@tsukune@Fabricant451
So let me get a bit more in depth,
Kingdom Hearts will never be more than an attractive mess. Its an average platformer, an ABYSMAL RPG and its plot is convoluted and stupid. There is a REASON that disney cartoons are made for CHILDREN, they don't fit in with halfway intelligent plots. And the combat is SHIT really really SHIT. I DARE anyone to defend the combat of mash the X button and occasionally QTE. Like I said this is an FF thread, but if KH was allowed I'd put it below 13 and 5 in an instant.
I recently played through the entire KH series thanks to the PS3 collections. In so doing I played KH 2 on the new 'critical' difficulty which is the 'so hard that the game gives you 50 ability points from the start to compensate' and I can safely say that the game has more depth in the combat than you're giving it credit for. Once enemies other than the basic footsoldier level guys enter the picture, mashing attack will just get you killed. I'm defending the combat in KH 2 at least. It's not on the level of, say, a Platinum game but it's way more involved than, say, a Dynasty Warriors.
Its plot IS convoluted but that has nothing to do with the Disney side of things and everything to do with Tetsuya Nomura sitting down one day and thinking the best way to write a story is to just make shit up and forcefuck its way into the timeline. The first game had a charming little story because it was the most Disney-esque. It was about a kid who just wanted to explore and have fun and then wound up saving the princess in the end like Disney do. But then Nomura decided that the story needed way more ridiculous lore and time travel and bullshit. Birth By Sleep introduces the most competent character in the entire series and then puts her on a bus because reasons.
Though the plot is convoluted it's actually fairly simple when you strip away the terrible presentation of it. 'Leonard Nimoy is evil and wants to make a super Keyblade by starting a war again and also is making thirteen bodies for himself so he can fight the seven whatevers to make the super Keyblade to get Kingdom Hearts'. There. That's the entire series condensed into the basics.
Also Disney movies are fine, don't be hating on them.
13 is wack, anyone who thinks boring whiny characters like Snow and Hope are interesting need their heads examined. ANY character can be given something that's bothering them, that's not enough. There needs to be some ample character development, and in the case of a modern title GOOD VOICE ACTING. 13 has neither. Lightning is a boring stoic piece of furniture. Vanillie is a budget Rikku (and rikku is a budget Yuffie) Fang and Sazh are OKAY but they don't add anything to the story they just don't particularly offend me. They are not 'Good Characters' by any stretch.
The thing is that they are good characters and if you think Hope is just 'whiny' there's the reason why you think they aren't. Hope is a developed character. He has an entire arc that affects not just him but Lightning and Snow as well. Lightning is 'stoic' but she has an arc to and by the climac of her own story she's anything but stoic. Blame Ali Hillis for a flat performance but don't say she doesn't grow as a character. She fucking smiles at the end of the game. Vanille is nothing like Rikku unless you think all Rikku is is 'the plucky cute one'. Sazh and Fang are actually the least developed. Which is probably why people say they're better than they are because they have less time on their own. Sazh doesn't add to the main story, you're right. But Fang absolutely does, seeing as how she's sort of one of the catalysts for the entire thing.
The characters were the best thing the game had, with the music being high up there as well. Not liking them is fine. But to call them bad characters is a whole different story. The cast had more development than ninety five percent of the entire Final Fantasy series playable cast because unlike Final Fantasy 6, FF13 actually was an ensemble affair.
Combat is linear as shit, and its not just that, its the fact that its linear combat in a linear game with no towns and no sidequests, and the main plot is paper thin and hard to stay interested in. Battle animations and Character designs are actually really good, but its basically having well dressed turd when the game is this shallow. Also 13 and 10's battle system cant be compared. Just look at the sphere grid and the amount of options you have to make an interesting and vaired build. The paradigm system is 12's battleboard for kids. Building a party in 13 is like playing a visual novel. ITS PRE-DETERMINED.
The lack of towns is such a bullshit reason for disliking FF13. For one thing the entire game is characters on the run from the government and the only town they visit they have to sneak in and still wind up getting caught. The entire world has an APB on them. Traipsing around Palumpolum or Bodhum has to be real low on the list. The sidequest chains are the entirety of the back third of the game, but whether you enjoy it comes down to the individual.
I take issue with you calling the plot paper thin as well. The Final Fantasy games have never had great plots. Not even the well regarded ones. But even so, 13's plot isn't thin, it's just told differently than the standard. It doesn't start out as a world saving plot but instead five personal stories that come together at the climax and then becomes a world saving plot. It has the standard cliches of 'the gods are evil and so is religion isn't this a fresh thought' and the really silly 'we believe in friendship that'll work' thing that is the bane of any JRPG but nothing about it is thin. If anything it's too dense with how it sets up its world from the jump and then walks it back.
It's a plot that works better on the smaller scale it started with rather than the global one it ended with because the better conflict wasn't between the characters and Barthandalus but between the characters and each other and themselves.
Final Fantasy 10 is a thin plot.
And sure, let's talk about the sphere grid and how making a varied build is actually not the case at all. Unless you play the international version with its expert sphere grid, for almost the entire game of FFX you're not making any sort of varied build but putting your characters down a preset path. The combat in 10 is boring and never changes it up. Even by the later dungeons the encounters still boil down to 'Tidus attacks the dogs, Auron attacks the shell thing, Wakka hits the flying ones, Lulu plays color games, swap in Yuna when healing'. You could theoretically take Yuna, say, down Auron's path but there's literally no reason to do so in the standard grid because the game is so simplistic anyway. The sphere grid is just following a preset path.
The characters in 13 may all have the same options for their paradigm but they don't all have the same abilities down those paths. Not every synergist is going to get haste and not every saboteur is getting the same debuffs. Any three characters can eventually fill any role, but how effective they are varies between them. It's following a path like the sphere grid is but the destinations aren't the same.
I dare anyone to defend KH or 13 defending these points that ive said, and not just blindly ignoring the argument and use words like 'underrated' or 'overlooked'.
'k.
Final Fantasy 5 is crap, ONE song cant save an RPG.
I dunno, Clash on the Big Bridge is pretty fantastic. It's so nice they used it thrice. And the final boss music is solid. Really the whole soundtrack is good. I like Final Fantasy 5. It's the best implementation of the job system in the series.
Final Fantasy 8 is kinda charming, but the gameplay suffers its pretty average, I do love the design though.
I can forgive the gameplay because it has triple triad and that's the best minigame in the franchise.
<Snipped quote by Intrepid>
If you want to spend your money wisely play:
Any Tales Game
They are better than final fantasy, no one here will admit it but its true, and I'm an FF fanboy.
Oh my god no. No. This is demonstrably false on so many levels. Have you PLAYED the Tales games and noticed how they're
all literal garbage fires?
