Eskating cyclist, gamer and enjoyer of anime. Probably an artist. Also I code sometimes, pretty much just to mod titanfall 2 tho.

Introverted, yet I enjoy discussion to a fault.

  • 14 Posts
  • 640 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Looks at persona

    Are you sure?

    That said I really like the combat system in modern FF games. It’s a mix of hack n slash + strategy you don’t really get anywhere else.

    They’ve made something unique, and I approve. My only complaint is that they don’t lean into it, and all but the highest difficulty lets the player get away with button mashing.


  • I don’t know how much you know about the intricacies of the newer FF combat systems, but “turns” are still in there, but among a bunch of new stuff that may or may not jell with you.

    If you want, in the remakes you can set the combat to “classic” which makes it so that the AI controls all three charachters, rather than just the two you aren’t playing as.

    This leaves you to deal with only the “turns”, and which abilities, spells, or items, to use them for. And you don’t need to be quick, the passage of time nearly pauses while you engage with the action menu to decide what to do with a turn.

    Characters and enemies can only engage in basic attacks outside of their “turn”. To use abilities, spells or items, it must be your “turn”.

    All the decisions that make turn based combat interesting are overlayed on top of the real-time action. At times they even overlap. When not using classic mode, it matters how you control a characters real time actions. The exact timing of when you use a turn can have consequences, you need to make sure you are standing in a good spot for a given ability, you need to make sure you’re not about to take an attack that might interrupt an action, etc.

    You have to decide stuff like whether you need to use your turns to spam cure just to keep the party alive. Should Aerith spend one turn and the MP to use Cura on one party member, or wait two turns to use Pray on everyone. Should Cloud go for damage on this turn, or build stagger in case it leads to a stun and bonus damage next turn? Can Tifa keep herself alive with Chakra or do I need to have another charachter heal her? Do I remember the pressure conditions for this enemy or do I need to spend a turn on Assess to find out?

    If all you want is turn based classic gameplay, then yeah, it isn’t here. But they have made something very interesting. It’s got hack slash style flashy action, but with an amount of strategy involved I don’t think any other games have achieved. It’s unique.


  • What? What the hell do you even mean by “baseline”?

    Again, what are you saying? You replied adversarially to someone who was making the point that society should be improved so as to not allow things like people starving to death, or becoming homeless. Are you agreeing with them or trying to shut them down?

    Are you saying society barely doing anything to help people in such situations is fine, because you survived it? Because that is what it seems like, and my reply is in response to such an utterly insane take.

    Society should prevent death and suffering as much as the available resources allow. Who the fuck cares where you draw the line for “good enough”?

    If we can do better, then we should.


  • Did you literally just use “there are fates worse than death” as some kind of comeback to someone saying that not being able afford necessities leads to “losing” (death), as a way to argue that a society that allows this should be improved?

    What are you saying? That people not being able to feed and/or house themselves is fine, because there are worse kinds of “loss”?

    What the fuck is point of “one-upmanship” around the baseline of suffering? And how is “people not dying” not a pretty good place to start when it comes to what society should try to achieve?



  • Rebirth does something with the open world mechanics I haven’t seen in other games. It interconnects everything.

    The life springs give you a shitton of materials for the crafting system, they reveal the locations of crafting recipes, and eventually the area boss.

    All of which interconnects with side-quests, not just at the start as a tutorial, but throughout each region.

    It hence manages to make you want to do everything, almost on accident. If you do all the sidequests, you progress the collectathon a bunch. If you do the collectathon, you end up progressing quests a bunch just by “coincidence”.

    Add to that the fast travel that lets you jump anywhere instantly, and nothing ends up feeling like a chore.


  • If you’re just watching, you won’t get the main appeal of the modern FF combat systems. That being the underlying turns and the strategy around what to do with them.

    And unfortunately, at lower difficulties, you can get by with button mashing. It’s really disappointing that the difficulty that actually requires thinking is locked behind ng+, but at that level, the system really shines.

    It’s all strategy, dressed up as a hack and slash, but if you just button mash, don’t min-max your builds, utilize the entire party, their abilities, spells and synergies, you are dead.

    And it’s all made more intense by the combat happening in real-time (though you can slow time to a crawl at any time). I really love the panic of the way you are forced to control any last surviving party member, waiting for your turn to be available so you can use a phoenix down.


  • I absolutely adore the remake games. They both follow a type of game-design that makes me feel like I’m playing something from the PS2 era again. Both the good and the bad. Makes me feel like a kid in the best kind of way.

    The games do have some trouble with time-wasters. It’s both improved and made worse in Rebirth. Luckily, in open world fashion, a lot of it can actually be ignored in Rebirth. And if you don’t ignore it, you get rewarded with actually good side-content. And Rebirths fast travel is good to the point you basically never have to travel anywhere “the long way” twice.

    I have the same problem with the combat being too easy. It wasn’t too bad with Intergrade as I was new to the combat system, but with Rebirth I am absolutely crushing enemies. I’m deliberately sabotaging my character builds to make it more challenging, but I really wish they didn’t lock “hard” behind ng+. Coming from the first game, you should be able to jump into the second at that higher skill level from the start. But no.

    Don’t worry too much about your stuff not carrying over. The characters do not get reset to level zero, and no abilities. They start with a little less than what you have at the end of Intergrade, but a lot of the stuff you’ll have gotten by the end of Intergrade, is what you have at the start of Rebirth. And then over the course of the second game, you get a lot of NEW stuff, rather than just re-aquiring the stuff you had in the first.







  • Everything?

    It has the complexity of a MOBA (but genius level UX that completely addresses how that would normally be daunting, through a fantastic community item build system), movement approaching the intensity of Titanfall and a match format that finally fills the hole in my heart that was left by Battleborn, and is maybe even better.

    It has a a unique 80s magic/fantasy aesthetic, and what we know of the lore so far is fantastic. (I laughed out loud when walking by a radio in-game and a newscaster voice went “Have love potions ruined dating?! These 20-somethings tell all!”)

    My advice, hit up !deadlock@sopuli.xyz, get an invite, and just give it a try. The way it’s looking, it might turn out my favorite game of all time.