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Magic has bested physical attacks for a long period of the FF history (notably FFVI, effectively making Terra, Celes, and Relm the three strongest characters due to innate high Magic . .. and Gem Box didn't help things at all). Then again, Terra and Celes are already two of the best characters anyway (high Magic, access to Illumina and Minerva, Terra's Morph is awesome). The magic-is-king trend stopped once the 9999 damage cap was broken as well as multi-hit physicals (and the advent of high damage summons that take 17 minutes to play through instead of high damage spells).

Edit: Also a few misleading ST/MT attacks that appear to be Physical (based on character) but are actually Magical. Sabin's Aurabolt, Fire Dance, Air Blade, and Bum Rush are all Magic attacks, not Physical for example (and Bum Rush is what makes everyone <3 Sabin).

Also, status effects are pretty awesome in older games.

And, well, all the Tactics games have a caster complex due to silly charge times coupled with "I WILL KILL THE CASTER" mentality, though FFTA2 had the broken Blood Magic + Summon combo ... along with 31 other ways to utterly break the fucking game. Disgaea 2's Resist system allowed for Casters to utterly dominate the game as well but that's a different game company (which embraces their sexualization of female characters).

Then again, Vigor vs Magic in VI may have played a larger role in it since Vigor in the damage calculation was a lot less than the Magic contribution. Though, to be fair, Genji Glove + Offering offers the highest potential damage (8x 9999) but since you need a ridiculously high level full HP Locke with Atma + ValiantKnife for it (or a few other combos I can't recall, I think Terra and Celes at a high level with Atma + Illumina) it's relatively irrelevant. Plus you sacrifice 100% Evasion for it >>

RE: FFTA2 slapfest ... *shrugs* Not sure what to say. It is a rather socialized norm and convention of "GUYS SHOULD NOT HIT WOMEN." The intent was likely in a "Hey Luso's a kid and doesn't know better!" but it falls hard on that; or maybe it's just a pro-beating women thing with a warning label but I doubt that. I just facepalmed it. Then again, I facepalmed the entire game so that's probably not really relevant.

As for Lightning, I'll refrain until I play myself as I'm keeping myself on media blackout for the game. She looks interesting but we'll see.

To be honest, I can't recall many games with a set main character that didn't say "fuck everyone else in the cast outside of their side-quests" so I'd not really state that it's an issue of the female cast falling out so much as everyone becoming irrelevant after getting them (with certain exceptions thrown for "THIS CHARACTER HOLDS VALUABLE SECRET/POWER/ITEM/ETC. FOR THE SAKE OF THE ORGANIZATION/WORLD/GALAXY/ETC.").

It's more of a flaw of the RPG system itself with the progression of the plot being main character driven (or villain driven / reactionary) without much regard to the rest of the cast, which is something that FFXII tried to stray from (and got flak for but they did do it rather poorly). People don't want to play a game they're "tagging along" for as opposed to "leading."

[spoiler]...god damn it, I shouldn't post anywhere after my Marriage class readings.

Though, to be frank, a strong (i.e., independent, strong-willed, physical) female is to stray from Japanese social convention. Even in the cases of a strong character (say, Chie from P4), they still break down at some point in the game to a softer and more "normal" character at some point in the game. Or they don't and are just looked at fucking weird (to be fair, males of the same type tend to do the same anyway but people like brooding males).

I have no qualms with there being more female leads; we've done this dance before. However, there is the stupid issue some guys have towards playing as a female character; many don't want to. Either perception of others towards it (whee, manginas thanks MMOs?) or some issue regarding masculinity. This is usually why female protagonists are avoided at a development level (or, rather, the perceived loss of sales from that).

Though, that's pure speculation without data for it but, by and large, I'd assume the "average male consumer" is probably lumped into one of the two above sides. And that is the target market really. Maybe it'll change. I'm not expecting that anytime soon, however.[/spoiler]

And VT, I still like the FF series; it continues to evolve (in terms of mechanics) and I quite like the stories and I love me good visuals/audio. Also, I'm a dude.

One thing that annoys me a great deal about Final Fantasy games is that with each generation, they become more of a time vampire. No, I do not refer to the amount of content or any grinding that may be required (which it never isn't, really). Just all the little things that waste time. Enough time to discourage me from ever playing it again.

The worst is battles against enemies that use spells which target the entire party. A really bad recent example is the Sylph Cave in Final Fantasy IV DS. Those floating skull monsters like to spam sleep and silence on the entire party. This is all they do 95% of the time, occasionally using Fira. It is not difficult but it really slow. I have to wait for all four of them to cast the spell, and since it targets all five party members it can add up to an incredibly long battle. To make this worse, they have no weakness and they are somewhat sturdy. All I can do is pray Rosa can get off a few Berserks. In general I would prefer it if a spell targeted a group, it would just make a single large graphic and display all the damage at once.

OH AND THE ENTIRE CAVE HAS MORE OF THEM EVERY FIVE STEPS

It gets worse with spin-offs. In The Crystal Bearers, one can combine monster drops to create accessories. Combining them regularly will just give the player a basic accessory, but combining the materials in the right order will produce something special. The fault lies in the fact that of course no one is going to just take a basic garbage accessory when they can have an accessory that gives amazing attributes and effects just for combining them differently. This leads to the player saving before trading anything in, and then just resetting until they figure out the right combination. It is a nice concept but since some of these materials are extremely rare, no player is going to rest with a poor product and they are going to go through the tedious stages of resetting.

A similar problem occurs in FFTA2, where one must bring materials to a bazaar to create equipment. Only after exchanging the materials can one discover what, say, an unlabelled katana is supposed to be. If the player finds some new rare material, of course they are going to be upset if they exchange it for something incredibly useless. It once again leads to a process of saving before trading and figuring out what each combination does.

In the very same title was probably one of the worst missions I have ever done in any game. The player must interview town denizens for the Bonga Bugle about their New Years Resolutions but it still uses the same game engine, so the town denizens are just treated as neutral units. Since the map is loaded with them, any time their turn comes up they have to "Wait". And since they are spread all over the map, it can lead to waiting for like 30 seconds after maybe 5 seconds of play.

Just to add, FFTA and FFTA2 have the spell targeting issue much, much worse than FFIV DS. It bothers me even more because I am usually immune to the status ailment and they are still spamming it on my characters anyway, just to drain more of my life.

This post is getting much longer than I wanted it to be, so I will simply say Square Enix is too lazy to alter mechanics that take away valuable fun. Aside from the spell multitargeting issue, the others all came from their attempts to create something fun and do something new but I can look at other RPGs, even RPGs created by them, who have handled similar mechanics much better.

Semi-Relevant:
Am I the only one that hates anything drawn by Yoshitaka Amano?

I hated the designs as they were incorporated into the in-game portraits in FFVI

What is that thing? That's Locke? O jeez

Anything drawn by him? Examples?