[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

And here you are dabbing that brush all over FFXII when its also the case rather obviously with FFVII and FFX. Safer Sephiroth and Yu Yevon had shit for brains. But then, they weren't the ultimate bosses of the game, neither was the last boss of FFXII. Final Bosses being ultimate bosses went the way of the dodo after FFVI, any fan should know and acknowledge that by now.

Yes, but at least those fights still needed physical input. I beat 12 with the controller on the floor and watched my AI whip it's ass with no one ever dipping below Yellow HP. Fight lasted maybe 5 minutes, and no I didn't have the Zodiac Spear or godly high levels. 2 handed swords are just stupidly good. I hardly did any of the hunts and other side crap either. He was just a f'ing joke. I did go out of my way to buy all the best Gambits I could though.

[Pai Pai Master]

Why the hell are we discussing Final Fantasy in a Dragon Quest thread. D:

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Some moron had to go and rate FF games again, that's what happened.

[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Omgwtfbbqkitten

Feba had to go and rate FF games again, that's what happened.

ftfy


Does Akira still do the artwork for the series?

[Feba]

Originally Posted by Malacite

Any game where you can win with literally no effort fails.

Except you can't. Are FF12 fights easy with the right gambits? Sure. The effort goes into making the gambits.

And anyway, where does this idea come from that the game needs to be hard to be fun? FF games have always had ways of making things more difficult for yourself if you want; people have been doing single character runs, all mage runs. No Sphere Grid, No Zodiac board, No junctions, no materia, no magic, no items, there are all sorts of things out there to make the game more difficult for yourself if you want. The rest of us can enjoy a game where we aren't dying and failing constantly, where we get to see a beautiful world unfold with a great story.

Originally Posted by Malacite

ftfy

Actually, it was Tickmeoff. If you want to be insulting, insult the right person, you don't want to look like a bigger idiot than you are.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

It wasn't Feba, I just didn't feel like naming names for the sake of seeming polite.

And yes, Akira Toriyama still does the artwork for the DQ series.

Dunno why you guys gotta go and rate off the FF games anyway. People always make this fuss about physical imputing actions when in most boss fights in FFXII that's exactly what you end up doing anyway. Gambits only account for so much of the decision-making.

Anyway, gauging an RPG by main story difficulty is no longer a valid way to evaluate their difficulty. FFVII changed that, FFVII was harder in a lot of other places than the final fight. Same with FFVIII, FFX, FFX-2 and so on. Only FF that really had a challenging final boss in recent memory were FFVI and FFIX.

But then, FFVII's Emerald/Ruby, FFVIII's Ultima, practically anything in FFX's Monster Ranch and X-2s's Trema could wipe the floor with any final boss in thier own games respectively. That's what Square left from the more hardcore player.

I have no problems with that design standpoint. The hard stuff is still there if you want it.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about Dragon Quest. Can we get back to that, please?

[Malacite]

Originally Posted by Feba

Actually, it was Tickmeoff. If you want to be insulting, insult the right person, you don't want to look like a bigger idiot than you are.

Ah, but you injected FF into the conversation! Guilt by association!

Moot point anyway XD

[Kirsten]

Here's my theory : SE announces a new MMO game in development a while back that is not Final Fantasy XI and will not replace FFXI. First one that came into my mind was Dragon Quest Online MMO - now it announces Dragon Quest X even BEFORE the Dragon Quest IX is released.... hmmm.... kinda confirmed that it will be something totally different and I got a Dejavu feeling again especially when SE announces FFXI in development back when FFX was to be released/just released. Makes sense in my opinion so the Wii ones might be a MMO ( good time to launch Wii's online gaming capabilities as well eh ? ). We'll see if my theory is right - if SE confirmed Dragon Quest X on other platforms too ( Xbox 360 & PS3 ) then it is a give-away.

[Armando]

Originally Posted by Malacite

Yes, but at least those fights still needed physical input.

Considering the dull repetition of commands that most RPGs entail, I don't think this is much of a plus =P After all, the strategy to beating bosses in most RPGs is 1) find weakness, 2) spam its weakness, and 3) heal off the damage you take. If I can make the game make the braindead choices for me, all the better.

[Yellow Mage]

Originally Posted by Armando

Considering the dull repetition of commands that most RPGs entail, I don't think this is much of a plus =P After all, the strategy to beating bosses in most RPGs is 1) find weakness, 2) spam its weakness, and 3) heal off the damage you take. If I can make the game make the braindead choices for me, all the better.

You're forgetting final/ultimate/doesnothaveaweakness bosses. Then you just spam your ultimate whatevers, use all the items you have been saving up, so on and so on.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Automating some of the process doesn't mean manually inputting certain commands made a game more strategic. In the case of FFXII, you had to determine every condition the characters needed to recognize to perform an action.

I found that the Gambit System required you to constantly revise your gambits, not unlike how you would reorganize Materia in FFVII or junction Guardian Forces in FFVIII. It was actually a lot of work and some dungeons in FFXII were very dangerous to boot.

In some respects, you could wire your gambits to emulate certain jobs and that design was in part intended if that's how you wished to play.

Even games such as Persona 3 and 4, along with Dragon Quest VIII featured AI tactics. The AI in the Persona games is actually whip-smart and deciding which character you bring along should be considered part of the strategy. I still prefer a degree of manual control and thankfully Persona 4 grants you that opportunity, but once you've learned all the enemy weaknesses, its actually convenient to set your allies' AI to autopilot for a while after.

If you wanted characters to conserve MP in DQVIII, they'd focus on skills that didn't require MP. If you wanted them to support and that's it, they'd do it.

I don't really see the problem with it. I still have choices to make in these games, its not like those are taken away from me.

If anything, I expect DQ X to pick up with the design it left off on in DQ VIII. DQ VIII was a very awesome game and only expanded on the formula in smaller ways. Dragon Quest is a franchise that proves you don't have to completely overhaul a system to keep a game great, but also that small evolutionary leaps don't hurt either.