FFVII is quite a bit easier to understand for anybody interested, by the way. I had next to no difficulties with it. Since the game doesn't make use of the kind of textures that later games like MGS did, the OpenGL2 plugin with some nice shader effects really brings the best out of it. The battles almost look like PS2 standard.

FFVIII has more kanji and some slightly more difficult words, but it's still much easier than novels or newspapers. The draw system is a bit of a pain in the wazz, but if you're using an emulator, you can turn the frame-limit off. Some of the monsters look awesome with the emu graphics too.

Playing these old games is really useful and motivating. It's a shame FF9 is a piece of crap.

Javizy Wrote:It's a shame FF9 is a piece of crap.

It's a shame FF7 and FF8 protagonists had no personality what so ever and were complete emo losers that didn't say a thing. Squall was a piece of shit that needed a bashing, and Zell needed a dialogue.txt file embedded into his character.

7 and 8 were okay, but none of them come near 9 when it comes to characters and character development (The protagonist anyway)

Just as with any sort of literature you know a piece of literature is shit boring when there is barely anything about the thought process/personality or anything of the protagonist. I know final fantasy ain't literature, but characters are characters.

There, never diss ff9 again.

Respect Zidane, you gun.

Character development is important, and so is an interesting and compelling plot to centre the characters around. It all depends on your interpretation as well. I agree about Squall being a bit of a douche, but I found the way Cloud was kept a mystery until late in the game added to it a lot. It wouldn't have made sense for somebody with his background to talk about his feelings while doing Tifa's hair for her.

In something as visual as a game, character and background designs, or the overall look and feel of the 'world' itself is pretty important too. If you like Dungeons & Dragons or something like that, you might be able to handle FF9, but I couldn't take the whole dwarves with tails thing. FF8 took things in a more realistic-looking direction (people-wise), so I was all the more let down. Rehashed characters didn't do as much for me as original ones either. Whether or not these things appeal to you is completely subjective, so it's pointless arguing about it, I guess.

FF9 seems to have been reappraised by the community in recent years. I remember when it was hugely unpopular (around the release of FF10), but lately it's started to become one of the most popular games in the series. Retro chic? I never really liked it that much in the first place... from 2000 (NA) I'd rank Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile, Saga Frontier 2 and perhaps Legend of Mana ahead of it.

If you're in Japan, amazon.co.jp and yahoo.co.jp marketplaces can get you pretty good deals on older games.

No matter how many times I start 9 I always wind up halfway through stopping at the same point. Maybe I would be more motivated to finish it in Japanese?

@liosama Squalls an awesome character! He's just largely misunderstood but I think that's only perhaps for those that get him. He's not a douche and definitely not on purpose. Irvine's a douche.

What I wanna know is wheres the damn patch to make squall end up with selphie cos I hate rinoa and her little dog too.

Playing DQ9 with my terrible Japanese ability is just a depressing chore most of the time. I also like how I can see, and resee the same words 100 times, and still forget them 5minutes later. Thanks, brain! Here's more alcohol for you, jerk.

LOL just finished getting ready to depart for timber.

12:22hr playing time. lvl30 - 35. 1 chachter has 8900 health, the second 3800, the third 2000. Squall is doing 2000 damage. GF's (including diablos) have about 1 - 2 abilities left to learn.

Ready to go

Wooo

I'm playing the game right now! Time to stack some water spells from fish scales and destroy the game.

Thanks for all the help!

ahh i cant get it to work,

I got all the cue/bin files, and they mounted with daemon tools fine, and I was able to convert the cue/bin to iso with imgburn.

ImgBurn popped up a msg saying "ISO is not an appropriate container format for the current disc but today is your lucky day and i will make the necessary adjustments".

After it was converted to iso though, I couldnt mount the iso with daemon tools, and also when trying to apply the patch it said "Opening ISO File ... Failed".

Did you see that inappropriate container format message mezbup? Any Suggestions?

yay, i tried all over again and it worked this time

You should be able to play the bin/cue file directly without converting it... Unless you're making a disk.

ropsta Wrote:You should be able to play the bin/cue file directly without converting it... Unless you're making a disk.

It's quite an involved process to get this game to work on a real playstation which is the goal here. It has to be patched to over ride the anti-modchip protection and to patch it it has to be in ISO format hence the need for the conversion.

I tried patching the cue/bin but to no avail, converted to an ISO then patched it and it worked

If you want to play it try play it on an emulator you can just use the cue/bin files straightaway. The problem I had with that was the emu would often freeze and the battle menu came up super flickery... and I have a real PSX so course I'm gonna play it on that!

You might prefer to play PS2 games with full voicing so that you can hear all the dialogue spoken and shown on the screen; that can save a lot of time looking up kanji -- although the FF's have automatic advancing dialogue so that's not so good.

yudantaiteki Wrote:You might prefer to play PS2 games with full voicing so that you can hear all the dialogue spoken and shown on the screen; that can save a lot of time looking up kanji -- although the FF's have automatic advancing dialogue so that's not so good.

I hated FFX.

I definitely plan on playing through FF3!!!

I hate it when it auto advances cos sometimes you don't get to read it all but the good thing is it forces you to read fast. It happens sometimes in FF8 but I catch enough of it.

I managed to watch half of K-On whilst level grinding on the beach outside the garden hehe. That's such a cute little show. Slowly noticing that Japanese has become such a big part of my life that my environment has become mostly Japanese through choice rather than feeling forced It's nice to live in a different language. Just gotta stop frequenting here so much!

I have often been wondering about the legitimacy of playing a FF-like game in japanese...
One could point out that the japanese is very basic and doesn t really prepare you to read newspaper or novel or technical book
but as a first step it would be easy to counter that it allows the user to grow accustomed to read japanese
same thing goes for the very specific vocabulary used in this kind of game....

No what s really bothering me is the main feature of FF-like game
no matter how much gorgeous CGI they put into it,no matter how good it looks , no matter how intricate is the plot , in the end it all comes down to the battle system/leveling up .How do you do that ? by playing hundred of hours repeating the same pattern ,going through the same menu and command , killing the same monster for the umpeth time .... hundred of hours which could be devoted to watching a movie , reading a book, reading a japanese forum , writing an email ,etc... all of which much more effective to improve your japanese ability .

I really think a distinction should be made between games which can be of some help to your japanese ability (adventure game being the most obvious choice) and time consuming game .

JRPGs are one of my favorite "learning resources"! My first serious JRPG in Japanese (without aid of walkthrough or translation guide) was Final Fantasy 5, one of my very favorite games in the series and quite easy to understand. Since then, I've yet to play through another JRPG in its entirety, but I plan to do so again very soon (Lunar remake on PSP is tempting).

Oh, and to add a little more fuel to the fire... my favorite FF games in descending order:

4 > 6 > 5 > 7 > 9 > 8 > 1 > 12 > 10

I've enjoyed them all to some extent, though found it difficult to force myself through the entirety of 12 and 10. I've never really played much of 2 or 3, and 11 doesn't count. Also, following Square's modern trends, I'm expecting 13 will land itself somewhere around 12 and 10 on my FF-o-meter, though I'd love to be wrong!

Aaaand that exceeds my daily recommended allowance of fanboyism.

ghinzdra Wrote:I really think a distinction should be made between games which can be of some help to your japanese ability (adventure game being the most obvious choice) and time consuming game .

...like FF12.

Burritolingus Wrote:4 > 6 > 5 > 7 > 9 > 8 > 1 > 12 > 10

Sorry, but the hilarity of that scene puts 10 ahead of 12 in my book.

ghinzdra Wrote:I have often been wondering about the legitimacy of playing a FF-like game in japanese...
One could point out that the japanese is very basic and doesn t really prepare you to read newspaper or novel or technical book
but as a first step it would be easy to counter that it allows the user to grow accustomed to read japanese
same thing goes for the very specific vocabulary used in this kind of game....

No what s really bothering me is the main feature of FF-like game
no matter how much gorgeous CGI they put into it,no matter how good it looks , no matter how intricate is the plot , in the end it all comes down to the battle system/leveling up .How do you do that ? by playing hundred of hours repeating the same pattern ,going through the same menu and command , killing the same monster for the umpeth time .... hundred of hours which could be devoted to watching a movie , reading a book, reading a japanese forum , writing an email ,etc... all of which much more effective to improve your japanese ability .

I really think a distinction should be made between games which can be of some help to your japanese ability (adventure game being the most obvious choice) and time consuming game .

What I do is watch shows during the leveling process (or do reviews!) because you don't have to concentrate on the game at all (only about 15%) when leveling up so you're free to watching movies, dorama, anime! Works like a charm if you ask me.

I wouldn't really call the Japanese "basic". It's not like a newspaper but then again only a newspaper is like a newspaper. Given the nature of the game most of the dialogue is very situational so you have a lot of explanation of situations, back and forth between characters, thinking to oneself which covers a wide range of expressions.

It's passive study and I think one should be passionate about their passive study. If you love dorama, watch heaps of it because you like to and absorb all it has to offer. Same goes with you're favourite RPG!

I'm thinking of playing through the beginning of FF7 just to get to the infamous "this guy are sick" part. That was always even funnier than the FFX laughing to me.

FF10 has its flaws, but if you overlook the stop/start first few hours and the awful American dub, it's got the most well-realised universe, the best battle system and perhaps even the best plot of the series. FF7 will always be my favourite, though.

On a slightly related note, the Famitsu review of FF13 was leaked recently. It got 39/40. The guy who docked a mark did so because of the linearity of the plot.

Did anyone see/hear that Bayonetta got 40/40 from Famitsu and 10/10 from Edge? First game to do so since Ocarina of Time. The only other one, actually.

[/offtopic]

FF9 sucks.

7>Tactics>4>10>6>8>12>5>9
[/being fourteen years old]

ghinzdra Wrote:I have often been wondering about the legitimacy of playing a FF-like game in japanese...
One could point out that the japanese is very basic and doesn t really prepare you to read newspaper or novel or technical book

The Japanese in a typical RPG is far from basic.

Quote:hundred of hours which could be devoted to watching a movie , reading a book, reading a japanese forum , writing an email ,etc... all of which much more effective to improve your japanese ability . .

But if you're interested in FF and not interested in those other things, it doesn't matter.

FF13 comes out in Japan one week from today (Dec 17th). I will have to go to my cave and temporarily remove myself from society next week ... :-)

I haven't had much chance lately, but I've been playing FFVIII as well. I didn't get to finish it the first time I played it, and don't really remember much about it now, though.

ghinzdra Wrote:No what s really bothering me is the main feature of FF-like game
no matter how much gorgeous CGI they put into it,no matter how good it looks , no matter how intricate is the plot , in the end it all comes down to the battle system/leveling up .How do you do that ? by playing hundred of hours repeating the same pattern ,going through the same menu and command , killing the same monster for the umpeth time .... hundred of hours which could be devoted to watching a movie , reading a book, reading a japanese forum , writing an email ,etc... all of which much more effective to improve your japanese ability .

I really think a distinction should be made between games which can be of some help to your japanese ability (adventure game being the most obvious choice) and time consuming game .

If someone didn't like games/RPGs, I wouldn't recommend playing them (except maybe sound novels and the like which are basically just novels as a video game). They aren't made to teach people (except obviously educational titles), they're made for entertain people who already know the language and don't need the tons of exposure someone who's studying it would need.

But if you would have wanted to play the game for enjoyment anyway, and you're studying Japanese, I don't see there being any harm in playing them in Japanese. You're doing something you'd have done for entertainment either way, but with the added benefit of getting some Japanese exposure as you do. It might not be the most efficient method of study, but if you're enjoying it then that's only going to help keep you motivated.