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JRPG general discussion
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
The OLED screen isn't just better, it's absolutely stunning. I can't wait for OLED tech in TVs to come down to a reasonable price because LCD is just a terrible technology and looks so much worse than CRT. OLED can match the colours of CRT and doesn't have ****ty black levels.
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No its not. They are practically identical in quality.
Source: Have owned both.
EDIT: Praising the Vita's OLED for its black levels is hilarious; Miura effect is really bad on the Vita. I had to give up playing Silent Hill on it till I got a 2000. OLED on high end phones great; the vita's is well documented to be lacking.
No you are wrong and honestly just look at the image, not going to get into it with you either as it will probably end up going way OT, I have seen both side by side and it is clear as day the difference and every reviewer of the new model also comes to the same conclusion.
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No you are wrong and honestly just look at the image, not going to get into it with you either as it will probably end up going way OT, I have seen both side by side and it is clear as day the difference and every reviewer of the new model also comes to the same conclusion.
An image posted before the release of the actual thing. People went ape♡♡♡♡ over the unit losing the OLED. Once it actually released everybody was cool with it. I put both mine side by side before I traded in the 1000. The difference in that image is by no means reflective. The 2000 doesn't have a superior screen, it's about equal to the OLED, but its a far superior unit as a whole. Thinner, lighter, and with nicer clickier buttons and a start and select button you can actually click which is nice!
I wouldn't worry about posting OT, Vita is THE JRPG console lol.0 -
Join Date:Posts: 50005
Well FF7 with the fan translation is finished. Can't really say I'd recommend the fan translation over the original but I'll get to that later.
So Cloud is back from the lifestream and his personality has totally changed. He's totally laid back now and a little less intense than previously since this is now the real Cloud. I think that did come across in the original translation ('Let's Mosey'). One thing I did notice is that Cloud isn't emo at all throughout the game. He's a cocky little **** at first but that's who Zack was but never emo.
That leads to another thing I'm not sure of. This fan translation makes it very clear that Cloud took on the persona of Zack because of the Jenova cells in his body. That's Jenova's power and it did so to try and fool Tifa and fit in. I never picked up on this in the original but then it was a long time since I played it but it's a well explained, makes sense and fits in with the lore of the universe.
So instead of progressing the story I returned to Nibelheim. Wasn't all that impressed with the reasoning for Nibelheim being rebuilt but it is there. I did the Zack flashback sequence. It's very obvious Cloud was taking on Zacks persona in this version because he acts just like Cloud did at the start of the game. The sequence in the back of the car is very funny and Zack is way more likeable and relatable in this version. Also his death is handled so much better than the crappy overwrought ending to Crisis Core that was just stupid.
Next up was returning to Junon to get the materia from the underwater reactor. I really enjoyed this sequence. The reactions and dialogue from the guards was hilarious. It's probably my favourite sequence in the game after Midgar. Got some crappy RNG on the boss carrier armour who did his strongest attack 3 times in a row right from the start. It's annoying because of how long it takes to get back to the fight. I remember the carrier armour giving me a good bit of trouble when I originally played it. Luckily the second time was much easier. The submarine minigame is pretty pants and looks way worse than I remembered it. At least it isn't tough to beat. One thing I only discovered recently was that if you fail that mission there's a whole sequence where you have to steal the red submarine.
Next up is the space sequence in rocket town. This just plain doesn't make sense why they are stopping Shinra trying to destroy meteor and there's some hair brained excuse about the huge materia 'holding memories that will help save the planet'. It's a good thing that the entire sequence is a lot of fun even if Cid comes across as a total dildo for treating Shera the way he did. I find it very hard to like him.
After that it's returning to the City of the Ancients. Wish there was more here because I love the music. I always found this part hard to understand and the whole premise of Holy and how it's going to save the world sounds like nonsense... and in the fan translation nothing really changes. The explanation is flimsy at best and makes very little sense still. Still it's a nice call back to Aeris in case you forgot about her. Holy kind of ends up doing nothing in the end anyway.
Back to Midgar and Rufus gets nuked by one of the weapons in a big CGI sequence. (Also **** you advent children for bringing dead characters back you piece of thrash!) Lots of fun to be had here and it's clearly a rip off of the episode of Evangelion where they have to take out the Angel with a super powered Sniper Rifle which I loved
I decided to complete all the side quests I could. First up Gelnika... ugh. What a horrible place full of horrible enemies. There's some nasty stuff in there but the rewards are good. Then it was battle square and chocobo racing. Battel Square did my head in with the rotten RNG I was getting. I usually find it so simple. Still it's the one time that the battle system because interesting in the game. It kind of turns the battle system into a kind of rogue like and despite me getting screwed over I wasn't getting that annoyed and was really enjoying my failure.
The same can't be said for Chocobo Breeding. The raising chocobos is fine but it's the racing that gets on my nerves. The race tracks in the game are all sorts of banana's and it's very clear that it was used by the Squaresoft developers to see how much they could get out of the PS1 system. There's Gouraud shading and alpha channel effects everywhere and while I found it impressive at the time I got sick of it quickly. Now it just looks garish and some of the cheats they used with the 2D sprite objects don't look so great when you are running the game in 1080p! At least the rewards are good and let you finally have a bit of fun breaking the battle system.
I did the Vincent side quest as well... and his story is kind of crappy. Sure you get to see Sephiroths real mother and learn about her... but it kind of adds nothing to the plot. Vincent is probably my least favourite character in the game and he kind of reminds me of Amarant in FF9 where is is just kind of there with little to no interesting back story. Really don't get the fan base he has, although his design is good (my god I'm praising Nomura!).
Back to the critical path and it's back to Midgar. This disappointed me so much when I first played it. Midgar was by far the best and most interesting area in the game so I was dying to go back to it and soak up the atmosphere. It just ended up being a dungeon and devoid of any NPCs to interact with... oh well. I was hoping that the fan translation added a bit more to Hojo's dialogue when you face him but it doesn't. He's just a lunatic wanting to give Sephiroth more energy by firing the canon at the crater. I really hoped there would be more about he whole 'force of will' of sephiroth. Felt good to Omnislash him.
On to the final area and it seems a lot more rushed than I remember. It's very small for a final dungeon, although perhaps I could add mercifully small. There's some real dick move enemies here that can end your run if you aren't prepared and it happened to me twice when I got an Ultima in the face.My own fault but it felt a little unfair. There's also the bug with the party members splitting up and finding items that you can duplicate. I found this whole mechanic weird and it doesn't really pay off in any meaningful way. Rushed or not the fact remains that the final area isn't all that bad. I've played some horrible final area dungeons before and it's nice to have a short but sweet one. Also, magic pots rock!
The final bosses posed no threat to me since I had the battle system well and truly broken by this point. I was going to use mimed tetra magic kotr... then I realised it would be Christmas by the time the animation was finished. Mimed 4x cut demolished all three bosses. I wish the second boss was a little bit tougher because I never really used the second team at all and it could have been a very interesting boss fight. Safer Sephiroth was a joke as well although he gave me awful trouble on my first playthrough until I went back and did the chocobo farming!
So that was FF7 with the fan translation and really it's not worth it. The original localistion might be rushed garbage but all the story beats seem to be there. In fact the fan translation kind of makes things a little worse. Since there's no ambiguity with what happens the story is less interesting as a result and seems rather formulaic. There's also some really jarring leaps in logic by the characters at points that make absolutely no sense and make it very obvious they were added as filler. The whole Huge materia quest, while a lot of fun, had some very flimsy justification.
Also there's no resolution to whether it was Sephiroth in control the whole time of Jenova. There's one mention of the 'force of will' of spehiroth in the northern crater by hojo but Hojo is kind of a dope and has gotten things wrong before. However I'd veer more towards the force of will thing because the whole Jenova being the puppet master thing seems a bit to clever for the writing in this game. There's also Sephiroth saying how the Jenova body has reached the end of it's usefulness.
Speaking of Sephiroth he comes across as a much more boring villian in this translation since there's no ambiguity to his aims. He wants to become a god and in doing so will destroy the world and its inhabitants to reach that goal. It's the same goal of nearly every FF villian. The reasoning always comes across as dumb to me and only really worked with Kefka in FF6, he was just so nuts that his reason for doing so was basically for giggles.
As for the game and how it holds up nearly 20 years on, it's still a lot of fun but the game has some major pacing issues. The first disc has a lot of down time and it was a struggle at times to get through it. The dull and slow battle system didn't help matters either. However that all changes once you hit the second disc. While the reasoning behind what you do in the second disc is flimsy at best the actually pace is like a rollercoaster ride and was a for the most part a huge amount of fun, sometimes even excellent like the return to Junon for the huge materia. I was also surprised by the games short length, it's about 20-25 hours without the grindy side quests like chocobo breeding extending the length of the game. While I much prefer RPGs to be around the 20 hours mark (some of my favourites such as Panzer Dragoon Saga and Mother 3 fit into this time frame) FF7 kind of seemed a lot longer than this due possibly to the slower sections of the first disc.
The game's status as the so called best JRPG ever or game ever just isn't right when you look at it objectively. There's games out there like Persona 3, SMT Nocturne, Grandia, Xenoblade etc. that just bring so much more to the genre and are far more consistent than FF7 which is a bit of a mess. I can actually see FF7 turning a lot of people off JRPGs now since it's very hard to get into now that the sheen of the graphics has rubbed off. It's a very interesting game though as a transition point between the 16 and 32 bit generation. It still retains a lot of hangovers from the 16 bit generation while also showing where JRPGs were heading, particularly in the Midgar section. And while the gameplay is probably the least interesting of any FF7, itself a step back form the simple systems of FF6, the tone and setting of the game were radical at the time. Square really knew what they were doing when they poached Kazushige Nojima after his writing work on the excellent Glory of Heracles 3 to try and modernise FF for the 32 bit generation and the bladerunner/steampunk world of Midgar really resonated with expectations people had of PS1 with games like Wipeout.
So it might have its problems but FF7 is still a great game and really should be played by any fan of the JRPG genre even if just to experience how interesting a game it is in many ways. I however would be very hesitant about recommending it to newcomers to the genre for fear of turning them away from it. It's strange to say that considering it was the game that helped me discover my love for RPGs. You kind of have to know what to expect heading into the game and be prepared to put up with some of the games more bull**** moments because it's worth seeing them through for the good stuff.
Right, bed time.
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
EDIT: Praising the Vita's OLED for its black levels is hilarious; Miura effect is really bad on the Vita.
Ah, it has a name, the Mura effect! I have noticed that on my Vita as well but I only ever see it when the screen is totally black and never during gameplay. Then again I have't played anything too dark on it, it's mostly very colourful stuff like the atelier games and Ys. Still I'd take the Mura effect over crappy black levels any day, at least the OLED gives much better colours and isn't washed out like a LCD.
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
Sephiroth_dude wrote: »I wonder retro would you play a fan translation of legend of dragoon :P?
How dare you!
I definitely wouldn't. FF7 has problems but it's still a good game and it's interesting enough that going through with an accurate fan translation was worth it in my mind. Legend of Dragoon is just out and out bad and the story is so basic and generic there's not really a need for a translation. Anyway the hilarious original localisation is the best thing about it. 'Master, I feel your fist inside me'
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Perhaps it does, I just find the backlight ends up washing the colours out. OLED tech still has a long way to go so can only get better. I've just always hated the move from CRT to LCD, sure it's more convenient but it just looks awful in comparison. Even if OLED's don't have as natural colour as LCD's I'd still take it over the washing out effect of LCD and the annoying black level issues which annoy me even on the most high end LCD models.
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
No. It's an electron beam hitting a phosphour so each element is lit independently. It's why the black levels are perfect, there's no backlight to interfer and they are only lit as much as they are needed to produce that level of black. In a way it's a bit like a Plasma screen.
I know why CRT was replaced, you need a bit deep piece of equipment to get a good picture with little curvature artifacts but it makes CRT bigger, heavier, more power hungry and more expensive than flat screens even if the picture is much better (also response times are instantaneous, there's always some lag in a LCD and it's very noticable if you take fighting games seriously). I'm very jealous of my friend in the US that has a 1080p HD CRT, there's only a few ever made.
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
@Ramza
On to the Jenova Cells and how they affect Cloud, it's only something I picked up on playing the new translation. Sephiroth really tries to nail home that Cloud is a nobody, just an artificially created Sephiroth clone much more in the fan translation. They really hammer this home and it gives greater impact to when you find out the truth. Also, and I hope I'm remembering this correctly, when you see the flashback to when Tifa meets cloud at the train station it's very much implied that Cloud took on the persona of Zack due to the Jenova cell's ability to create and distort memories. Sure there's probably others factors like the ones you mentioned but this does seem heavily implied in this fan translation. That's counter to the Jenova being the puppet master theory which there are absolutely no allusions to in the fan translation, and the lack of evidence there really strongly suggests it's not true.
I agree with you as well on how easy the game is although I did have some embarassing game over moments. However I think the ease of the game worked in its favour in a way. Sure the game can be broken wide open if you know what you are doing. The materia system is also not very deep at all and simple. However while this makes it kind of dull for RPG fans for newbies to the genre (which was near everyone playing the game on PS1) it meant the game was very accessible because even if you half understood the battle system (I didn't know you could equip accessories until my second playthrough!) you still could breeze through the game. The demon wall and carrier armour were stumbling blocks for players but it just meant that the player was now more experienced with the battle system and would have to experiment a bit and thus learn the system a bit more.
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Join Date:Posts: 50005
I know this.
According to other people.
Eh, why the snarky remark. Just giving some advice that maybe going straight to Suikoden 2 might be a better choice based on what I heard a few people saying. It's been a long time since I played the Suikoden games so I'd well believe S1 hasn't aged the best since even back then when I was gobbling up any RPG I got my hands on it felt a bit 'twee'.
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