Just finished Orbonne Monastery (old content spoilers)...

I skipped Stormblood. Like, I wasn't subbed during that time frame, and I've never leveled an alt. through the content (I got about four hours in, decided I wasn't hooked like I had been in Heavensward, and boosted past it). So Orbonne Monastery was 'new' to me, as was the whole Ramza-Alma chain.

And, having just now completed it, I have to say: what utter crap that arc is. When the story wasn't shamelessly name-dropping Ivalice locations, sending you on pointless mid-action fetch quests, or dispatching you to raids that bore only the vaguest resemblance of source locations from FFT, it was employing the most basal narrative tropes imaginable (Ramza and Alma were named by some rando playwright after the real Ramza and Alma, grew up to look like them, and then are eventually partially possessed by the originals?... COME ON, MAN).

https://media1.tenor.com/images/bd3a...3818/tenor.gif

I think the most infuriating part - for me, at least - was fighting ridiculous, caricatured versions of Cid, Agrias, and Mustadio, all of whom, while auspiciously 'testing' the WoL, were aiming to kill, and were screeching like they were respectively all on drugs while doing it.

The beauty of FFT is its almost universal subtlety - characters act normal; are largely driven by banal, recognizable motives (greed, lust, honor, etc.) in an otherwise very lived-in, very rule-driven high fantasy setting. Apparently, that all went over the head of whoever wrote this garbage plot - it wasn't enough to have cutscenes littered with bad gags, or Ramza 2.0 acting like a complete prick. Nah, Agrias has to now be some ur-Paladin (I don't even recall her being a paladin. She just had some sword attacks), Mustadio a possessed sniper-rifle-wielding killbot, and Cid - having taken his battle moniker to apparent heart - an actual God of thunder. Top it all off with not even including Ovelia (I actually feel kind of blessed about her absence in retrospect), and SE managed to somehow complete the hat trick: turning me against my favorite Final Fantasy. Not satisfied with a **** sandwich, you managed to cook an entire **** banquet.

Congratulations: you suck at writing.

You do know that the rando playwright is a descendant of Orran and Alma, right?

What did you expect them to do with having to design a story based around short-lived mass battle content? You're looking at it from the wrong angles, I think.

Plus, you clearly didn't pay close attention to the story that went along with it, perhaps due to your apparent low patience mindset. That, "rando playwright," is the descendant of Orran Durai and Alma.

Also did you not notice Agrias, Mustadio, and TG Cid help you in the final battle, along with the soul of the real Ramza?

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

That, "rando playwright," is the descendant of Orran Durai and Alma.

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I know who he was. Know what being a 'to the power of XYZ' descendant of a bit part character makes you? A nobody.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I know who he was. Know what being a 'to the power of XYZ' descendant of a bit part character makes you? A nobody.

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Ahh yes, descendant of Alma, the girl possessed by Ultima, and the guy responsible for the Durai Reports, one of those, "universal subtleties" you seem so fond of sure were bit characters. Yep. Mhmm.

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

the guy responsible for the Durai Reports, one of those, "universal subtleties" you seem so fond of sure were bit characters. Yep. Mhmm.

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Yeah, also known a non-participant in 99% of FFT's story? This is like comparing the importance of a beat sports writer to the lineup of the '96 Bulls.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I skipped Stormblood. Like, I wasn't subbed during that time frame, and I've never leveled an alt. through the content (I got about four hours in, decided I wasn't hooked like I had been in Heavensward, and boosted past it). So Orbonne Monastery was 'new' to me, as was the whole Ramza-Alma chain.

And, having just now completed it, I have to say: what utter crap that arc is. When the story wasn't shamelessly name-dropping Ivalice locations, sending you on pointless mid-action fetch quests, or dispatching you to raids that bore only the vaguest resemblance of source locations from FFT, it was employing the most basal narrative tropes imaginable (Ramza and Alma were named by some rando playwright after the real Ramza and Alma, grew up to look like them, and then are eventually partially possessed by the originals?... COME ON, MAN).

https://media1.tenor.com/images/bd3a...3818/tenor.gif

I think the most infuriating part - for me, at least - was fighting ridiculous, caricatured versions of Cid, Agrias, and Mustadio, all of whom, while auspiciously 'testing' the WoL, were aiming to kill, and were screeching like they were respectively all on drugs while doing it.

The beauty of FFT is its almost universal subtlety - characters act normal; are largely driven by banal, recognizable motives (greed, lust, honor, etc.) in an otherwise very lived-in, very rule-driven high fantasy setting. Apparently, that all went over the head of whoever wrote this garbage plot - it wasn't enough to have cutscenes littered with bad gags, or Ramza 2.0 acting like a complete prick. Nah, Agrias has to now be some ur-Paladin (I don't even recall her being a paladin. She just had some sword attacks), Mustadio a possessed sniper-rifle-wielding killbot, and Cid - having taken his battle moniker to apparent heart - an actual God of thunder. Top it all off with not even including Ovelia (I actually feel kind of blessed about her absence in retrospect), and SE managed to somehow complete the hat trick: turning me against my favorite Final Fantasy. Not satisfied with a **** sandwich, you managed to cook an entire **** banquet.

Congratulations: you suck at writing.

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Now you know what happens when SJWism runs amok

The anger being displayed over this is diproportionally high compared to the import of this subject.

I mean, it was written by the guy who wrote FFT, so I would imagine he knows something about FFT. :P

And honestly I found it bad but FFT/XII aren't really good either, honestly felt pretty much the same.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

Yeah, also known a non-participant in 99% of FFT's story? This is like comparing the importance of a beat sports writer to the lineup of the '96 Bulls.

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Orran Durai is the ancestor of the narrator telling the story... you know, releasing the truth of history? It's more akin to when the Citizens' Commission to investigate the FBI brought COINTELPRO into the light.

His descendant in XIV has that same sort of plot thread.

The story wasn't top notch, in my opinion, but it was alright. A lot of Stormblood's stories were mediocre at best though. What the Ivalice raids mainly had going for them was nostalgia. From the locations, to the music and the bosses it was a walk down memory lane. Orbonne had my favorite boss out of all 3 of them though, which was Agrias. Her VA really sold it for me as she delivered some epic lines. I loved the raids themselves overall though. To each their own. They can't please everyone.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

The story wasn't top notch, in my opinion, but it was alright. A lot of Stormblood's stories were mediocre at best though. What the Ivalice raids mainly had going for them was nostalgia. From the locations, to the music and the bosses it was a walk down memory lane. Orbonne had my favorite boss out of all 3 of them though, which was Agrias. Her VA really sold it for me as she delivered some epic lines. I loved the raids themselves overall though. To each their own. They can't please everyone.

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I love, love, loved hers and Cid's voice lines. Especially Cid's. "The strongest of shields cannot defend the weakest of wills." "Misfortune hangs heavy on a head once held high. Such is poor cover for when the heavens fall." "To the current of life we succumb. Its judgment swift and final; its bite as cold as steel."

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Originally Posted by Vyrerus

"To the current of life we succumb. Its judgment swift and final; its bite as cold as steel."

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Every time Agrias says this one it gives me chills.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

Congratulations: you suck at writing.

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It was written by Matsuno, so...

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

The story wasn't top notch, in my opinion, but it was alright. A lot of Stormblood's stories were mediocre at best though. What the Ivalice raids mainly had going for them was nostalgia. From the locations, to the music and the bosses it was a walk down memory lane. Orbonne had my favorite boss out of all 3 of them though, which was Agrias. Her VA really sold it for me as she delivered some epic lines. I loved the raids themselves overall though. To each their own. They can't please everyone.

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I can't argue with the music. It did hurt not to hear Antidote played, though, considering it was essentially the Durai theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmWVGN9DXC0

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

It was written by Matsuno, so...

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Honestly given the TC has ignored this being brought up twice it makes the complaints feel somewhat insincere.

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Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

Honestly given the TC has ignored this being brought up twice it makes the complaints feel somewhat insincere.

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Either TeraRamis hasn't noticed the statement (twice), ergo has still no idea about who wrote the thing, or simply pretends to be nescient. :shrug: There's even a chance they have known said detail and are therefore making such whirlwind in their comment.

->Unless we get some reaction about the matter, it's a Schrödinger-question.

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Originally Posted by MelodyCrystel

Either TeraRamis hasn't noticed the statement (twice), ergo has still no idea about who wrote the thing, or simply pretends to be nescient. :shrug:

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I love it when people on this forum break out the thesaurus to try to sound extra smart. It seems to be a very common occurrence with this playerbase, and it never fails to leave me shaking my head.

I knew who it was written by - it's still crap. Maybe he'll read this thread and hang his head in shame.

By the way, while we're "hey, you haven't acknowledged XYZing" each other, nice work just glossing over the points made in the OP, not a one of which has an actual counter argument. Or are you prepared to nuzzle on up to the "Alma's long-lost descendants look identical to, are dressed like, and named after their famous predecessors" nonsense on which the entire arc is predicated?

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I love it when people on this forum break out the thesaurus to try to sound extra smart. It seems to be a very common occurrence with this playerbase, and it never fails to leave me shaking my head.

I knew who it was written by - it's still crap. Maybe he'll read this thread and hang his head in shame.

By the way, while we're "hey, you haven't acknowledged XYZing" each other, nice work just glossing over the points made in the OP, not a one of which has an actual counter argument. Or are you prepared to nuzzle on up to the "Alma's long-lost descendants look identical to, are dressed like, and named after their famous predecessors" nonsense on which the entire arc is predicated?

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You realise you're playing a JRPG right?

How did you find the quality of writing in FFXII? Which was also mostly written by Matsuno, with the first two-thirds at least being entirely representative of his writing.

I swear most of the acclaim for the writing of earlier games is mostly due to their poor quality graphics and thus leading to more ambiguity and allowing consumers to insert their own tones and nuances, thus improving the quality of said content in their heads.
Looking back without the rose-tints, games like FF7 and even Tactics, weren't anywhere near as well-written as their fans like to proclaim. Most seem to adopt the "ooooh it has politics, it's so high brow" mentality.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

You realise you're playing a JRPG right?

How did you find the quality of writing in FFXII? Which was also mostly written by Matsuno, with the first two-thirds at least being entirely representative of his writing.

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It was so boring that I stopped playing about halfway through. Everything about FFXII was wrong - the combat, the voice acting, the unnatural manner in which you traversed the world. It's a bad game.

I found the duties for Invalice to be pretty good. I'll admit the writing/story was extremely long but over all I didn't find it to be a problem. I enjoyed the story especially when Fran entered the scene.

It's an alliance raid side-story that was meant from the very beginning to be fan service for people who played Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. If you were expecting any more, then you were setting yourself up for disappointment and you're not going to find many here in the forums who sympathize with you.

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Originally Posted by TeraRamis

I love it when people on this forum break out the thesaurus to try to sound extra smart. It seems to be a very common occurrence with this playerbase, and it never fails to leave me shaking my head.

I knew who it was written by - it's still crap. Maybe he'll read this thread and hang his head in shame.

By the way, while we're "hey, you haven't acknowledged XYZing" each other, nice work just glossing over the points made in the OP, not a one of which has an actual counter argument. Or are you prepared to nuzzle on up to the "Alma's long-lost descendants look identical to, are dressed like, and named after their famous predecessors" nonsense on which the entire arc is predicated?

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I didn't gloss over them. I said that I found it about equally as good as FFT, they're both extremely boring and unexciting.

What a crap topic.

The point in the raid plot isn't to be a serious clone of the original Tactics games, rather just paying tribute to those concepts. Much like other plots in XIV do. Your taking this waaaaaay too serious bruh.

They found a way to make Tactics work for this game... which it needed to do because at the end of the day this isn't Tactics, this is a different world (that just happened to have a version of that game).

Most FF games are not related or connected and this one is no different. It did a crossover event and changed the original story to not connect the games but to make a history of the elements of one game exist in this one, which doesn't change the original story (because in it's own way that's still stand alone canon for Tactics)

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

It's an alliance raid side-story that was meant from the very beginning to be fan service for people who played Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. If you were expecting any more, then you were setting yourself up for disappointment and you're not going to find many here in the forums who sympathize with you.

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I feel like this is something people need to keep in mind with the Nier alliance raids too.

I've never played FFT. Been told it was good by multiple people. Never made the time to sit down with it, so I'll just believe them. My only experience with the world of FFT is through crossovers/cameos/references. And from what I've noticed there...Ivalice seems utterly incapable of introducing a character, or a macguffin or whatever. It always, always needs to bulldoze an entire continent with innumerable characters into its host game and integrate itself into that game's history/lore. That's...a way to do it I suppose. But again as someone who's never played FFT, *I*'m getting bored of Ivalice's "HI, DID YOU MISS ME?" shtick, and I've only ever been there through its initial full-bore world setting bulldoze into FF12.

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(I don't even recall her being a paladin. She just had some sword attacks

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Yeah, how could you ever mistake the girl who grew up in the church, served in a knightly order acting as the primary bodyguard for the royal family, using a school of swordplay known as the holy sword style, whose practitioners are called holy knights, and whose masters earn the title "sword saint", and has the driving character traits of loyalty, honor, and devotion, for a paladin.

CRAZY LEAPS OF LOGIC THERE

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I've never played FFT. Been told it was good by multiple people. Never made the time to sit down with it, so I'll just believe them. My only experience with the world of FFT is through crossovers/cameos/references. And from what I've noticed there...Ivalice seems utterly incapable of introducing a character, or a macguffin or whatever. It always, always needs to bulldoze an entire continent with innumerable characters into its host game and integrate itself into that game's history/lore. That's...a way to do it I suppose. But again as someone who's never played FFT, *I*'m getting bored of Ivalice's "HI, DID YOU MISS ME?" shtick, and I've only ever been there through its initial full-bore world setting bulldoze into FF12.

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Tactics is a good game, but not for everyone. The combat can take some getting used to and the story just kind of drags along in some places. Often times I found myself asking "who is this guy and why should I care?" about a majority of characters, but as a whole it's a solid game and story. I'd recommend the War of the Lions version that was released on the PSP because you get nice introductory cutscenes for some characters.

Tactics is probably my favorite video game, and the one I've put the most time into, but it's quirky and weird.

War of the Lions is better gameplay wise (though Balthier is yet another character in the "base class is overpowered" pile and Luso is... a thing that exists), but the original version has a lot more character.

Also, wotl goes WAAAAAAAY overboard with its ye olde englishe theethou nonsense.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

I feel like this is something people need to keep in mind with the Nier alliance raids too.

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I mean, the big issue here is Nier... isn't FF. It shouldn't be here. Fanserviceing an FF game is a big difference from something not connected in any meaningful way.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Snip.

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Yeah, that's pretty true. I blame it on the developers. Ivalice games don't seem to be exceptionally popular (you can tell as they've pretty much put an end to new ones, and even with the ease of which gacha games are made they couldn't manage to make Tactics S work out), but the developers for a number of things enjoy them so they pretty much just shove as much as they can into it. Though, as far as XII goes it is set in Ivalice, I wouldn't count it the same as XIV or RK or other examples.

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Originally Posted by Joven

Snip.

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For me it's just that Tactics... really is very clearly not an FF game. Later Ivalice games manage to integrate a bit better into it, but it's really very jarring and doesn't mesh with the others as well as it should. The story is extremely boring, characters once they join your team pretty much stop being relevant, so on and so forth. Honestly something it could really use is something along the lines of the support system from Fire Emblem, to give characters some time to get fleshed out. But even then I don't think it would fix the core issues. It's just too much "medieval Europe but if the Church was right and demons exist" which... is not a setting I want to explore.

Again later Ivalice games at least manage to do moderately better, but they still suffer from a lot of the same issues of characters just not being very developed, the world is extremely drab, lack of comedy, so on and so forth. Ironically the games that manage to do a bit better on this are the ones Ivalice fans hate too.

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Originally Posted by MirronTulaxia

For me it's just that Tactics... really is very clearly not an FF game. Later Ivalice games manage to integrate a bit better into it, but it's really very jarring and doesn't mesh with the others as well as it should. The story is extremely boring, characters once they join your team pretty much stop being relevant, so on and so forth. Honestly something it could really use is something along the lines of the support system from Fire Emblem, to give characters some time to get fleshed out. But even then I don't think it would fix the core issues. It's just too much "medieval Europe but if the Church was right and demons exist" which... is not a setting I want to explore.

Again later Ivalice games at least manage to do moderately better, but they still suffer from a lot of the same issues of characters just not being very developed, the world is extremely drab, lack of comedy, so on and so forth. Ironically the games that manage to do a bit better on this are the ones Ivalice fans hate too.

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To be fair when a character joins you their part in the story has essentially been wrapped up and they're just along for the ride to see how the rest of Ramza's story plays out.

What really constitutes a "Final Fantasy" game though? As far as I know it checks all the right boxes: it's got classes with specific roles in the party, mystical spells to cast and monster to summon, iconic monsters to fight, the minor conflicts that reveal a greater threat and a turn-based combat system. The only thing I can see that's missing are airships and magitek. That's one of the best parts of the Final Fantasy franchise is that it's not bound to a particular style. For the most part Tactics is more of a traditional Final Fantasy game like I-VI than games like Crystal Chronicles, Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core. Or even any game past VII (outside of IX).

It's OK if it wasn't to your liking, but I think it still deserves the title of Final Fantasy.

1. My issue is mostly that they should be more developed. I honestly don't feel you get to know the characters very well, mostly it's just constant drama and then they join and that's it.

2. I could very easily go into it in detail, but putting it most broadly as I said the setting is too real world based.

3. I very strongly disagree, it needs some major changes honestly.