Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[Bardiche]

Oh, no, I was talking about the YouTube comments. Video games is srs bsns to rage over on the internet and discuss the morality of a 14-year-old telling a girl it makes him happy when she smiles when the girl has UNDERLYING FEELINGS OF LOVE, except this is a Japanese game so all males are super dense.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I feel like that JRPGs should probably be written by robots, because love does not compute to them, and thus there would be no hair-pullingly awful love stories.

[SnowFire]

CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin.  Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka.  The FF13 party is stuck enacting the Bad Guy's plan, and the character who has the most knowledge about what the hell is going on, as well as an avowed new mission to save Cocoon, is the one most in place to stop this - Vanille.  Instead, the party drifts along.  Again, if the writers were really tied to that plot sequence, feel free to have Vanille's efforts to derail fate fail!  But I'd like to have seen her try more.  And I like the *idea* of Vanille - the perky girl stuck in a bad situation who secretly knows the whole plot from the beginning, but tries to manipulate everyone to not re-enact the bad ending and to run off and "neglect" their duties to blow stuff up.  She just needed to have taken the lead in defying the villain's plan rather than enacting it in the last quarter of the game.

Turtles would still have slaughtered me utterly.  Except for maaaaaaybe Vanille Death hype if I somehow survived the opening attacks.  I hunted some Behemoth Kings mostly that had some support - I think they were new Mahabara, yeah.  Even still, that formation gave 7,000 CP or so?  The minibosses at the end of the final dungeon gave 20,000 CP +.

Haven't heard the alternate Ultimania theory about the source of the brands, but uh.  Nothing in the game about that, so will have to chalk that up as a possible weirdness.  Just knowing "Bob did it" doesn't actually help - I want to know WHY Bob did it, and what the... okay, microtext: I want to know what their foci were.  Or have valid guesses.  If it was Anima who gave all 6 of them their brands, then how come only the Cocoon 4 failed their old Foci and became Cieth?  Were they different foci after all?

Re Fang/Vanille giving themselves up for the people of Cocoon, I buy that.  The problem is that they just got done putting the people of Cocoon in such dire straits in the first place by killing Orphan.  And the idea of Ragnarok even being capable of such a feat is nowhere supported earlier.  This is closer to if Aeris had decided to summon Meteor herself to wipe out Shinra, but also tried to evacuate the people in the slums to minimize collateral damage.  Does the game want to make the case that the Cocoon fal'Cie were so evil as needing to be destroyed even at the cost of half the world's population?  Apparently so, but we never hear the party talk about it in those terms.

Interesting comments on the final boss.  I originally went in with a Light / Snow / Sazh team based purely on character worth, but after dying horribly to Form 2's "80% your max HP damage!" after Stagger attacks, switched to Light / Snow / Hope for better healing / debuffing.  Vanille does sound pretty handy, and of course Fang is kind of broken, but meh at using them.  (I did use both of them on Chapter 11 at least, figured that they deserved to be in the party the whole time for Pulse.)

[Captain K.]

I feel like that JRPGs should probably be written by robots, because love does not compute to them, and thus there would be no hair-pullingly awful love stories.

Yeah, but you'd still have this:

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.

[Meeplelard]

CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin.  Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka.

You just openned a huge can of worms and now you're going to eat a Meeple Rant!

You may want to check again, cause all Celes does is whip Setzer into shape.  Sabin was very much looking for his friends (GAME OPENLY STATES THIS), and its implied Edgar was on his way to doing so as well before he got side tracked by a more immediate, localized crisis (Kefka was more looming threat that had to be taken care of eventually; Figaro was in an immediate crisis which could NOT be held off, there's really no question which takes priority in the situation).  Edgar even brings up Kefka's name without Celes so much as even implying her actions.  Ditto Sabin being the one to bring up Kefka's name when Celes is there; Celes just says "I lost hope, but now I know everyone is alive!"

Gau was also stated to be "Training to fight Kefka."  It really was just an excuse to shove him back on the Veldt, but the nonetheless, there's a reason he's so eager to join.

Furthermore, Celes didn't even set out to fight Kefka; she set out to find her friends, most in particular Locke, acuse she thought she was alone.  She didn't even know Kefka was behind anything on the Solitary Island, just that the world was in a shit state, but maybe some of her friends are out there (Kefka's name is not brought up until Albrook in the WoR.  Cid doesn't mention Kefka at all, and Celes has no reason to realize Kefka's being a god like figure.  Half of Albrook was basically saying "This is what's going in in the world!")

To say Celes is the driving force..is an exaggeration.  She just starts the WoR, and nothing more; she's a stop gap PoV character cause someone needed to start it.  She's not the ones telling everyone "WE MUST FIGHT KEFKA!" seeing as I illustrated several characters had that in mind anyway and some were even working directly on that (Sabin got hit by an IMMEDIATE crisis just as an excuse to prevent him from being a "Free Recruit."  Gau was just an excuse to put him back on the Veldt); it really is not fair to say "Celes gets all the credit!"  seeing as she just started it.  FF6 treats it as a group effort, and not Celes' doing.

I could go into detail, but Celes is not the main of the WoR at all, nor is she a driving force.  She just starts it.  It doesn't get obscured in the later parts, its downright denied; Celes only has two more scenes before the Tower, and that's Gau's Father sequence (which several characters get, and is 100% humor toned), and with Locke, where she says 2 lines consistnig of 3 words total!   Worth noting that despite Celes being a forced character in this scene, Locke comes to "lets defeat Kefka!" without Celes so much as saying anything anything but his name.


So Celes is just a convenient starting point; she doesn't get the credit, nor focus, and thus can't really be considered the driving force  Game doesn't say "She's running around recruiting characters!"  More like she was just the first, and everyone is working together as they join.  She's not whipping anyone into shape...Setzer aside.

[SnowFire]

Meeple: Fine.  Replace "Defeat Kefka" with "Find everyone, bring them back together again, and make the world a better place, which will probably involve killing Kefka."  Yes, Edgar and Sabin were already willing, but Celes is the one who actually finds them.  You're correct that I was thinking of the Setzer case, but it's easy to assume that similar conversations with Cyan / Terra / etc. to get them back on their feet are similarly driven by Celes.  Except that they can't be in-game because you might have left Celes on the airship, so you have generic party dialogue instead.

FF6 is a game in the SNES-era without as much dialogue as I'd have liked in the WoR probably due to budget / cartridge storage concerns.  Celes is the character you start controlling, and the *party as a whole* runs around trying to make the world better.  Thus I assume that Celes is doing this, in the same way that you can assign Cecil credit/blame for some of the party-as-a-whole's actions in FF4.  To be sure, I'd probably have expected a bit more on a later-gen system like customized dialogue based on your party which would make it easier to tell...  but whatever.

[OblivionKnight]

CT: My reference was mostly in that, while it get somewhat obscured in the later recruits due to FF6 allowing you to pick your party any way you want, Celes is the one who drives the plot in the World of Ruin.  Everybody else has their own problems, and Celes runs around whipping them into taking another shot at Kefka.

I think Nintendo Power actually labeled the World of Ruin like that, hyping Celes being the driving force of the 2nd half of the game (and Terra for the first half).

[Meeplelard]

Except that...she's not?  Look at the Falcon scene; its Setzer who says "we have to find our friends" and Edgar who goes "right, first things first!"  Celes just goes "Hey, a bird! Lets follow it!"  

To say its Celes whose driving these conversations...I can't say I agree.  If you look at many of these scenes, characters like Cyan and Relm just join cause "hey, you're here!  I'll tag along with you guys!"

And again, Sabin was not talked into it by Celes; he had the idea FIRST.  We start with Celes, but Sabin's been traveling around looking for the others.  Its kind of a noteworthy factor cause it proves Celes wasn't the only one with that idea, and the only reason Celes has all the dialog with Edgar is cause "She's forced, Sabin is not; cut back on space."  (do you really think Celes should have more dialog with Edgar than Edgar's own brother, otherwise?)

There isn't much in the way of Generic Dialog.   In fact, if you want a "canon" way of looking at things, Celes recruiting everyone doesn't realyl fit, but rather, something more like this does:

Cyan: More got really into his charade; seeing the team just was a "Yeah, probably a good moment to stop this nonsense"; notice how the team doesn't say anything other than his name to him, and "These Flowers are beautiful."  Granted, if we add implied dialog, the only thing that needs to be said here is "Cyan, we're fighting Kefka, wanna help us out?"  He'd be all for that without any sort of convincing, for a number of reasons.  I'd argue Sabin is a better character to do that here than Celes, cause Sabin has at least some connection to Cyan.
Gau: If they made a scene involving recruiting him, Cyan and Sabin would be the ones to do the talking, not Celes; they're the ones who have some remote connection to him.  Celes wold be...kind of random.
Terra: Celes in the first scene, sure, but she fails miserably there.  The second scene, Terra came to on her own, and that's kind of the point.  The fact that she gets to the top of the Tower without even going to Mobliz once shows that Celes had nothing to do with Terra's own personal resolve.
Shadow: Whoever you think canonly fits beating him in the Colosseum; the only character Shadow has a connection with doesn't really fit here, oddly, but so it goes.  To say "ITS CELES!" without any back up though other than "SHE'S RECRUITING PEOPLE!" doesn't really fly here.
Relm: No one in particular, though Celes barely knows Relm so I'm not sure why she'd be the one here? (Terra, Locke, maybe even Shadow?  Sure, they'd fit, but Shadow aside, they're stretches, and in Shadow's case, it'd be a bit OUt of Character other than him maybe talking about Interceptor.)
Strago: Blatantly shown that its Relm who smacks sense into him
Mog: Plotless, doesn't really matter; if not recruited in the WoB, he actually just kind of forces his way into the team
Umaro: Recruited by mog
Gogo: Less plot than Mog. LESS. PLOT. THAN. MOG.


Locke's about the only one I'd concede was Celes, for obvious reasons; to say "Celes is driving the conversation!" just cause she started it...I dunno.  Seeing as its Edgar whose shouting "Lets attack Kefka's Tower!" in the initial assault scene, and not Celes, I'm really questioning the validity of "CELES IS DRIVING THE CONVERSATION!"  The only person she openly recruited was Setzer, and the only person I'd give her credit of optional ones is Locke (I'd credit her for talking to Terra, but she failed miserably in the recruitment there.)

I think Nintendo Power actually labeled the World of Ruin like that, hyping Celes being the driving force of the 2nd half of the game (and Terra for the first half).

And I'm pretty sure it doesn't, actually.  I know the players Guide doesn't either (just checked it!); what it says there is just intro to the Solitary Island going "Celes needs to find some direction in a world lost!", and it just talked about how "Cid and her are the only survivors!"  I remember reading the NP stuff a lot and it just says "Celes awakens a year later, blah blah blah."
Neither hypes the WoR as Celes' story, but just her as a starting character, which is really all she is, and all the game treats her as.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

I never took that scene as Celes having nothing to say but Locke's name and more him already knowing what she was going to say and being on board. Cause he's never the kind of character who needed prodding to help others, and all.

[Niu]

Snow fire rant

I don't know this will make everything sounds better or worse to you.....

Here are some spoiler explanation:

The whole soldier turned into Cieth is just Bart invisibly turns them into l'Cie and speed up the timer to the max.
The whole final battle portion of the plot to the ending can be summed up as: "fal'Cie=Etro has divinely intervened"
She miraculously turn the PCs back to normal and miraculously crystallize the Ragnorock so the Cocoon can be held in place.

As for the gods, if you do more Pulse mission and unlock more fragments, you can see what is going on with them. But then, even those told you less than a quarter of the truth and no reason were given on why fal'Cie=Pulse and fal'Cie=Linse vanished from the world.
Though, fal'Cie=Barthandelus was misguided to believe he is looking for the missing fal'Cie=Linse (but he kinda acknowledge that possibility too). What he is really doing is to open the gate to the Invisible World so that Bunibelze can to the another side to kill Muin. Just that no one know Muin is already dead but fal'Cie=Etro, who witnessed Muin's death. And during the final battle, the gate to the Invisible World was opened slightly, thus giving fal'Cie=Etro, who is in the Invisible World, a chance to intervene.

[Nephrite]

argumentum ad ignorantiam all up in this bitch

[OblivionKnight]

Just the type of response I'd expect from a DIRTY POLITICIAN

[SnowFire]

Niu: Interesting.  Thanks for posting, but...  does the extra information ever say what their focuses were?  And how Light/Sazh/Snow/Hope "failed" them?  I can buy "Etro" turning them back, but if the goal really was to blow up Cocoon, they were about to succeed it, not fail it, when Fang started transforming...  It'd have been nice if they'd explained that in game, and given motives to the various names...

Meeple: Well, we've both played the game, so there's no disagreement of fact here, just of interpretation.  You're looking at the trees.  And you're right that there's no particular reason to think that Celes somehow "took the lead" in saying "Let's go bet a Striker in the Colleseum and browbeat Shadow into joining us!," or many other actions the party takes individually.  I'm looking at the forest.  Sure, Sabin and co. are willing to go fight Kefka again, but Celes is the one who *actually finds them* and joins up.  I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR.  Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer?  No.  But I see the general "WoR quest" as Celes's thing since she's the one who starts it with "let's go find my friends (and save what we can of the world)".  I have already freely admitted that this is to some extent only implied and thus arguable due to SNES limitations.

[Niu]

Niu: Interesting.  Thanks for posting, but...  does the extra information ever say what their focuses were?  And how Light/Sazh/Snow/Hope "failed" them?  I can buy "Etro" turning them back, but if the goal really was to blow up Cocoon, they were about to succeed it, not fail it, when Fang started transforming...  It'd have been nice if they'd explained that in game, and given motives to the various names...

We never find out on what their focus is. And they turn into Cieth in the end simply because their timer is out of the time.
But what we do know is fal'Cie=Anima, who made the PCs into L'Cie, is really really pissed at Cocoon. All of the fal'Cie in Pulse actually never gave a damn on what Cocoon is doing but Anima, who got offended by Bart when Bart was salvaging some natural resources from Pulse.
Also, the previous war ended the same way like this time. fal'Cie=Etro intervened by reverting Fang into human, froze her Brand, and turn both Fang and Vanille into Crystal, then puts fal'Cie=Anima into suspend animation.

[NotMiki]

It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.

They do all the time.  Off-camera.  And they never bring it up 'cause it ain't no thang.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

It would actually be an interesting swerve to see a game have two characters just hump for funsies.

They do all the time.  Off-camera.  And they never bring it up 'cause it ain't no thang.

Also they slip out and fight crime as a superhero team.

[metroid composite]

Desktop Dungeons.

So...I had been operating under the assumption that there were six deities, and then wondered why it felt like I kept going five or six attempts in a row without seeing the deity critical to my strategy (three deities spawn per map).  Turns out, I never bothered to count: there are nine deities total, making the chance of Binlor on any given run 33%, not 50%.

Speaking of which, I decided to check just for sanity--I had been thinking there were 10 glyphs.  Nope: turns out there's 13.  So...if looking for one particular glyph with a character that comes with an extra pre-set glyph, the chances are not 50% as I previously thought (6 glyphs on the map, 2 fixed, so 4/8) but rather 36% (4/11).  Damn.

Up to Gauntlet level 66.  But I feel it's going to be time to quit soon (or get a better strategy).  It's getting to the point where regen fighting gets me 600 damage under decent but unspectacular circumstances with a lot of regen tiles remaining, burst fighting with Elf gets me another 400, and that's still well short of killing most bosses; even low-HP bosses like Nine-Toes have 1000 HP now.  On the plus side, successful fights are once again often in the range of being close calls where lots of little decisions matter.  Except Gharbad vs CYDSTEPP.

I did try human once (the race where the theory goes that regen fighting gets more damage per tile).  Of course, the glyph that makes human worthwhile didn't spawn, and...I found myself rather not impressed by the race.  Now that I know I can expect the CYDSTEPP glyph 36% of the time I'm liking it even less as an option (and really less than 36%, because a regen buffer like poison or BLUDTOPOWA are still required, and leave one less glyph slot available, so...more like 3/11 which means 27%).

Mmm, yeah, I definitely feel I'm leaving the realm of sane reset numbers with percentages like that.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR.  Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer?  No.

Well, actually, there *are* some unique lines of dialog in the script that only play when Celes is in the party. Unfortunately, the extent of the difference between the line when Celes says and when a generic party member says it is that when Celes says it, it has her name in front of it, while there's no name-tag at all on the generic line. At least this is the case for Sabin and Edgar's recruitment (which is amusing since there's no way not to have Celes in the party at those times).

[Anthony Edward Stark]

You can recruit Sabin without Celes in your group. Not Edgar, though.

[Grefter]

So reading FF13 spoilers, I find out that FF13's plot is stupid and makes no sense without painful supplemental reading that doesn't explain shit.

So reading FF13 spoilers shows exactly the things I had been saying about it.  Cool.

[Meeplelard]

I personally assume Celes's mark on everything the party does in the WoR.  Is there customized recruiting dialogue to support this for characters after Setzer?  No.

Well, actually, there *are* some unique lines of dialog in the script that only play when Celes is in the party. Unfortunately, the extent of the difference between the line when Celes says and when a generic party member says it is that when Celes says it, it has her name in front of it, while there's no name-tag at all on the generic line. At least this is the case for Sabin and Edgar's recruitment (which is amusing since there's no way not to have Celes in the party at those times).

Celes also gets a unique line of dialog if she's in your party when you recruit Locke (its an actual added line to the scene, not a "Generic vs. Non-Generic" line.)

Fact is, FF6 shows it could have had moments where it has Celes get specified dialog, but didn't do it.  I don't think its fair going "The WoR is Celes' journey!"; she got the ball rolling, nothing more.  Again, look at the Falcon dialog.  Everyone is saying "We have to do this!"  Its not Celes driving everything, its a clear group consesus.

You say "But Celes found Sabin, SHE ACTUALLY FOUND HIM!"  Umm...that's actually kind of a flawed argument cause when two people find one another, they find each other, especially if they were both looking for one another.  Celes just happened to be the one lucky enough to NOT get stuck holding up a building.  How is she "Finding Sabin" when he was looking for her too?

Honestly, your entire argument hinges upon something isn't even necessarily true.  FF6 was hit by SNES limitations, but this isn't one of those cases; Celes having unique dialog for every character recruit would just not fit in some cases (Cyan AND Relm both come to mind), and to say "ITS HER QUEST!" just doesn't fly; the WoR is an ensemble by nature and its always been treated as such, and its the sole reason some people proclaim FF6 "Has no main character."  If Celes were indeed its focal character, why does she fade away practically completely never to regain that spotlight after you get the Falcon?  And why is the Falcon scene having Setzer and Edgar talking about finding friends if this is Celes' quest?  If this was "her mark!" I don't think the game would have made her fade away into obscurity, and even with generic dialog, you'd think they'd have had her name brought up like "Celes is recruiting everyone!" or some such.  FF6 never suggests such a thing; to give Celes all this credit for just starting the WoR (cause someone had too) is not realistically fair.  She's not a focal, she's not a driving force; she's just a starting point.

[Shale]

Dissidia Duodecim: Downloaded and started. In the third chapter now. Game's reasonably entertaining, but I wish they hadn't made HP attacks such a damn crapshoot. Acting-wise, Kefka is the highlight thus far, even if he is just ripping off Mark Hamill.

[Meeplelard]

Dissidia Duodecim: Downloaded and started. In the third chapter now. Game's reasonably entertaining, but I wish they hadn't made HP attacks such a damn crapshoot. Acting-wise, Kefka is the highlight thus far, even if he is just ripping off Mark Hamill.

HP Attacks are a mixed bag.   Generally speaking, knowing when and how to use them is the way to go, though there are still some issues with the AI regardless cause they are cheating bastards.

Some things that alleviate the problems are that some characters get Brave -> HP Chains (basically, master a Brave attack, get an HP Link up that can be used directly with the HP Attack.  When you time the HP Attack varies on each move; some you finish the entire combo then press Square, others you press it before the final hit, etc), some characters use gimmicks to get their HP Attacks to hit (Ex-death and his counters, for example) A few others can actually do some genuine Brave -> HP combos with custom link ups, like Squall can do (with good timing) Thunder Barret -> Blasting Zone.

There are a bunch which are "Fire and pray"; ideally you use these to punish bad blocks, but alas, its not as good against the AI which sometimes just cheats with dodges.  

And yes, Kefka is easily the best part of Dissidia (both parts) for writing and acting and such <_<

[Shale]

Oh, that's what mastering your attacks does? I'm still pretty far from enough AP to do that at this point.