text strings and are told to simply translate them. So the translator would not know that a line that says "I'm sick of this" actually belonged to a dead character.
As for keeping the thread on track...
A game that I found was a letdown was the new Contra. I picked up Gradius V and have had a lot of fun with it (although I've only gotten as far as level five twice). So I picked up Contra thinking it would be a dose of retro fun like Gradius was, but it wasn't. Contra as a series really hasn't felt the same since Alien Wars - after that game, it seems that they've largely ditched the level style the older games used to have and focus more on the bosses. That isn't as enjoyable for me.
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
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Originally Posted by Darth Marsden
You can if you have the PC version - just root around on the CDs and play them in Media Player. They're even prettier if they're not squished into a 640x480 resolution. Of course, knowing me and my efforts to help people, you've probably got the PS version, right? :rolleyes:
I had the PC version - it was a copy burnt from a friend. I did watch some of the movies on the CDs, but they weren't easy to identify cause the file names didn't match the content of the FMVs.
I have since gotten rid of my burnt PC version though 1) because I can't play it anymore since I have Linux and it doesn't run in Windows XP (at least I don't think it does) and 2) I decided to get rid of all my pirated games and actually buy them. I got real copies of Warcraft II and Starcraft, and bought FFVII for the Playstation.
I agree with Warlock about Aeris - she was an integral part of my team who I built up quite a bit, and I was really upset to see her get killed. That and she was really cute.
I've seen the FFVII tech demo for the PS3, and although Square says it's just a demo, there are rumors floating around that they may be remaking the game. Who knows what's true? All I know is I want to freakin' see Aeris' face! (it's always cut off!)
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
Ah, the
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you can bring aeris back by fighting rufus 300 times and then going to nibelheim and youll see shadow from ffvi and if you beat him he gives you a sup[erlife materia and you can go back to where aires dies use the soperlife meteria and you can bring her back to life!!!!1!!!1!!
rumours. Fun.
DISCLAIMER: This is not true. Aeris dies. You cannot bring her back to life without using hacking tools. Even then, it's not recommended. Just get over it.
Anyway, I prefered Tifa. Not as cute, but more feisty.
Biggest Gaming Letdown? Sonic Heroes. I don't know why I keep getting my hopes up for new Sonic games.
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
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Originally Posted by Darth Marsden
Anyway, I prefered Tifa. Not as cute, but more feisty.
That's interesting, I just prefered her because she had huge tits.
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
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Originally Posted by Daarkseid
That's interesting, I just prefered her because she had huge tits.
Well, that too. Plus, mini-top! ;)
Aeris just seemed, to me, to be the typical 'Princess' type of character - weak, always getting you in trouble, ends up getting captured forcing you to rescue her, etc. A very small part of me was glad she died, it meant I wouldn't spend any more time trying to 'find' her.
Vegeta: Only a month and a half to go. Hang in there...
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
Plus Tifa has a sweet limit on top of all that stuff. It's cool cuz they all string together. I dont know what my biggest let down was. I'd have to say Hulk for GCN.
Re: Biggest Gaming Letdown?
Biggest gaming letdown?
Super Mario Sunshine would probably be my guess. Instead of a classic "Super Mario Bros." style adventure, we got Mario running through a very non-Mario-ish world spraying things with a watergun.
I long for the day that we get a Mario game as good as Super Mario Bros. 3, which is still the bestselling Mario game of all time.
Mario Power Tennis was a slight letdown because Toad wasn't a playable character, yet "Petey Piranha" was. Nintendo seems to be neglecting the fact that there are many Toad fans out there,
MPT was an awesome game, though, I just miss playing as Toad.