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What are opinions you've had that've changed over the years? Can be any sort of change in opinion regarding any videogame.

Interestingly, the thought came to me due to the usually large amount of accusations of flip-flopping that come with any election year. In politics, nobody wants to change their mind, but I find it rather pleasant when it happens in other areas. Namely-- videogames!

One major transformation for me was the way I remember FFIX. When I was first playing through it, I was somewhat unimpressed. I enjoyed it well enough, but I'd just finished FFVII (which if not a better game is at least flashier one), and, since it was only the fourth (proper) RPG I'd ever played, my fond memories of FFX still set the bar impossibly high. Since then, in no small part due to the fact that most of the people in chat really love FFIX, my regard for it has grown. Another reason might be that I tend to alternate between being in the mood for guns/futuristic RPGs and swords/knights RPGs; I enjoyed FFXIII, but upon completing it I was ready to lean back towards FFIX's world.

I enjoyed FFVIII a lot while playing it, and I still consider it one of my favorites. However, I didn't get why people liked the track Man With the Machine Gun so much. It always seemed to come up in discussion as one of the best tracks from that game, and even as one of the more impressive tracks in the series. Even when we did that big music bracket voting competition here at CoN a couple years back (holy crap, a couple years back already?), I didn't like it. For whatever reason, though, it's really grown on me in the past couple years. I really don't know why.

My opinion on FFXII changed as I was playing it. I got through the first fifteen hours or so and wasn't really on board with it. There were lots of deserts, and then that mine, and I was just kinda lukewarm. I ended up taking a break of about half a year from it, even. Upon completing another game, I came back to FFXII and started bogging through it, and after a few hours I found myself in more enjoyable parts of the game. I think the reason here was that the first bit of the game is more story-driven: since FFXII's story is kinda crap, it wasn't doing it for me. Getting into the middle of the game, though, I started doing a lot more exploring, mark hunts, getting loot/equipment, etc. FFXII is much better at these aspects, so when they were able to shine through I found myself much more in favor of the game.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

My FF tastes have changed in recent years myself. When I was in high school, FFVII could do no wrong and it was perfect. Finally, after a number of play throughs I got bored with it and went back to the older games which at this point I hadn't touched since the 90's. When playing them again, I was blown away by the quality of the story and how heart wrenching it can be. Recently I picked up FFVII again when during a conversation I realized that I had forgotten a fair amount of the story. It was enjoyable but once I got past the Temple of the Ancients, I couldn't stand to play it anymore. It suddenly felt so lackluster with it's numerous plot holes and relatively uninteresting villain. (In the sense that he had a very one track mind.) Despite this, the early game is still a blast for me to play. And yes, I admit that I enjoy Sephiroth because he can be very unnerving at times, the writers catching the essence of madness and hanging onto on to it for a few precious moments.

With the rushing of SquareSoft to get the game finished for the PS1, the plot holes are forgivable and even enjoyed. The favorite speculation among my gamer friends was always the questioning of Hojo being Sephiroth's father. It was silly, but fun, a lot like trying to figure out just who Gogo from FFVI is. In recent years, post highschool, when SquareEnix began to fill in the plot holes, I actually felt like the company had let me down. The fill ins felt like bad fanfiction and did not feel like the amount of thought it deserved had not been given to it. Even still, Dirge of Cerberus is fun to play even if the story is disappointing and Advent Children is still enjoyable when not watched constantly. Despite my opinions of the game changing, I still find the music and imagery amazing. Red XIII still stands as one of my top gaming characters.

I was also not fond of FFIX when it first came out. It felt too cutesy and childish that I could barely get through it. Now, looking at it, it is actually a very enjoyable game. The locals and dungeons are very interesting and hold the attention without much effort at all. Plot points that then seemed ridiculous and over-dramatic were revealed to be well thought and very heart breaking. (Burmecia anyone? Bueller?) I still find Kuja disappointing and his outfit still makes me uncomfortable (mostly because I know people that would die to wear that outfit) but the rest of the game has taken a few levels in awesome since my first play through.

One of the major opinions I had change was centered around Starcraft. I refused to play it all through my childhood (I don't even remember why) and found it dull. Then, one day, my husband brought it up on his computer and let's just say that the Zerg and the Protoss have proved to be a very formidable army to send across the map.

This post has been edited by St Khael on 4th November 2012 18:40

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I'm your Mama Terra, come hang out with me around the internet!

Retro gaming cosplayer with a focus on Terra Branford.

First off, this isn't an opinion, more a way of thinking... but I'm glad that I no longer care for the console wars of my adolescence, and will thoroughly avoid/shut down any console fanboy conversations I find myself dragged into.

As for opinion? Well this is again rooted in my earlier years: I used to hate 2D fighting games/tournament fighters. I had no love for the Street Fighters and Tekkens of this world until very recently. The only fighter I'd touch was the Smash Bros series, because, well...Nintendo (psst.Marth ftw!). My aversion was probably due to going to friends houses in my early teens and getting absolutely slaughtered by kids who knew all the button combos and had been practicing.

In the past few months, my opinion of fighters has improved a lot, thanks to a friend of mine lending me Blazblue: Calamity Trigger. Here's the Arcade Intro
I loved how very self-aware it is in its Japanese-ness, if you will. I've enjoyed it so much I've posted elsewhere on the forums about it and somebody could accuse me of being obsessed. I'm a lot more receptive to any game of this genre now, and may expand my library further to other franchises
...does anyone else play? I need an opponent online..


Edit: That same friend also took me to one of his favourite haunts in London this summer, A little basement arcade. I was impressed with the gamers I saw and met there: friendly, welcoming attitudes of those perfect strangers. Until of course, they proceeded to beat the pixelated hell out of each other

This post has been edited by Blinge Odonata on 4th November 2012 22:11

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www.youtube.com/blinje
The victor sacrificed the vanquished to the heavens

My opinion on FF XII changed at least two or three times as I was playing it this past summer for the first time. I was determined not to fall into the weak-minded "lol Star Wars" category and take the game on its own merits, even though I was five or six years late to the party.

So I start out, and the game looks beautiful. Environments are good, character models are okay, weapons are visible on characters, lots of nice little things. Rabanastre is a cool little city. Combat starts out a little weak, but gets better as I unlock more Gambits and fill out the License Grid a little bit. I don't like the License system much at all, but meh. I've played worse. So FF XII is starting out interesting and getting better.

Midway through the game I'm pretty deeply invested. Combat is fast-moving and fun now that I'm getting a feel for the maps and my characters are settling into roles. I'm doing hunts, I'm collecting materials for the bazaar, I'm stealing **** left and right, and every new overworld area and dungeon looks great. I pull some strings and farm a few specific items and eventually I have a few weapons capable of carrying me into the endgame. I nab a couple of optional Espers. I've decided that this is my favorite game with Final Fantasy in its name since FF Tactics.

(cue VH1 Behind the Music soundtrack) ...And then it all fell apart. I realize how much I'm relying on a guide for the bazaar and how incredibly obtuse and limited some of the item hunt is. I decide to hold off on additional optional quests and just beat the game, and if I want to continue the grind I'll do it later. As I continue, the downright awful pace of the final story revelations, the complete ditching of specific subplots, and the mishandling of certain characters (both player characters and NPCs) give a really bad impression. The giant lighthouse dungeon is pretty sweet, but every other part of the final act seems weak, from throwaway characters to the final stage and confrontation to the ending cutscenes. I decided that FF XII isn't nearly as good as I had thought earlier.

FF XII is one of the best examples of wasted potential I've ever played. The Espers, hunts, loot, and sidequests are fun for awhile, but killed by a horrible endgame grind and a total lack of transparency on the bazaar system. The game's characters and story concepts are all cool, but the final third of the game is so rushed that everything comes hurtling out of left field in such a way as to cheapen all of it. Characters that should have been cool only get a few minutes of face time, and characters that seem out of place stick around for far too long (looking at you, Penelo). I've heard that FF XII had all kinds of budget and deadline troubles surrounding, and I believe the rumors.

When I finished playing FF XII, I didn't want to immediately pick up the controller and play more, but I didn't hate it either. It's an incredible mixed bag and I'm still not sure if I like it or not. The Zodiac Job System business in the International edition of the game seems pretty cool, but it doesn't fix everything that's broken. I've gone on too long with this TL;DR monster of a post, but damned if I didn't change my mind all the time when playing that game.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

I used to be a huge, huge fan of JRPGs. I still like them, but I can see their faults these days, such as having slow battle systems and battle gameplay revolving around merely dealing enough damage and outlasting the other side, in relatively uncreative ways. And then some games are a bit ham-handed in the way they try to do a more interesting battle system.

I've thought a lot about how to do things like, how to make different magic spells more worth using (especially the cheaper ones), but I've never really delved deep into whether there are games that do these things or how they do them.

They're still great vehicles for delivering narrative, but I don't find their gameplay as exciting as I once did.

That said, I also feel I have less time to sit down and play a game. (Furthermore, if a game's not on GB/GBA/NES/SNES, I can't really turbo through the boring parts easily even if I emulate.)

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 6th November 2012 17:57

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

I used to take my time progressing through the game, always trying to get 100% but as I've started watching some speed runs I've noticed I enjoy trying to go as fast as possible myself while limiting myself e.g equipment.

Of course this mostly pertains to reruns of a game. ❤

Nowadays, I play video games mainly as a means to relax as well as have fun, a purpose for which I think rpgs lend themselves quite well. Back in the day, though, I was really into fighting games. I guess, overtime, I just lost the motivation to learn the mechanics of all the new fighting games and do all the practice needed to effectively compete with others. Even with 3rd Strike, which I still play off and on, I can't be bothered with learning all these priorities or all those frame rates or whatnot, and I no longer particularly care whether I measure up to other players who go about all that stuff like it's their job.

It doesn't help that I find the aesthetics of some recent fighting games, like SF4, hideous.

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Console RPG Cliches

Quote (Death Penalty @ 4th November 2012 17:31)

I enjoyed FFVIII a lot while playing it, and I still consider it one of my favorites. However, I didn't get why people liked the track Man With the Machine Gun so much. It always seemed to come up in discussion as one of the best tracks from that game, and even as one of the more impressive tracks in the series. Even when we did that big music bracket voting competition here at CoN a couple years back (holy crap, a couple years back already?), I didn't like it. For whatever reason, though, it's really grown on me in the past couple years. I really don't know why.

Yeah! I'm glad you like it. (A couple of years back??? )

For me I've really enjoyed playing through parts of FFX with my brothers over Christmas. They were both stuck on a boss (Seymour Flux) and I was surprised by how much I still remembered of the game. Also I could tell them my stories of FFX like how funny it was to finish the Kimahri fight against Biran and Yenke by Self-Destructing so everyone died, and how silly Wakka looks after hitting himself with a Stonetouch ball (but his statue he leaves is pretty cool). I'm becoming weaker as a person, and I like FFX a lot more than before.

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Scepticism, that dry rot of the intellect, had not left one entire idea in his mind.

Me on the Starcraft.