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What Final Fantasy opinion are you defending like this?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Nostalgia creates some massive rose-tinted glasses.
I've used to love FFVIII as a teenager and decided to buy it again for the Switch last year, but I legit couldn't progress more than a ten-minute-interval without either cringeing at the characters or being angry about them in some way. Why are they all so edgy? Why are their decisions always so incredibly stupid? I eventually realized that the characters are basically what a 12 year old would consider to be cool adults when in reality they're absolutely immature in every aspect.
I really really tried to complete at least one playthrough again in the hopes that it would eventually get better, but snapped when the oh-so-mighty martial arts character, who had been showing off his melee skills in every effing cutscene, flat-out forgot that he has been fighting literal demons with his bare hands for the entire effing game only to realize AFTER a multiple day long imprisonment that he could just slap the guards around without having to get a weapon first. FFS how do you forget such a thing for longer than a week?!
I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it's THE best FF game to date and they're usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn't play it "back in the day" just couldn't understand what was so great about it. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won't try to ruin anyone's fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.
As someone who was around then, it's hard to explain just how revolutionary the game was at the time to someone who wasn't there to witness it first hand.
Though, FFVII is my favorite of the FFs, so there's that too.
I feel similar about Ocarina of Time. Still one of my favorite Zelda games, and absolutely revolutionary for the time it was published in, but horribly outdated compared to basically everything that exists today. Since almost every 3D game today has stuff like Z-targeting and companion NPCs giving in-game hints and context-sensitive buttons and the like, there is nothing new and baffling about that game to someone who is already used to these gimmicks and concepts being the bare minimum standard.
I feel the same way. Loved it as a teen. Possibly because the characters were just like teenagers.
It's pretty cringe as a 38 year old trying to play through them again. And I definitely am not going to play for the gameplay. Even as a teen, I only played these for the stories because the combat is boring as fuck.
And yet... Nostalgia hits like crazy. And, uh, Chrono Trigger still holds up, unlike most Final Fantasies.
Edit: Final Fantasy 7's remake is still kinda cringe with the dialogue and made for teens, but the gameplay is so different and there is also a cool twist going on with the story that it's actually more fun than the original to me, and I loved it when it was new.
Chrono Trigger is an absolute classic ♥ even today it's still one of my favorite SNES games, along with Secret of Mana, Lufia, Terranigma and A Link to the Past. I still replay some of these every other year.
To be fair Squall was handled badly here, I think legends of localization had a piece about it. Localization wasn't great back then, it was actually even worse, we just didn't have original voiced dialogues to confirm discrepancies.