Name a better magic system protip:you can't

>>381765747
I liked FF5 job system though that wasn't strictly magic.

define magic system
I would say Dark Messiah has a better "magic system" because casting spells actually impacts your environment and feels fun. FF7 spells and flashy and do damage but in the end it's just numbers. No excitement, no craftiness, little improv.

You mean worse.
Hate materia system, makes everything pointless since all characters are the same

>>381765747
FF5's. It's more consistently in balance with physical attacks.

>>381766129
>define magic system
a system for spell mechanics?
>no craftiness
>little improv
>no excitement

you can pair up materias for combo. each materia have bonus and negative effects for equipping. all changing with the remake since its going to be action based.

>>381765747
It's a great system but the game doesn't put it through its paces enough to really take it to its full potential. Another game with it could have been perfect.

Once you learn how to swap materia in battle it wound up being really broken. Should've removed that from the game.

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>>381765747
orbments&quartz

>>381766892
>swap materia in battle
???

>>381766945
Is this really that unknown. It's not that hard to figure out.

>>381766892
>swap materia in battle

are we talking about ff7 here or its spinoffs?

>>381766909
Only in ao though.
Master quartz+not horribly dumbed down.

>>381765747
I don't know if I would say it's the best magic system, but is definitely one of the most enjoyable I've used, and easily the most enjoyable in a ff game. It sucks that they more or less scrapped it after a single game.

Magicka wins by default

>>381766186
This.

I liked the customization but it needed restrictions or some way to make the characters more unique.

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>>381765747
fucking materia overlord bullshit. took forever even with farming the magic pots

It would have been perfect if the characters had some more diversity in their basic actions without equipping Materia, and if there were more complex slot arrangements. Like, if you had a weapon with a Y-shaped arrangement of slots, with one slot in the center and three connected to it. So you could choose to have Fire, Ice, and Lightning Materia on the outer slots and Elemental Defense in the center, to be a diverse caster that resists all basic elements. Or you could put Lightning in the center slot and have Elemental Defense, Elemental Attack, and Absorb MP on the outer slots to make the character highly lightning-focused.

>equip 100 death to elem-atk
>insta kill everything
Junction was broken shit

>>381765747
The mantra system from Treasure of the Rundras.
You literally type anything you want and it spits out a spell using the game's logic.
You can make some pretty overpowered stuff right from the start of the game if you know the best syllables to chain together, but if you don't want to experiment to find them you can also write down enemy words and break them into syllables or use real world words which almost always results in an effect that makes sense for what the word is.

>>381765747
Nothing more satisfying than the material levelling up 'ping' on the EXP screen

>>381767525
Also, I didn't like grinding Materia levels, and think that if the slots themselves determined levels, there'd be more unique options to consider. What if you had a choice between two weapons with similar attack power, but one had four level 1 slots, and the other had one level 3 slot? What if Yuffie was more prone to having a large number of low-level slots on her weapons that encouraged utility magic, as opposed to Aerith being prone to having a small number of high-level slots on her weapons that encouraged damaging spells?

It's a real shame that since the remake is going to be action oriented, Materia will probably be much less strategically viable than even the original game, and we'll have to wait for some unrelated spin-off to advance the Materia system, like Bravely Default or something.

>>381767992
>All mastered
>All reborn

sweet. time to rake in millions

Should I just emulate the PSX version if I want to play this on PC? The original PC release looks and sounds like shit, and the newest one has DRM. I really don't feel like giving Square any more money than I have, and I've already bought the game a few times (coincidentally, I've either lost or sold the consoles I owned it on)

Romancing SaGa 2

>>381768189
Just pirate PC version.

>>381768313
It's probably just me being stupid, but getting it to work is annoying. It was the same when I pirated the latest version a few years ago, too.

I'm just going to buy it. It's on sale right now, anyway.

>>381768646
>clicking launcher.exe is annoying
Well, I guess consoles and Steam exist for people like you.

>>381768872
I just said that it has DRM. It's not as simple as that, and if it is, I'm missing something.

>>381768950
> I'm missing something
Copying cracked exe?

>>381769004
The torrent I downloaded didn't have one.

>tfw you get Fire2
Getting the next tier spell was the best.

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>>381769106
Yeah, definitely sub-100 iq right here.

Spell mixing system in Two Worlds II.

Weapons and equipment enchanted with magic that when used, conjure spells.
A weapon in Diablo 2 that has a chance of casting whatever spell or skill when you swing it.
Enchanting a Staff with your spell of choice in Elder Scrolls.
Having a big pouch of rings in Eternal Ring.
Scribing a shitload of scrolls in a variety of games so that you can spam the fuck out of them without any worry over MP.
A handful of weapons in Final Fantasy 1 that when used as items have unlimited casts of a certain spell.

>>381770458
How am I stupid? I tried every possible option with the torrent I downloaded. The only thing I am is lazy, as I can't be bothered to download another one that may or may not include a crack, or even the crack itself.

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FF VII is one of my favorites games but materia system is retard and broken.

>>381766186
>>381767389
most characters had shitty magic stats so you were better off limiting them to healing and buffing shit

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>>381765747
Fight me.

What was the SNES jrpg where you created spells by writing in words created with base words prefixes and suffixes that you would learn over the course of the game? So it was like the prefix Sja- meant it was multi target and thaktra was poison and -zalt was a modifier that turned it higher level debuff spell but it wasn't as simple as slapping them together you had to also figure out how to properly conjugate them into "Sjaktralt" which would be your high level multi-target poison spell, just as an example like the name I don't actually remember any of the words.

That shit was fucking cool because on a replay you could just use those powerful spells because you already knew the magic words also the system was wide open once you knew the words and word components with hundreds of different combinations and some with unexpected results.

>>381767486
>owning the steam version
Should have gotten ultima edition literally 2 decades ago. Same shit without the faggy sqaureenix account linking bullshit

>>381767758
>he didn't junction 100 tornadoes to STR before leaving balamb garden to insta kill everything

>>381765747
what?

dude, it never MATTERED how much materia you had since even though it lowered your stats, it never hard gimped you. though, you can blame that on enemy skill materia being broken as fuck.

>>381771707
It most certainly isn't the same

>>381771591
That sounds vaguely like the system as I remember it from SaGa Frontier 2. Idk.

>>381771591
Treasure of the Rudras, and it's already mentioned in the thread

Orbment in Sora no Kiseki was fucking great.

Also, does anyone have even heard of Magicmaker?

>>381771887
Nah the dual weapon arts in SaGa Frontier 2 were like a random chance if I remember correctly. You just had to like use one sword art and an Axe art back to back and then you'd randomly learn the sword+axe combo attack.

This was like you'd register these words in a text prompt in town and then use them in battle to see how they function.

>>381770787
This. I like FFVII but the fans who say materia system is the best magic system in the series have likely never even played the other games. I even prefer the fucking Esper system

>>381772045
That's it, did it ever get translated? It was all in moon and nearly impossible when I played it.

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I swear I'm not a vampire.

>>381771591
i wanna say a Square game from 95 96 that, of course, we never got in the US

>>381772072
Ah right right. Man it's been way too long. I loved the art of that game back when I was a kid. I should pirate it and relive some memories. Good luck with your hunt!

>>381772157
I remember playing it in english at least some 10 years ago, so yes.

>>381772157
Yeah, it got a translation. Making the magic system work in English is a pretty impressive hack.
Due to the differences in language, from only being able to write in whole syllables in a single space in Japanese, to having to write in single English letters, hey upped the number of spaces since you need multiple characters to write most of the previous syllables using English.
However, some syllables can be activated with a single English letter and this makes the added space very powerful if you figure it out.

>get steam version of FF7
>get NT mod
>materia is balanced enough and character stats are more extreme, so not everyone can do everything.
>have fun

>>381772105
Espers are way worse than materia. When 5 out of the 6 stats you can get from Espers are not worth investing in, there's a major problem. Then you factor in the shitty spell balance on top of that and it becomes a clusterfuck of stupid design.

>>381773879
>purists REEEEE at you

>>381766945
>>381767021
You just have to resurrect Aeris and it unlocks the materia swap in battle ability.

>>381765747
type-0 magic system

>>381773903
>Speed, Mag Power, Vigor

That's more than 1 out of 6 worth investing in.

>>381773879
Is it fun for a first playthrough? Does it work with Reunion mod?

>>381767486
>he thinks Steam achievements are worth something

On consoles you get banned for fraud achievements/trophies

>>381772105

Materia is awesome.

>As a magic/ability system specifically
III, X-2, VII, VI, V, LRXIII, X,II, I, IX, CCVII, XIII-2, XIII, BCVII, XII, DoCVII, VIII

>As a leveling up system in practice
V, III (A transitive Job System is also fun), X-2, VII, VI, LRXIII (Schemata may have a different name, but it's Materia/Relics. I'll love it just the same.), XIII-2, II (Fuck you, I enjoyed it.), IV, I, BCVII, X, XII, XIII, IX, CCVII, VIII, DoCVII

But I'm one of those, who prefer the party to be interchangable, so I can play whomever I want even if I 99% of the time rotate every party member throughout the games. Just let me have everyone with hundreds of abilities at the same time would be my dream.

>>381774515
There's a grand total of one speed Esper in the game, Speed isn't important when it's very easy to set up near-instant kills on anything in the game, you can only get it in increments of +1, and using it means you're not getting Quick until you're done, which is far more powerful than Speed levels are. Vigor is never worth investing in.

>>381774520
It comes separately or as part of the 7th Heaven mod bundle. I modded it separately, so I don't know if it works with Reunion.
It good enough for a first time playthrough, but not for a first time RPG.

The mod changes some item chests so that there are no missable items and automatically goes through annoying minigames so you don't waste ten minutes timing a button press. Materia like Enemy Skill and KotR are now reasonable as opposed to overpowered.

However, the enemies have increased difficulty through better AI scripts and more elemental resistance/immunity/attacks (as opposed to just improving stats, which happens to a small degree), so you'll have to plan out your materia more. Basically, the game assumes this isn't your first rodeo, but if you've beaten any other RPG before, then you can start FF7 with this and enjoy it

>>381775189
Also, the Speed Esper is replaced in the same dungeon you get it by a different Esper, so if you want to even use it, you'll have to go back through the same dungeon once you are done with it.

I really like FF6, but everything mechanics-wise about Espers is a complete mess. At least using them won't delete your save file

>>381774086
Don't bullshit the new guys.
The real way to unlock it is by getting Dio as a party member

>>381766741
>l changing with the remake since its going to be action based.

This is why I don't trust companies to touch their old games anymore. I mean, I'd love another release of Saints Row 2 with fancier graphics and smoother animations, but I played SR 3 and 4, I don't trust at all

Just update the graphics and iron out some bugs.

>>381771025
While this is true, the game is so easy that the stats don't really make that much of a difference, even the optional bosses which were more like puzzle encounters than anything else. In FF12, for example, the stat difference mattered more, although that was only in the most extreme cases like Yiazmat.

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how i beat ff7 in under 10 hours every time
1. never use magic or summons
2. pick up and equip the cover materia
3. master the cover materia before reaching cosmo canyon
4. sell every materia other than cover at cosmo canyon and buy hp+ maria and counter attack materia
5. equip cover, hp+ and MULTIPLE counter attack materia to cloud

cloud now has 9999 health on disc one, is the only one to take attacks, and deals between 1 and 10 counter attacks every time he's hit

>>381775189
Vigor is worth it for a Genji Glove + Offering character.

>>381768189
Yes, emulating results in the highest quality

>>381766741
>all changing with the remake since its going to be action based
>devs removing one of the reasons why FF7 was good

not surprising

>>381771446
I can't read moon, care to enlighten me on what's going on in your screenshot?

>>381766186
that's what i like about it

>>381766186
>Being able to use your favorite characters with no significant penalty is a bad thing

>>381765747
Chrono Trigger's system was better.

>>381776008
No, not really, it gives very small damage boosts at low levels and is irrelevant past that because the major determining factors in physical damage are level and weapon battle power, in that order. It takes extreme investment to even make Vigor factor into attack as much as weapon battle power does and by the point you can do that, you're capping on damage anyways because you're like level fucking 50. Why bother?

>>381776348
Yeah, it is a bad thing when it takes a massive shit on party building and makes characters boil down to their limits and equipment.

>>381776482
I'll always take that over having a character you can't stand stuck with an ability you can't do without.. The limits and equipment were enough.

>>381766186

third post best post. Materia is an objectively bad system because every character is the same.

>>381776671
I won't. Fuck that.

>>381776758
>I need a game to tell me what abilities each party member has because I lack the creativity to make my own combinations.

>>381776875
>I don't understand why party building and character roles are important but I'm talking about JRPGs anyways

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>ctrl+f Baiten Katos
>0 results

You guys are joking, right?

>>381777048
You can freely assign those roles yourself with materia. Needing the game to do it for you is autism

>>381776348
>no significant penalty
Yeah okay, Vincent with his shit limits and shit ultimate weapon is just as good as Barret with his best limit in the game and best ultimate weapon in the game because you can equip shit that Vincent isn't even good at using on him.

>>381775196
>KotR are now reasonable as opposed to overpowered
Then what's the fucking point, it takes forever to get anyway, might as well let it be broken

>>381777195
>Significant.
FF7 is easy enough that I beat it with Vincent my first time through despite not fully understanding the materia system.

>>381777189
If you don't understand the fundamental difference between forcing the game to work one way when it's set up to not work that way and working with a game that had that set in stone from the beginning, you're retarded. Every single time FF has tried that kind of structureless design it has fucked up the game. Every single fucking time.

>>381776257
A more complex materia system where no two characters had the same lines and you had to deal with things like spots that were locked into a certain color along with each materia having its own unique value making otherwise useless in combat materia useful because you could use it to enable spells that you couldn't get if you used nothing but stat boosting materia.

>>381776002
This, and then switch it over to Yuffie when you get the chance. She can carry the weapon with the highest amount of slots, so IIRC you can have up to 16 counters. Or reduce the number of counters and throw some linked Ultima's in there, so they hit back with non-elemental damage against all enemies. Man I loved materia.

>>381777339
>FF7 is one of the most beloved and successful RPGs in history but I didn't like it so it doesn't count

>>381777507
Because it had a marketing budget of 100 million dollars.

>>381777564
Plenty of big budget games have failed in the past. FF7's sustained popularity is because people have fun playing it.

>>381777339
>Every single time FF has tried that kind of structureless design it has fucked up
7, 8, 10, and 12 fans might beg to differ

>>381777339

Not the guy, but every enemy besides Ozma, Chac and Death casting mobs in XIII are 100% beaten by that logic. Just get everything as is intended before fighting. What's the point of playing these games?

You must temper yourself in any game to retain challenge.

>>381765747

I kind of wish they'd just kept doing variations of the job system rather than coming up with completely new mechanics every game.

>>381772191
>rain
>water shield
>lightning bolt

>>381777759
10 actually has character differentiation outside of overdrives until lategame. Not the same as FF7 or 8 at all. 12 got a whole new version of the game to fix exactly what I am talking about.

>>381775472

>Dio

FF7 had a Jojo reference?

Main problem I had with materia is that it seemed too magic focused and everyone was basically a red mage-type character because stat differences weren't extreme enough to matter. It was pretty boring.

>>381777962
>10 actually has character differentiation
Until you get yellow or blue spheres, then it's a free for all.

>>381777764
Roguelikes and dungeon crawlers disagree.

>>381775472

I actually had a lot of fun playing through the game as Sephiroth and a party of chocobos.

>>381771717
>not just abusing the card game to have literal end game stats by the time you leave for Timber

I'd say the fire cave, but you only have two people for that part.

It's easy, if slightly time consuming, to have 300 Quakes, Deaths, Meltdowns, and Regens by then, which is enough to faceroll everything up to disc 3.

>>381778175

Well naturally, but I was talking about within mainline single-player FFs. Sorry for speaking too broadly.

>>381778357
Also the item-> spell ability was broken, iirc hi potions turned into curagas for example so everyone could have max hp by literally buying it

>>381772910
I wish I hadn't just watched a video, I'm gonna have to wait a week so I don't just use the most broken spell in the game

>>381778365
The only early FF I have to handicap myself in is 2 and that's because it's such a massively broken piece of shit. Even with the blatantly overpowered speedrun party of 2 Fighter/2 Red Mage in FF1 I still have to make an effort to not die.

>>381772191
The game would be so much better if not for the shoehorned memes every two scenes

>>381777120
SHAMPOOOOOO

Vancian is best. Fite me.

>>381776002
This is fun, but only after doing a regular playthrough where you don't know what you are doing. I can do the same in FF8 but its way more fun bumbling through and feeling accomplished when you figure out how to get a few bits of strong magic early

Shame that magic is actually dogshit in most FF games, past the first few hours

>>381778784
Vancian is only good if magic hits 10x harder than physical. Which doesn't happen which makes it shit.

>>381776002
This would be a great idea if you could buy counter attack materia. You can't. It's still a good idea, though.

>>381779019
i'm pretty sure you can buy one in cosmo canyon. and if not, by the time you get there you'll have mastered/ reproduced a couple
counter attack stacks with higher levels and multiple materia

>>381778930

Why are you using evocation like some sort of plebe?

>>381778784
Vancian is garbo as it requires lots of downtime making it not very conducive to extended adventures unless you purposely want to gimp casters like a fag.

IX's system of learning from a piece of equipment was the most stupid, and worst system. Why they used it in Advance and A2 I don't understand.

>>381779252
>Wanting casters to actually contribute to random clearing makes me a pleb

>>381778784
Properly balanced MP > FF3 vancian > FF1 vancian > GBA/DS remake MP.

I don't have anything against Vancian but FF1's pure spellcasters kind of suck and Holy/Flare aren't worth sticking with them over Red Mage.

>>381779406

Battlefield control spell, then you let the martial classes do their janitorial duties.

>>381766186

You're not forced to stack your whole party with the same materia, ya know?

>>381779432
Damage mages in FF3 stunk after a while because your physical characters start casually hitting 9999 while mages struggle to do so outside of their 1 use spells.

FFIX and Lost Odyssey have the best progression systems in turn-based RPGs.

>>381779560
>Control spells
You mean the ones that developers almost never get right?

>>381770698
you could literally Google FFVII Crack and find it within seconds.

Based on the facts you've given us uou really are stupid. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to insult you.

>>381779663
What the fuck, stop grinding. That's not even close to normal physical damage in FF3.

>>381779742
Worked just fine in FF until FF6, which, coincidentally, was the first game where it was easy as fuck to shit down an encounter's throat before it can even move.

>>381779824
That happened to me in the FF3 remake and I never grinded. Granted I did decide to lock Refia into thief all game long because I wanted to steal Gungnir.

>>381779665
>FFIX
Learning shit from equipment is retarded.
Then being cockblocked by a limited number of slots for the shit you grinded for is also retarded.
FFIX sucked ass.

>>381779914
The remake is a different beast from the original game. The only time you're ever hitting anywhere near that much in NES FF3 is with dual wielded shurikens and it's still nowhere near damage cap.

>>381779912
FF2 is the only one of the original 5 where spamming Toad/Petrify/etc worked and that required you to grind them up to the point where they started hitting.

Level 5 death and the other control spells had their uses in 5 although in 5, its very hard to not find a combo that breaks it if you experiment a bit.

>>381778612

I think you have to actively hold yourself back from becoming too powerful in VIII, X and XIII-2. You also can't grind any extra in VI, VII and IX. Others self-regulate, are balanced pretty well or allow no customization respectively.

Anyway the basic idea was that since one can easily prevent oneself from grinding, why can't one prevent oneself from learning every ability and stat bonus for every character even if it's open for you, if you know it will ruin the game for you? It should be the same self control required.

>>381779560
>Battlefield control spell, then you let the martial classes do their janitorial duties.
I don't know of many games that get battlefield control right

Walling off enemies, hampering their movement till they're crawling, blinding everyone but your guys, putting your allies where it's advantageous

It's more of a tactics game thing than jrpg, but even then tactics games can devolve into rocket-tag

>>381779937
It was a great progression system. It made every piece of equipment valuable, and stealing was highly rewarding as a result. Lost Odyssey used the same system with a few changes and additions. Namely mortals learning abilities from equipment, and immortals learning from the mortals themselves.

>>381780258
>I think you have to actively hold yourself back from becoming too powerful in VIII
At least it's a different type of grind, if you grind the old-fashioned way you're setting yourself up for a more difficult time

>>381780258
Because that's monumentally less interesting than a game that challenges you to use everything at your disposal.

>>381780452
>It made every piece of equipment valuable
No it didn't, that's an outright lie. If you could just 'learn' the skill and have it available then sure, all equipment would have a use. But you couldn't. You were limited to a set number of slots.

>>381780258
The thing with grinding is that it requires you to dick around in a dungeon beyond the usual scour every nook and cranny to find all of the chests.

On the other hand, needing to actively gimp your character progression just to face some difficulty means that the developers fucked up.

>>381780526

But grinding is amidst the everything that is at your disposal and it tends to ruin the other games too.

>>381765747
Any game with in-combat spell fusion

>>381780735
False, grinding is for people who are still having difficulties because they fucked up somewhere along the line or those who want to play on baby mode.

>>381780670
Only early on, and you also learn abilities and spells from equipment that don't require points to enable. The equipment itself is also well designed, having various passives, stat growths and so on that never really become obsolete until the end of the game.

What are the best ways to completely break each of the mainline FF games?

>>381780962
This. IX handled equipment better than any other game in the series because very few things were just direct upgrades of shit you got a few hours earlier and there's almost always a trade off between stats and resistances and shit when equipping armor and accessories.

>>381780994
Temper/Haste
Berserk/Haste
Grinding
Grinding
Chemist and Blue Mage
Vanish/Doom, stacking Magic Power and using Economizer/Gem Box Quick and Ultima spam, equipping Gau or Gogo with Offering and Fixed Dice
Enemy Skill
Don't level up.
Quina
Quick Hit and Attack Reels

>>381767486
Did all achievement except the one where you need to get like 99million gil. You don't even need money in this game what the fuck

>>381775472
>not soloing the game with Dante & Knuckles
It's like you hate interparty banter of good quality. Every time Knuckles doesn't chuckle is pure kino.

>>381781397
So the strat in 8 is to just Draw a bunch of shit while running from every random encounter?

>>381781872
Or Card them and refine magic through cards.

>>381780994
>FF1: 4 red mages/wizards
>FF2: stat increase bug, i.e, enter and cancel commands over and over
>FF3: 4 dragoons always in the air, never get hit
>FF4: exploit elemental weaknesses, can't remember actual cheesing
>FF5: dual wield with rapid fire
>FF6: vanish/doom, super cyan
>FF7: mime limit
>FF8: triple triad
>FF9: blue magic
>FF10: haste and quick hit, also wakka's attack reels and entrust
>FF12: you can literally AFK 99% of the game with the right gambit setup
>FF13: walk straight
>FF15: spear aerial combo, black magic

>>381781981
>FF4: cast slow on everything because nothing was immune to it

>>381781981
4 red mages is worse than 2 Fighter/2 Red Mage.

>>381781872
No. Playing children's card games is a way faster way to gain ultimate power in ff8.

>>381776348
>no unqiueness is a good thing

>>381774734
See that's the core of the problem, some people like party members to be interchangeable and some others like myself don't

>>381782208
shit, i fucking suck at triple triad

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I can't.

It's the best magic system to go with the best FF game and one of the best RPGs.

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This one

>>381779642
And characters do have their own natural affinities with no materia equipped. Everyone only plays the same if you give them the same loadouts, and that's not really the game's fault.

>>381781981
>FF12
Actually, you have to do a ton of sequence breaking and grinding exploits to cheese the game.

A good gambit setup is important but the original game takes forever to give you any good ones.

>>381779642
No, but when you specifically don't give everyone cure3, bolt3, HP+, etc. Then you're handicapping yourself on purpose just to make the game better.
Materia is a shit system because it makes you choose between efficiency and fun.

>>381780994
>FF1:
Cast Fast and Ruse on Knights

>FF2:
equip 2 shield sand punch yourself

>FF3:
Haven't played

>FF4:
Glitch your way into Mist Village and grab late game gear very early

>FF5:
Plenty of routes for being busted strong. Chemist, Blue Mage, Summoner.
Samurai can literally pay to win

>FF6:
Pause buffer Setzer's Slots to get insta-kills on everything.
You can set your RNG to a good pointer by using an Echo Screen first.
If a boss is flagged to not be insta-killable, you can still Muddle Setzer to reverse the self kill version of the attack onto them and kill them anyway

>FF7:
Enemy Skill materia

>FF8:
Play Triple Triad to get top tier cards, then mod those cards into items and mod those items into spells to junction to your stats and become all powerful

>>381782279
For the early game, they always play in the from left to right, starting at the top and working their way down, if they can't turn any cards. Just play something they can't capture, turn something in a way that they can't turn it back, then stall until you win. This works until you get stronger cards and can just faceroll

>>381782434
I don't think having a character hit for 2347 damage while another one hits for 2100 damage really counts as "affinity"

>>381781872
Yes, but a bit more complicated.

At the start you'll want to run from all fights The game uses a level scaling system, so you want to purposely run from non-mandatory fights to keep yourself from getting any XP. There are a couple of caveats: bosses and other mandatory fights don't give XP so you're free to finish those. Also, using the 'Card' ability counts as a kill and lets you complete the fight but doesn't give XP. This is useful because you can use 'Card-refine' on the cards you get, and you'll get AP for the fight (which you can use to learn new GF abilities).

Following the above tricks will keep your (and more to the point your enemy's) level's low. To increase your own stats, you'll want to either 'draw' or 'refine'. Drawing is pretty basic, but refining comes from abilities that your GFs learn, notably the 'Card-refine' mentioned earlier, and 'Item-refine'. They will take cards and items respectively and convert them into magic, which you can junction to your stats.

It's actually incredibly easy to complete a low-level max-stat run if you know what you're doing.

>>381782149
Which in turn is worse than 2 fighter, 1 red, 1 black
Because the Black Mage gets Fast at a lower level.

>>381782682
I don't know dude, that's a 10% increase.
There's a bunch of situations where that makes a turn of difference.

>>381782762
You don't need Haste before Red Mage can get it.

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>>381767486

>tfw I used a save editor to get all the cheevos

lol wut

>>381782723
Forgot to mention: it's also recommended to learn 'no-encounter' asap so you don't have to worry about fights that give XP at all.

I honestly really enjoyed FF8's progression system, it provided a lot of methods for the player to get stronger at their own pace while downplaying the typical 'fight shit and mash attack' type of grind we're used to.

>>381782519
90% of the game you're not going to have duplicates of the same materia just to give same shit to everyone unless you spent 100 hours making them. green materia and hp+, sure because they are store bought. everything else will be spent deciding who gets what.

>>381782631
>>FF6:
>Pause buffer Setzer's Slots to get insta-kills on everything.
>You can set your RNG to a good pointer by using an Echo Screen first.
>If a boss is flagged to not be insta-killable, you can still Muddle Setzer to reverse the self kill version of the attack onto them and kill them anyway
You don't know about Vanish Doom?

>>381782378
Really? It was your generic RPG skill tree. And DDS2 mantra was better.

>>381783103
Slots insta wins fights that Vanish + Doom doesn't
Like the final fight with Kefka

>>381782378
The Mantra system was pretty cool, but it took way too long to grind stuff out later in the game even with Hunt skills

>>381782919
Tell that to the guys that routed the speed run

>>381782723
I never like using draw because it takes way too long to get 300 spells, and there's few reasons to have less, unhook you get a good magic stat..... which requires a lot of drawing. Not even mentioning that it can just fail outright.

Plus triple triad is pretty easy for the most part, so i find that way faster, and you can get the broken stuff earlier than just drawing.

>>381783693
Yeah, I didn't really mention that but you're correct, drawing is definitely the slowest (and most boring) method. It's all about refining, and from there it's about how you get stuff to refine.

>>381783479
What are you talking about? The default speedrun party is Fighter/Fighter/Red Mage/Red Mage.

>>381784051
Not anymore.
It's now Fighter/Fighter/Black Mage/Permanent Dirtnap

Because it cuts down the grind time spent at Agamas.

>>381783885
Drawing was clearly envisioned as a top up to spells, and to allow players to use magic even when they'd run out

Instead dumb fucks thought they needed to draw 100 Blizzard early game lmao. Funny thing was I only heard Americans complain about this, never the Japanese (FF8 is one of their favourites)

>>381779141
you get counter attack materia semi regularly from S class racing in the gold saucer.

I should know, I got 3 last night - all while trying to win the magic counter materia. In about 100 races ive seen it 4 times, but never won it - even if winning the races, I get some other reward.

Goddammit I know i can get it in the crater, but I just wanna get it from the sacuer for fucks sake.

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>>381784289
I think a lot of people who didn't like 8's systems just weren't paying attention. It was different and designed to be broken on purpose.

>>381784814
I had a hard time fighting her at lvl 99.

>>381784267
I just checked. People are still using Fighter/Fighter/RDM/RDM.

>>381785009
http://www.speedrun.com/ff1/full_game#NES

First and 2nd place both use the party I described.

>>381784993
Yeah, she has literally 18x more health and boosted states to match

>>381784814
It's called balance, the game was built from the ground up so people could beat it with any method they choose.

Like to level up to win? Monsters scale with you and you can now draw powerful magic from weak monsters to compensate. Like to not level up? Monsters stay at a nice pace with the player. I mean 16,500 HP is still quite large if you just didn't level up but also didn't go out of your way to find 100 Tornadoes before proceeding. Using just magic you find and drawing a little, 16,500 is quite balanced considering the damage Ultimecia does.

You can beat this game using any mix of skills, attacks and summons and it's great. It's really well made. If anything the only flaw is that they could have balanced it even better by having monsters that counter stacking good magic early. Imagine if bosses all started drawing your equipped magic after a certain point, or if you equip a certain element spell to your attack it will make your attack shit vs resistant enemies - regardless of sticking it on elem J. Elem J could have been just additional elemental damage/resistance and the main stats should have affected this too

But alas, it is still a very good game

>>381765747
The one from Dragon Quest III and Wizardry games where when you change classes you retain all the spells you learned in your previous class but have to start from level 1 all over again.

>>381785483
The game itself is good and fun to play. I just have trouble playing it again because everytime I do, I remember how fucking retarded the story gets, especially once the "literally everyone grew up together then got amnesia around the same time" plot dump happens, and the main character falls for the mandatory love interest out of nowhere the instant she falls into a coma.

>>381783281
That's like 0.001% of battles that VD doesn't work on

>>381785483
Exactly. Fighting, exploring, or doing sidequests (playing cards) were all viable for progression. Even if you only focused on one aspect you'd do fine. Taking them all into account is and really breaking the game is where it shined though.

>>381785714
I imagine if they kept the R=U thing (that they were obviously going for before it got cut) those plotlines would have had a point.

>>381776348
Exactly, Tifa & Cat Saith all day

>>381785840
Which happen to be the most important battles in the game.

If the dude asked for the best way to cheese the game, he isn't going want to be left high and dry at the very final set of battles because his cheese doesn't work anymore.

How would you rate the Mantra System+combo spells in Digital Devil Saga 1&2?

>>381786197
But your cheese is much more difficult than vanish doom, so its best to use VD in the fights it works on and leave that cheese for the fights where VD doesnt work

>>381786083
>Not Cid and Barret
>Not having the angriest party in vidya

>>381785714
I think you may have autism, the story progresses just fine and Squall was in love with Rinoa long before that. I think maybe the devs should have expected the players (in America) to be retarded and never talk to NPCs and other characters for additional dialogue

Doing that explains the memory loss, gives backstory on all the Gardens, tells you about several major characters that otherwise don't seem to have much of a story to them in the main plotline, confirms Squall's parentage, fleshes out each town and it's history, fleshes out the various wars and sorceresses

That said, some dialogue is translated to the detriment of the English player. Rinoa's personality suffers most from this, and I don't mean the little suffix, more than that. She feels naive in Japanese and bratty in English. The character development was nicer when she just purely thought everything would turn out for the best and broke down when it didn't rather than the weird American teenager vibe she gives off in English

>>381786083
Could / Tifa / Vincent

Cloud doublecut, counter+cover

Tifa God hand 255acc deathblow+added cut

Vincent magic as fuck, contain, ultima, comet + kotr.

Thats my current setup, just about to go do the parachute into midgar.

>>381786717
Make sure to stick mime on someone so they can repro kotr

>>381786585
>I think you may have autism, the story progresses just fine and Squall was in love with Rinoa long before that.
Ah yes, I really felt it all the times Squall told RInoa to fuck off and stop being a whiny useless bitch.

>Doing that explains the memory loss,
The memory loss explanation is retarded, brought up only once as "Well I guess this is for using the GF" out of nowhere, when such a thing has never been hinted at, and it's literally never brought up again.

>confirms Squall's parentage
The ending does that fight if you have enough brain damage where it wasn't immediately obvious while you were playing the game.

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>>381785714
>"literally everyone grew up together then got amnesia around the same time" plot dump happens
The one that totally isn't foreshadowed at all and totally comes out of nowhere?

>>381786823
yeah, I have a gold chocobo from breeding so hade mime & quadra magic etc atm.

Its all so much overkill it isnt necessary so i've not bothered.

Will be pulling it out for ruby / emerald tho no doubt.

>>381786837
>Squall told Rinoa to fuck off and stop being a whiny useless bitch
This is in your head, not the actual dialogue. Not even in English

>when such a thing has never been hinted at
This is wrong, it is hinted at all through the game. Try actually exploring and talking to NPCs you dipshit

>>381786837
How does the ending show it outright? Because Laguna and Raine show up? That just closes Laguna's story, it's more important to actually learn more about Laguna from the sidequest and from Galbadia NPCs

>>381786837
> brought up only once as "Well I guess this is for using the GF" out of nowhere
Not saying it wasn't retarded, but...
IIRC GF technology is still relatively new in the universe (only like 30 years old) and nobody outside of SeeD used it extensively enough to know how bad the memory loss was. And since Squall n co are basically the original SeeDs they were hit the hardest.

>>381786837
>all the times Squall told RInoa to fuck off
He was a dismissive prick, but only because he was super insecure. He liked her (well maybe not at first) but just never showed it til things turned to shit.

>>381786971
Random optional dialogues are not enough foreshadowing. This isn't Dork Souls

>>381768201
Or Romancing SaGa 3

>>381788615
"random". it's an rpg, do you just run through the game without talking to anyone? teens these days, holy shit

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>>381781981
>FF13: walk straight

kek

>>381784814

I agree with this. I loooooooooved how you could get card ref and enc-none so early and just big dick through the game with card abuse.

It was essentially replacing random encounters (unfun) with Triple Triad (fun).

>>381765747

Honestly prefer Bravely Default/Second's setup to any turn-based FF.

>>381765747
almost any other magic system. if I only played final fantasies I'd probably feel the same way. DEnDE

>>381775959
Is that the superboss that took hours?

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>>381765747
Final Fantasy XV's magic system was better.

>>381790270
If you're not guaranteed to talk to them you can miss the foreshadowing.

>>381791335
You mean Fira: The Game?

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>>381790270

>there are people in the thread RIGHT NOW who don't talk to every NPC multiple times to milk out that sweet, sweet flavor text

Rough world we live in

>>381766186
>FF7 system being good at anything

I literally altered character sheets to make specialized roles, and the way stats level up put everyone back to normalcy after six levels.

>>381788615
>>381791510
Gee, I wonder why Square went with ultra-linear everything is forced down your throat via cutscenes and unskippable dialog approach with FFX and FFXIII.

So I've only casually played the game a couple of times, never finished even. What are some cool ways of breaking the game without using glitches?

>>381792442
Don't look at me, I had no problem with it. I had more of a problem with a thousand boring kill X monsters sidequests in 12

>>381792656

FF7? Enemy skill materia, multi-hit limits.

"Breaking" 7 never really felt that satisfying to me. I didn't have any problems going through it the first time with Cure and Attack when I was 10 and didn't really understand what materia could really do.

>>381786971
Just because it's foreshadowed, doesn't mean it isn't retarded

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I love it.

>>381786971
>foreshadowed

Oh, well if it was foreshadowed I guess that completely erases how completely fucking retarded it is.

>>381797461
Shame about the game itself.

>>381798609
You've failed to comprehend FF8 and the reason they were reunited post-militiary graduation. Congratulations.

>>381799194
I'm sorry FF8's story is bad? I'm not sure what else you want from me. The gameplay itself is 10/10, but I wish I could play it again without having the rest of it there.

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>>381795705
>>381798609
And where exactly did I say it wasn't retarded? The fact is plots of Final Fantasy games (and JRPGs in general) have always been written by monkeys but that has never kept me from enjoying them

Can you honestly say that pic related isn't just as retarded? Or the world getting fucked because a fucking clown slightly moved few statues around in FFVI wasn't retarded as fuck if you think about it?

>>381799567
I never said those other games weren't retarded. Just that "foreshadowing" isn't a catch-all excuse to FF8's problems.

>>381799375
Sorry, but you've legitimately failed to comprehend FF8.

The reason the party is reunited just prior to the start of SeeD's true mission is that Edea recognized Squall in the past when he chased Ultimecia through time at the end of the game and told her about how she formed SeeD to combat the future sorceress. She and Cid formed Garden and SeeD, and the children present (Squall, Zell, Quistis, Seifer, Irvine, Selphie) were trained in the art of para-magic via the use of Guardian Forces (which consumes their memories in exchange for power). Selphie is transferred just in time for graduation, Quistis is demoted, Irvine is assigned to their squad and so on.

TL;DR: Reading comprehension is a bitch, and you should make absolutely sure you know what you're talking about if you're going to shitpost about something like this.

>>381800528
I'm not sure what you think repeating blatantly explained plot elements is doing for your argument, but you do you I suppose.

>>381777774
>Steam, Steam, Shield, Lightning, Lightning

>>381800736
You're the one who can't understand a basic fantasy plot written with 12 year olds in mind, famalam. Feel free to come up with a legitimate argument when you're done reading a plot summary written by someone who doesn't have a double digit IQ.

>>381800941
>You're the one who can't understand a basic fantasy plot written with 12 year olds in mind, famalam

Are you suffering a stroke anon? Maybe you should lay down a bit.

>>381801090
If you read FF8 as an adult and couldn't even understand it on a surface level, you're the one more likely to have suffered a stroke. My condolences.

>>381801367
I can't even tell what you're angry about anymore. Do you think anyone had trouble understanding FF8? I mean, it's not as perfect as you think it is, but who even didn't understand it?

>>381800941
>basic fantasy plot
Just because it's a basic plot doesn't mean it isn't garbage. In fact that just means it likely is.

>>381766892
GR8 B8 M8 I R8 8/8

>>381801714
Even worse, it's a basic plot that goes straight to retard town in the last hour or so.

>>381801551
This guy >>381798609 i.e, you. Even the foreshadowing comes as a surprise, apparently. If you're going to shit on something, at least have a basic understand of what you're criticizing. Go ahead and post an accurate summary of exactly what you find so bad about it, and it CAN NOT be something as a result of your low IQ or poor reading comprehension.

>>381765747
Orbments in the Trails series.

>>381802079
Yeah, it seemed like they wanted to spice it up but time travel stories are hard to not fuck up. Thank fuck the gameplay for a jrpg was good and avoided bullshit grinding. I used to hate 8 but it has really grown on me over the years.

Path of Exile

>>381798773
Don't talk shit about GS.
For the 8yo me it was the best game ever.

>>381802289
What are you even raging about anymore?

>>381803276
Your 72 IQ.

>>381786212
DDS1 Mantra system was lame.
DDS2 Mantra system was fun.
Fusing demons is way better than both, if it counts as a magic system.

>>381803396
Ok, I apologize for saying ff8 has any flaws if it'll make you relax.

>>381770576
>Enchanting a Staff with your spell of choice in Elder Scrolls.
You only got to do that once in Oblivion. By the time you can do it in Skyrim, you're at a high enough level that staves are useless. Morrowind didn't even have staves that could fire spells.

FFVII was my very first experience with RPGs. Because of the way it handled magic and made the characters largely interchangeable, the concept of classes or even certain characters being better at magic or melee didn't even occur to me. I really should play it again now that I've learned so much about RPGs over the years. I wonder how much differently I'd play it now.

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>>381786971
>Squall doesn't remember them because he doesn't fucking care about them
If it was literally any other character you might have a point, but It's totally in-character for him to not remember them.

It would have been 100% better if you could save materia builds for when the game forces you to switch your party every hour. Redoing materia every single time your party changes is retarded.

>>381765747
Materia isn't magic, it's a general command system, the actual magic system is the same barebones 3 tier elemental spells and buffs debuffs, with the occasional non elemental nuke and Blue magic.

To answer your question, any SaGa game, especially Unlimited, Frontier or Minstrel Song have a vastly better magic system, Rudra no Hihou has been mentioned already, same with Magicka, TES has some fun magic system too.
Other than those, I'll add Soul Sacrifice Delta.
>>381772072
>You just had to like use one sword art and an Axe art back to back and then you'd randomly learn the sword+axe combo attack.
There's nothing of the sort in SaGa Frontier 2, combos work on their own ruleset with no random chance involved other than turn calculation which might or might not mess up your chaining if you don't assign turn order manually(like you should), you don't have to register anything, the various notes you found through the game were simply a written note for premade combos for those who don't want to bother learning the combo ruleset, there's no such thing as "dual weapon arts" either, don't even know where you pulled that from.

>using magic
>when the game consisted of just miming uber limits until the boss died

>>381802289
>and it CAN NOT be something as a result of your low IQ or poor reading comprehension.
Fuck you nigger, I'll do what I want.

>>381778239
I think there actually was a GameShark code to have Sephiroth in the party, but you couldn't control him. He'd act automatically, like he does in the flashback battle.

Ah, the days when cheats and cheat devices still existed...when games were still fun...