General RPG Thread

[Leo656]

I'm sure it's been done, but oh well. I am way too lazy to dig and I have stuff to do today.

But let's talk about RPGs! Since the Ocarina of Time thread became ensnared in Final Fantasy talk, I felt like we could move some of it Over Here.

As I've said, I love RPGs. I've played many more than I've completed, sadly.

Some of my all-time favorites are Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasy VII, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Kingdom Hearts, the Paper Mario series, X-Men Legends, and Justice League Heroes. I also own several dozen I have yet to play but look forward to finally getting to.

Obviously, I have no preference as far as style or type of RPG. Japanese, Western, European, turn-based, action-style... doesn't really matter to me.

I also think it's really awesome how RPG elements like "leveling up" and open-world exploration and so forth have become cross-pollinated into so many other genres, like shooters and action games. To me, this has been a wonderful thing across the board.

Discuss! Favorites, least-favorites, hidden gems, things that blew you away or took you by surprise... go nuts.

[neatoman]

So I got Dragon Quest I-III and XI on Switch. I like XI but I noticed the default setting for combat is essentially self-playing and that many other settings just allows you to tweak how the game is playing itself. I've noticed I-III are pretty similar in that regard as well. I know DQ is the RPG series in Japan but is that the reason? That the player doesn't have to be that active? I see why that would appeal to children but I find that it makes the game a little too easy. Alternatively, I guess part of could be that the character design is done by one of the most successful Manga artists ever. I also noticed that, in comparison to Final Fantasy and most other JRPG games, the plot tends to be less complicated and more goofy. Think like slightly more complex than most Zelda games and containing much of the goofier charm of Zelda.

I can also see how the series influenced Pokémon. Aside from the obvious part about V and VI allowing you to recruit random encounter monsters to fight by your side like in Pokémon, they both share a tendency have silly attack names and cute monsters. I see why the creators of Pokémon would try to emulate Dragon Quest, not only does it make sense to copy what (is in their neck of the woods) the biggest thing and there are certainly things to enjoy about it. But it makes we wonder why Pokémon is such a big international success while DQ is still really just big in Japan?

[Prowler]

I did make a thread about JRPGs a few years ago, but we can just start a new discussion here. Doesn't really matter.

Anyway, my first RPG experience, like many people of my generation was Pokémon Red. It offers more opportunities when choosing your party since there's 151 pokemon available in the game. And even if you didn't have anyone to trade exclusives with you still had a very large pool to choose from.

For years I assumed Zelda was an RPG game. So that should tell you about my knowledge of RPGs when I was a kid. Zelda does have a few RPG elements but it most definitely isn't one.

My 2nd RPG was Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga for the GBA. Played it in 2005. I liked it.

I grew up with a SNES but didn't grow up with any of its RPGs. I guess my brother just didn't care about those kinds of games. Plus I'm not sure RPG games were thst big in Europe before FF7 and Pokémon RBY took the world by storm. Europe didn't even get some SNES RPG games like Earthbound and Super Mario RPG for some odd reason.

My 3rd RPG was FFX on the PS2 in 2009.

Well, it's a genre with LONG games. Instead of going through levels like in platformers, RPGs offer more strategic battles in terms of items to use, builds for each party member, etc. Random encounters could be a bit annoying at times when you're stuck in a cave but still...

I guess I do like the genre. But there aren't many RPGs I've played and beaten as of today so far.

My favourites would be Pokémon in general. But I also loved Dragon Quest VIII. I liked FFX a lot too.

I'm yet to beat Earthbound and Shining Force II. I need to give KOTOR another go sometime as well.

What about games that aren't pure RPGs but a hybrid of RPG with another genre? Like the Deus EX series. That's a mix of stealth, FPS and RPG. I really enjoyed Deus EX Human Revolution. There should be more game series like that.

[neatoman]

I guess I might as well bring this up, what qualifies as an RPG? Does it have to build on DnD rules or is there something else to it?

[Andrew NDB]

Highlights of mine:

* The Dragon Warrior/Quest series. Amazing memories. I played I-VIII and XI (X was online only). Apparently XI is even a prequel to the Erdrick saga! Less so now, but it became very apparent very quickly when the Square/Enix merger happened, Dragon Quest was largely buried.

* The Final Fantasy series. Also amazing memories, but largely earlier on. When I saw FF II (IV) on SNES it mesmerized me. I had to have it and it didn't disappoint at all. Then I went back and played I, played III (VI) and then years pass and I was able to play all the ones we didn't get from Japan (the true FF II, the true FF III, and FF V) on translated ROMs/emulation. I wasn't impressed with 7 at all. 8 I liked a little more. 9 was great in its own way, and pretty darn tough. 10 was bittersweet in that is was graphically awesome and it had a great story with a scary enough villain... but sad in that it was the beginning of the end of Final Fantasy as we knew it. It's never recovered beyond FF XII's offering.

* The Ultima series. Wow. Holy sh**. Ultima VII: The Black Gate was revolutionary for the time it came out on PC. Graphics way better than SNES and you can lead a party of like 5 people across a vast open world of continents and islands and caves and you name it. There's wildlife you can kill and hunt for their meat, jobs you can work if you want to earn money, or you can go around and just massacre whole towns. WAY ahead of its time in 1992 and what an awesome story. Highly, highly underrated. Terrible to see Electronic Arts do what they always do which is buy up and bury great properties like this one.

* Quest for Glory series. Also amazing. There's a humor here, but it has a definite edge and it's pretty cool how different they make the setting in each game. Super underrated and it's a shame we never got a part 6.

* Chrono series. Chrono Trigger is timeless, of course, and I just re-beat it a couple of weeks ago. Chrono Cross was batsh** crazy, too, in the best possible way. I'm enjoying playing the remastered version now. Now it is CRIMINAL there isn't a Chrono Trigger part 3 by now. Criminal. They could have easily grown Chrono Trigger into something that would have dwarfed Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Instead they just leave it sitting in the past in a corner like some forgotten toy. Moronic.

[Prowler]

Neatoman, from what I gather, Dragon Quest is a series that doesn't innovate or change anything significant in its games. It is just a pure and safe RPG experience and mechanics. It also doesn't have art, graphics and overworlds as flashy as the ones in Final Fantasy.

Also, while I did not find DQ8 difficult it definitely is less noob friendly than FFX or Pokémon games. There's longer distances between save points than in FFX and you're expected to deplete your resources along the way. And if a party member dies you have to pay a fee at the church to ressurect them.

So I'm not surprised Final Fantasy became Square's biggest RPG series.

[Bahamut810]

I just got done with the FF6 pixel remaster. They did well by it...it looks amazing and keeps the story.

Im currently playing FF14, the JRPG MMO.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Neatoman, from what I gather, Dragon Quest is a series that doesn't innovate or change anything significant in its games. It is just a pure and safe RPG experience and mechanics. It also doesn't have art, graphics and overworlds as flashy as the ones in Final Fantasy.

Also, while I did not find DQ8 difficult it definitely is less noob friendly than FFX or Pokémon games. There's longer distances between save points than in FFX and you're expected to deplete your resources along the way. And if a party member dies you have to pay a fee at the church to ressurect them.

So I'm not surprised Final Fantasy became Square's biggest RPG series.

The early Final Fantasies were pretty much the same as the Dragon Quest/Warrior ones. It was FF that abandoned their mechanics, not DQ. And DQ outsold FF in Japan up until Square-Enix buried DQ and put 9 out on Nintendo DS.

And I spent years playing FFXI, the previous (and still going) MMORPG.

[Leo656]

Way back in the day, many magazines and strategy guides classified the first two Zelda games as RPGs. They technically are not in the strictest sense, but they do have a lot of RPG elements such as gaining levels and strength, open-world exploration, a certain level of freedom in how you choose to engage with the world around you and what order you choose to do things in... you can even choose your character name in some of them.

What classifies any game as an RPG is a bit broad, but going from one of my 80s-era strategy guides which had an extensive section on what defined each different genre of gameplay, the basic gist of what makes a game an RPG is that you are not simply playing as a character and moving them from A to B in linear fashion, not simply guiding that character through a world... but rather, you BECOME that character, having control over what they do and when, and how. You choose how they develop, to a degree what choices they make, where they go and when... obviously all games have scripted elements to them, but it's basically the immersion and freedom and control that make a game an RPG. Back in the day, a turn-based combat system such as Dungeons & Dragons was a major identifying component as well, but obviously that's no longer the case.

In many ways, we have the Zelda series to thank for that, since those games are heavily, heavily inspired by typical RPG elements without adhering strictly to any genre definition. Thus, a case has been made that The Legend of Zelda was if not the first, than one of the very first games to be known as an "Action RPG", since it combined tons of RPG elements with others that were more common in standard action and adventure games of the time. It defied convention, but it MOSTLY was made up of various RPG elements, which is why it was often classified as one despite not quite fitting in that box in the strictest sense. By the time the SNES Zelda came out, more and more magazines and guides were using the "Action RPG" label.

The biggest thing missing from most Zelda games which people expect from a straightforward RPG is simply that you generally don't "level up" or have Hit Points in the typical sense... but you DO get stronger and gain new abilities as you go along, which is very much in the RPG fashion. They just did it a little differently than what was typical at the time.

One reason I'm not a huge fan of labels just in general, is that there are so many things which don't neatly fit into any standard definition. Like how the Zelda games aren't strictly "RPG"s... but they mostly are. We see things defying convention more now than ever, since lots of RPG elements have been popping up in everything from action games to shooters to racing games in recent years.
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I've heard so many great things about Ultima, but it seems like a very dense series to try and get into. I only have the first NES one, whichever one that was, and I haven't played it yet but the Walkthrough for it is longer than the f*cking Bible... for an NES game! That makes me afraid I'm going to be overwhelmed, as I hear there are all kinds of little nuances and intricacies to the game that make it very hard to master. One day, I hope to check it out.

I know the NES versions were the "bastard" ones and a pale shade of their proper PC versions, but I'm not equipped to play any of the PC ones, although I would like to. I've read about the series a lot, and it seems very interesting and was apparently very, very popular before they made the jump to 3D and added a bunch of stuff to dumb the whole thing down and appease console gamers, which in turn enraged PC gamers. Apparently the last two were not very good, and sold poorly, which is why they never made any more of them. Pretty sure I heard the last one wasn't even finished but EA made them ship it anyway because it was way over budget, or something to that effect.
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The first RPG I ever actually saw was Dragon Warrior for NES. Seemed really cool but I never actually played it until about two years ago. Obviously it was very quaint to play now, but I still have the ability to see things through the lens of when they were released and I can completely understand what a revelation that game must have been upon its release, that and Final Fantasy. The first Final Fantasy is better than the first Dragon Quest/Warrior, but the whole genre was still kind of finding its way so a lot of what holds DW back are understandable things. It's a very basic, simple, straightforward "Knight Kills Dragon, Saves Kingdom" story, complete with rescuing and marrying a Princess and all that. That hadn't been done entirely to death yet, by that point, so it's perfectly fine. FF and all of the DW/DQ sequels aimed a lot higher and did a lot more, but the first game being so simplistic is entirely forgivable in my opinion.

Talk about a grind-fest, though! There are SO many stretches in that game where you spend hours upon hours killing the same three monster types over and over again, because if you go anywhere outside of general area you're in the other monsters can one-hit kill you. And there are very few "big moments" in the game's story to break up the monotonous grinding, so it can be very tedious at times.

The whole middle of the first game is a slog, basically. I had a lot of fun in the beginning and near the end, but my enthusiasm drifted somewhat during the in-between. Because there was just SO much grinding. I still like the game a lot, it's just very, very of its time.
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I'm not surprised that Final Fantasy became the more popular RPG brand in America because right from the beginning, it was more dynamic than Dragon Quest. They weren't afraid to play with tropes and expectations, put more personality into their characters, etc. It took the DQ/DW series a bit longer to get into that kind of groove.

Dragon Quest is a great series, the games just tend to be a bit more "dry" than your typical Final Fantasy. That's been my observation, anyway.
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I know I've mentioned this before, but I played the Final Fantasy games completely out of order. I only played I and II on the Origins Collection for PS1, and I think that was somewhere around 2004 or so. I liked them both a lot, but I get why some people hate II. The leveling system is completely f*cking broken, but you can work around it. I had fun with it but it's definitely an odd duck.

[Leo656]

I'm not sure why I never got into Pokemon, aside from two main reasons.

Firstly, I was almost done with high school when the first games came out, and despite all the magazines raving about how that didn't matter and they were fun games for anyone of any age, they were clearly designed and marketed to kids so that was a bit of a turn-off. Like, this is just anecdotal, but in my grade and my age group, Pokemon was just not a thing. You didn't see the Juniors and Seniors walking around wearing Pokemon shirts, or asking to trade monsters or anything like that. You saw it with the Freshmen, a little bit, but even among them it was the smaller, "nerdy" kids. The gamers in my grade were all about FFVII, excited about FFVIII, and otherwise were balls-deep into stuff like Tony Hawk and Quake. If any of them were playing Pokemon, they kept that entirely to themselves.

Obviously nowadays it's a super-popular franchise beloved by people of all ages, and that's cool. But when it was new, it definitely had the "little kids' game" stink on it. Plus, it wasn't "cool" to be huge into Japanese culture yet, so if you were one of the kids who were talking about Pokemon or Sailor Moon you were probably one of the kids who got wedgies at lunch. It was stupid, obviously, but that's how it was in some places at that very specific moment in time.

The second reason I never played Pokemon back then was a much simpler and more straightforward one... I didn't have a Game Boy. And as I said before, if I did I wouldn't have had any friends to play with anyway so I wouldn't have had the full desired effect. But that's whatever, the main thing is just that I didn't have a Game Boy. If I did, would I have played it? Eh, very possibly. If I'd actually seen someone playing it at the time, it probably would have seemed cool enough. There was only so much I could ascertain from screenshots in magazines, so there wasn't much urgency around it for me. I wasn't gonna run out and buy a Game Boy just for that, it just wasn't on my radar.

I'd have no idea where to even begin nowadays, though. It's amazing what the franchise grew into, how popular it got and how many games there are. Pretty neat. It's never been "my thing" but I mean, it got millions of people into RPGs and video games in general, people who might otherwise not have bothered. That's impressive and inspiring.

[Prowler]

That explains why Zelda was called an RPG my a lot of people for years.

Well game genres are kind of like music and movie genres. A lot of them don't fit just one genre or its strict definition of it. It's not like such things are scientifically classified like animal species are, for example. So yeah, Zelda does indeed have RPG elements to it. It just simply isn't the first game I'd use as an example of an RPG game.

I believe OOT was 3-4 years in development. Took Nintendo a long time to finish it. It's not a rushed game at all unlike Wind Waker.

My brother was definitely one of the people who fell for the "you can obtain the Triforce in the game" prank lol

Well I played DQ8. While it's not as flashy as some FF games are, the cast of characters is simple yet charming. Also, another thing FF probably has an advantage over it is the fact the main character talks and has a personality. DQ's Hero doesn't. He's supposed to be the player. Which is why he doesn't even have a name and you have to name him when you start a game.

My brother must have been the only 16 year old guy in Portugal to pre order Pokémon Red at a store and go there 3 times asking if it had arrived yet. He bought it because he read great things about it in magazines. And he did enjoy the game.

...but he disliked everything else about the franchise. He saw a couple of episodes of the anime and didn't like it. Not only was it too different but it was obviously not aimed at HS students. He was a fan of the game itself but jot a fan of Pokémon itself. He didn't buy a pokemon game ever again and when I asked him why he simply said "I just figured they're all basically the same thing"... and he's bit wrong.

So yeah, someone who was 15-18 at the time Pokémon came out in the West is very unlikely to have become a fan of it for the reasons you've stated. It was marketed to kids under the age of 12.

It's a shame the games suffer from it because they're generally good games. But that's how the Pokémon Company markets the franchise. Every generation it tries to get a new generation of kids into the series and makes them beg their parents to buy the newest game in the series. And a new anime series focused on the current gen games also comes out for that same purpose.

[DarkFell]

Does Okami count as an RPG?

Otherwise..

Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and eventually, Majora's Mask.

Sword Of Vermillion.

Pokemon G1. (I was annoyed that Kadabra was removed from the later games because Uri Geller wanted extra $$$$$$ by whining that Kadabra had his likeness.)

Final Fantasy 10.

Primal.

Gauntlet: Legends, Dark Legacy, & Seven Sorrows.

Devil May Cry 1.

A Castlevania N64 game that I forgot the name for. (Whoops.)

The Golden Compass.

Banjo Kazooie.

[TMNTFanatic4Life]

I remember about 20 years ago walking into KB Toys and buying a copy of FFVII and beating it with Cloud, Tifa and Vincent around level 54….became my favorite game of all time. Then the Remake came and I got nostalgic so I went back last year and beat the game again, this time via PSN on the PS3. And I went all out this time. I maxed out my entire party to 99 with all of their limit breaks and weapons. I also got every single Materia, items, accessories and summons. And beat both Emerald and Ruby Weapons.

Oh and did all of the Chocobo breeding to the S Ranking!

Knights of Round mime plus double cast is how I beat Ruby and Emerald….still a challenge because of their stupidly high HP but that way takes them down in good time.

I died like 3 times in the entire game. Once early on because it’s had been years since I really played any kind of games so I had to get used to the controls again but once I did, I was rolling! And I died 2 times against the Midgar Zolom because of the attack he does once you get him to 1/3 of his remaining HP where he flicks away your last party member….I eventually got good timing and finally beat him on my 3rd attempt before he did that attack lol

Sephiroth’s final form HP varies on how high your party’s level is so at 99….yeah he was seemly annoying as Emerald and Ruby’s HP but I dusted him pretty quick with a couple turns of Knight of Rounds.

Overall, I enjoyed my time playing FF7. I really enjoyed listening to the music soundtrack….got me pumped up during battles. I sunk into the story and characters and the cutscenes for the PS1 tech at the time….beautiful!


Oh and the game was pretty easy for me…even as daunting as Ruby and Emerald were because I was so leveled up early on. Like I would spend hours and hours just leveling up. I was at Level 70 at the end of Disc 1. Spent a lot of time in Junon leveling up at the section where you ring a bell and get high leveled machines to beat on. And even easier once I obtained Knights of Round. So here I went on a very high level run which but in FF8, I went a completely different route which I will write about in another post

[Leo656]

Prowler: Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You can excusably describe Zelda games as RPGs, but if someone asks you "What is an RPG?" you almost certainly would not pick Zelda as your first example. You'd most likely say, "Like Dungeons & Dragons" or "Like Final Fantasy", depending on who you were talking to and which one they'd be more familiar with. I'd probably use D&D as my example simply because even non-video game players are at least aware of it.

Oh, man, the Triforce in Ocarina. I remember it wasn't until the game was over before I was like, "Wait a minute... you didn't even get the Triforce, this time!" And that felt kinda like a rip. Like the game had everything BUT that. Some people were pissed. Which is why that particular prank/April Fool's Joke was so easy to believe. Not me, though; I never took anything in any April issue of any video game magazine seriously until I knew the following month what was real and what was a joke. That one was inspired, though.

Dragon Quest VIII was considered to be something of a revival for the franchise. For one thing, most of the previous few games weren't released in North America, and even then everything after the first NES game had gone completely under the radar here. The sequels were better games, but for whatever reason they didn't catch on like the first one did - I guess because the sequels didn't come free with a Nintendo Power subscription, and so they weren't in as many homes. You'd think people who liked the first game would have bought the sequels, but for whatever reason they didn't. I guess they got their fix, or figured the sequels would be more or less the same, or something. I'm not sure what it was, but only the first game really caught on and so just like Final Fantasy, a lot of the sequels didn't make it here until the remakes many years later.

But with FF7 and FF8 came the "RPG Boom", and suddenly those games were all the rage, which was a perfect opportunity to "relaunch" Dragon Quest in North America a few years later (under its proper name, this time). Specifically, as Final Fantasy got further and further away from the typical JRPG formula, there was a growing audience of fans who wanted something more "traditional". DQ8 fit right in that groove and was exactly what a lot of people were looking for.

But again, for whatever reason, things kind of tapered off quickly and so most of the subsequent games didn't make as much noise.
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Okami is more typically referred to as an "Action Adventure" game. There's a few RPG elements but the game itself is pretty linear, for one thing, and there's not a lot of freedom of choice in how you play it or what you do. I'd go so far as to say the RPG influence is minimal, and that it's much more of an action game.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by TMNTFanatic4Life

Overall, I enjoyed my time playing FF7. I really enjoyed listening to the music soundtrack….got me pumped up during battles. I sunk into the story and characters and the cutscenes for the PS1 tech at the time….beautiful!

I really do love the music, but at one point when I was a teenager I went through a phase where the in-game music for most games started to bore me, so I'd listen to other stuff. For some reason, the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack was my go-to CD for playing FF7, and Juke Joint Jezebel was the song I'd always blast for the Boss fights. That quickly became one of my favorite songs of all time; that game and that CD are forever linked in my memory.

I was a little bit disappointed with how easy Sephiroth is to beat if you have Knights of the Round. For years all I'd heard about was the epic final battle - just that "It's easier if you have Knights of the Round" - but nobody told me you could zip through it in two minutes like that. I guess you could always choose not to use it, but I sincerely thought that the fight was gonna be a lot harder and therefore I'd "have" to. Next time I play it I'll give it a try without using it, see what happens.

And I don't care what anyone says, I know everyone hates "Advent Children" but I love that stupid f*cking movie. If you're gonna do fan-wank, you might as well go completely dick-and-balls-out. Plus, that f*cking soundtrack and the revised Sephiroth theme. F*cking magic. I don't care, I know people say Advent Children is terrible, they're smoking crack.

[Prowler]

Well, in Europe it was similar. The PS1 Final Fantasy games and Pokémon on the Game Boy were pretty much what introduced people to RPGs here.

Okay that makes sense about DQ8. It's a very liked game among western fans of the series indeed. I've heard great things about DQ7 as well, but I didn't buy it. It's also available on the 3DS.

I'd like to play it someday but I heard it's even bigger than 8. And Dragon Quest 8 was HUGE already. It's one of the longos games of all time. I've been told that on your first plathrough you can take up to 100-120 hours beating the story alone on Dragon Quest 7. And then there's a lot more time sunk in the game with sidequests and the post game content. Like holy ****.

I spent over 100 hours on DQ8, and if 7 is even longer then oh boy. I'm gonna need a lot of time for that. And the older one gets the harder it gets to get into huge games. That's also why I didn't buy Fire Emblem Three Houses either. Heard it has 80 hours of story ALONE.

I know the first 3 or so DQ games are available for the Switch. They have a few QoL improvements to make them more up to date from what I've heard.

I don't own XI or the Builders game yet. I'm not sure what Builders is about exactly. It's more of a spinoff title o think.

[Prowler]

Okami is a Zelda clone. So it definitely has RPG elements to it. But like Zelda, I'd never use it as an example of what an RPG game is.

Kinda like if someone asks me to name typical metal bands I'm not gonna mention Slipknot or Korn. "Pure" metal is stuff like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Nu Metal is barely accepted as being actual metal by most metalheads.

[Leo656]

I always say, "Now that I'm older I'm less inclined to play long games"... until I play them. I think I sunk over 200 hours into Elder Scrolls: Oblivion last year and I still need to go back and do the Shivering Isles DLC one of these days. And I purposely avoided a bunch of Guilds and side quests because I was trying to be a purely virtuous character. It all just flew by, too. Granted, it helped because with the pandemic and all there was f*ck-all else to do, but it was definitely one of those games where every minute I wasn't playing it, it was all I could think about.

Still gotta play Skyrim, too. Jesus.

I actually really love that kinda sh*t, it's just that I make it a point to space those games out with other stuff, because if I didn't do that I'd never play anything else. I have a friend who for a while only really played Skyrim and little else for a very long time, and that's cool and all but I just couldn't do that. I have thousands of games, I can't just play One forever. But every now and then I do love being able to really sink my teeth into something for months. But when it's done, I pretty much need to spend a year or so playing Anything Else, for a while.

[Prowler]

I'd love to play Skyrim someday, but I'm not getting the Switch version because it has no mods. And Skyrim is the type of game that is supposed to be played on PC with mods.

Ofc the fact it's apparently very long also makes me postpone it.

The Monster Hunter games are others im curious about but everyone sinks 300 hours into every single game of the series. Meanwhile I have other **** to play.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I really do love the music

FF7's "One Winged Angel" was definitely on my playlist for a long time.

And I don't care what anyone says, I know everyone hates "Advent Children" but I love that stupid f*cking movie. If you're gonna do fan-wank, you might as well go completely dick-and-balls-out. Plus, that f*cking soundtrack and the revised Sephiroth theme. F*cking magic. I don't care, I know people say Advent Children is terrible, they're smoking crack.

It's not even a movie. It's a J-Pop music video. And Sephiroth comes back to life, clothes and all how again?

That thing was infuriating. As even FF7's writers admitted, they weren't able to give the game a proper ending (or at least the ending they wanted). Here we are, years later and they're making a relatively big budget FF7 sequel movie... and they make nothing of it. Nothing. No character evolutions, no resolutions of anything, the Cloud-Tifa thing, nothing. It was just noise.