I’ve loved most of the Final Fantasy games. But the PS1 games (the golden era) were the worst about this.
Pre-PS1 typically required more thought. You had to balance magic use, item use, and of course melee. But even then you had to debate whether to spend a turn reviving your healer or try to get the victory before a team wipe.
Post PS1 you had X’s rock paper scissors battle. You had to figure out who could attack who. It wasn’t too complicated but it forced variety.
XII streamlined the auto attacking and allowed you to focus on the exceptions (enemy weak against fire, use silence, cure). That could be automated too, but I liked to handle that myself.
XIII & XIII-2 forced you to balance your jobs/classes constantly in battle.
Lightning Returna, XV, and XVI were real time.
Tactics was PS1, but it definitely required more than just attack.
The PS1 games, for the most part, could be dominated with “press X”. Most of the strategy took place outside of battle.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
I played FFX for like, 20 hours give or take. The combat wasn’t so obnoxious in that games like previous ones. But then I got to the Seymour Wedding part, what I can only describe as "defeat all these enemies in order with no save points in between and if you werent prepared with 30 billion healing items and Lulu (the GOAT) gets killedz your game is basically softlocked. Beat that (thank you savestate scumming) and was already not having fun but that cutscene at the end of that part was frustrating to me. It felt like every character was acting extremely out of character, except maybe Seymour, and it was at that point that I decided I wasn’t having fun anymore and didn’t really care enough to try to potentially suffer more of that.
I really tried to like Final Fantasy. I want to like it. I just don’t like that kind of gameplay experience.
Soggy@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
That part is like only like five fights against humans and robots, the only tricky part is the kicky robots will ruin you if you save them for last. And you’ve been without Yuna for a bit by that point so somebody (Kimahri or Rikku) should be filling in the healer role already. It is a weird and kinda weak story sequence but I think the game starts improving after that point.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
This is certainly a good strategy but this probably assumes the player has been grinding levels. I don’t do that. I play the storyline, and do absolutely no extra grinding because it is boring. I must have been underleveled because those “just humans and robots” were getting a TPK in 2 or 3 turns of combat on I think the 4th group.
Sad to hear the game gets better, but honestly it took me 20+ hours to get to that point and I wasn’t absolutely loving the game. By the time I quit, I just kept thinking that I wished I could play as Jecht instead of Tidus. Jecht had a better design and his voice acting seemed less annoying. I understand the specific voice acting quirks of FFX, but it sure sounded like Tidus’ english actor was some random Square picked up off the street and paid $50 to read the lines. Along with other annoyances, I just decided dropping it was probably for the best. Lulu was my favorite character, with Jecht or Auron being second place. Seymour was good as a character, I just didn’t like him.