All posts by Swordzmanp236

UPDATE: It's happening again.

Dragon Quest Tact fell on its face in much the same way as DFFOO. It, too, shuts down the 29th of February. This was a TRPG with hundreds of those oh-so-cute DQ monsters as drawable game pieces. It was fine early on, but for me it went stale after a few months. And again, we're getting the same hodgepodge of surprise, sadness, whatever, and BURN THEM ALL IN HELL!! Something definitely needs to change across the Pacific. What it is, I don't know, but the company seems like it's shooting itself in the foot every damn time one of these comes up. I'd like to see a staff member give their take on it.

Seems like it's ending too soon, and yet with the same boilerplate excuse that so many recent games have. They say it's QoS, but it's actually fatigue of a sort. The story has reached its end because the devs have run out of ideas and most likely need to move on. Players won't spend money because the game itself has gotten stale and repetitive, which in turn leads to a drop in the revenue stream (and let's be honest: if the bulk of your revenue comes from one-time purchases that those who want them have already spent their money to get them, you won't last long past a particular point). None of these games have ever disclosed, "okay, folks, it's taking us this much money to run per month, so we kinda need your help to reach a goal of x this month to keep going. If you can do this, we will (add a popular character, for instance)..." I'd like to see more disclosure from games like OO without the devs using a tone of desperation or straight-up greed. We're ultimately investors, after all, and should be appraised of the state of the game every so often.

With that in mind, I'm sad to see it end so abruptly and with a lot left on the table. But then I must ask: what's it gonna take for Square Enix not to make the same mistakes over and over and over again?!

You most certainly have the option of sharing your experiences in your respective AppStore's review process, or you can bug it with Square Enix support as linked in-game. No doubt they will continue to upgrade the PR versions as entirely new operating systems come to the fore. It may take a while in some cases, but they will do it. It's the old versions from 2014 and earlier that will not be upgraded. There is a very high chance those might not work as device makers continue to evolve.

As a case in point, let me submit Adventures of Mana. This final fantasy adventure remake was stuck at version 1.0.7 for quite some time before upgrading in 2020, or was it 2019, to version 1.0.8. It seemed to work OK for a while, but newer devices and operating systems were having some issues. Fortunately, enough folks wrote about what issues they were having for the company to fix them all in the latest version that was posted mid year this year.

@CorujinhaGamer26 Give it a smidge more time. You're going to reap a lot in rewards. Perhaps enough to snag some great gear this cycle.

I played 5 out of the 7 years. The most unusual thing about it was the community. They had it going well for about 2-3 years, and then it vanished. They had raids, but couldn't manage. Then, they just got stuck on repeat. I'm shocked it lasted as long here as it did.

If you're up to the task...

One of the main reasons there really isn't much info on FFRK these days is that a lot of the traditional blogs/trackers that served Global just...stopped, came to a screeching halt after 2017. And I have to imagine that year upon year of the same content with little variation in strategy accelerated straight fatigue. The end result? A huge dropoff in revenue from "whales" to the point that GL is getting stomped by JP. They'd rather cut losses here than stick it out or improve the experience.

That said, there are new and ongoing games that are serving up fresh content and maybe don't get as much exposure as they should. Many are also walking a tightrope between trying to be good to "free-to-play" players and being worth the trouble for those big "whale" spenders. WWYD?

Except for one problem. SoM 2018 was awful. Cringeworthy disgusting stuff because SE contracted out to the worst "partner" who then left it with a bunch of bugs still not fixed. If they're going to redo FFIX, they have to have folks on board who give a durn about it. Like, after SoM bombed, they probably weren't looking for ToM to save the franchise, but it did! They found a porter that took care of business, and that's the difference.

If it's anything like any of the other gacha games, where you're just kinda throwing wads of cash to try to get good stuff out of it, it probably won't work as well. But if it has a good story behind it as well as good gameplay, then you're going to see a lot of good mentions about it. There's a certain segment that wants games like this to be very friendly to free players. Not many are. The key thing, I think, is answering this question: what kind of value will the loot the players get hold? Next would be: how well does it tie in with the main story?

Not with an inept commander-in-chief, they aren't. But once you put Kefka from VI in place of Mr. Trump, you even the odds.

There have actually been a number of games like that. IV got a total revamp In '06, VII got a repackage twice before the big remake. IX also got repackaged, X and XII as well. Those last two were expanded from their international versions (which, ironically, were only released in Japan) . The last one to really get a makeover was VIII, which was really just a cleanup. You can't really go wrong with any of the things that I've mentioned here. So, once again, good luck.

That's no clearer than the question itself. Nor is the real story.

The original Final Fantasy came out in 1987, but didn't arrive in the west until 1990. A prototype of the original second game existed, but never made it out of Japan because Nintendo knew best and thought it was too hard for puny American brains. That was skipped in what would've been 1991, though II was released in Japan at the tail end of '88. And then, they start working on the original III and finish that by 1990. Once again, it wasn't released in the west because Nintendo knew what was best; that one was too similar to the first game.

That makes what happened next kind of weird. Because the Super Nintendo was nearing completion, work on NES games had to stop. Squaresoft was already working on Final Fantasy IV for the new console. FF IV started shipping in 1991; but when it arrived west, it got re-numbered as II because it was the second game to release in the west.

V was skipped for a couple of different reasons, one being a translation controversy. More like it wasn't in the budget at the time. And again, it was thought to be exceedingly complex for feeble American minds.

Thus, VI becomes III when it arrives stateside; by that time, it was 1994, smack in the middle of a golden age of role playing games.

When Square broke from Nintendo, they no longer had to deal with their arcane and draconian rules. It was only then that VII remained VII. From then on, the series has maintained consistent numbering. II did eventually get released as part of a compilation in 1999. So did III, but it had to be remade from the ground up after 16 years.

That's the short version as I understand it. Good luck.

Really tough call here. Now, if I had to get rid of one from each era, then it'd be II (clunky as hell all around with a flat story), IV (impossible pick, but the wonky American release does this one in), VIII (just plain bad execution), X (too melodramatic), the entire XIII saga (a mess), and XV (too complicated).

Never fought it myself @ProfessorTofty , but I seem to recall walkthroughs noting that it took so long simply because there are lots of phase changes in play and the player basically has to plan from one to the next. Nasty attacks, too, IIRC.

An oldie but a goodie, or so I'm told. The film is Airplane!, headlined by the late Leslie Nielsen. Man was notorious for his deadpan delivery.

"Surely, you can't be serious!"

"Well, I am serious, and don't call me Shirley!"

Ruby Weapon for the poll, but I've got to put in for Ozma (IX) for the purposes of the discussion. What makes this Marble of Doom so difficult in the classic series is that its attacks are totally up to the RNGods. If you even survive rocks and space junk falling on the party, you'll still have to deal with it puking debuffs all over the place; and its insane speed will wax an underleveled party before you can react to revive from any one-shot kill.

@OreosDippedInMilk easy on the spoilers, buddy. We don't want to ruin the experience for someone who might be a newbie.

Both are very good choices given to you. Don't let the sheer scale of either intimidate you.

VII is considered by many to be a GOAT, especially within the series. The graphics are going to be clearly dated versus the likes of what you played, but the story plays out like a good film and has aged like a fine wine. I may be a bit biased here, but it may yet be because this was one of the first games I ever played on the PlayStation platform. Once you dig in, you will not regret it.

XV, on the other hand, plays more like one of your western RPG's than an eastern one. You should immediately be familiar with some of its mechanics. It's designed to appeal to a broader base of fans. A fully open world with lots of places to go and lots of things to see. If you find yourself really into that kind of thing, go for it.

Now, if you really wanna get into it, you go old-school with a IV or a VI. V if you're really brave.

If I remember right, both are knights in the service of the dominion of Grandshelt, with Lasswell taking Rain under his wing as the two grew up. Both trained under, and to an extent revere, Rain’s father Raegan (sic).