I admittedly have, but I also have gone to Gamefaqs and other sites to check them out. I filter to the more neutral ones to find the reviews that actually I know will give me a fair judgement on a game. Usually from 5-7 scores, sometimes eight depending on what I want to know. I do look at gameplay, story, characters and interaction with the world. I am usually very flexible with a few that can be eh'ish, but it has to hit my tastes also. I know people have different tastes and that's fine. Spoony isn't the first nor last to point out the flaws that I pointed out also. Anywho........ Back to the topic so I don't get cracked over the skull by an admin. :P I don't know if there's a fanbase long enough to hold out for Final Fantasy. I know at some point maybe in the future they'll go back to the days that VII was in a lot of people's minds, not all. I do know that people don't like VII also, and that's fine. But maybe it's just the transition from die-hard gamers to casual that's making the ones like me who grew up with challenging and interactive worlds that we could explore are just going to be left behind.
Sorry, I thought I explained it well enough to not sound like I was bashing, I do sincerely apologize. I just loved Final Fantasy until XII. It kills me to see what XIII looks like to me and a lot of other diehard fans. I know that several people liked it, fine. But that doesn't mean it still hasn't shown the strengths and excellence of Final Fantasy VII or VI which I will always stand by as one of my favorite games. Seeing it as even a review which I honestly take to heart because I don't have the money to spend 60 dollars or even ten dollars on a game that seems like FFXIII, I get my opinion from it. Maybe it's good in some ways because sales are still enough to make five sequels to the game. But I am allowed my opinion with my own thoughts and backing even if I didn't play the game.
It's not just the linearity of XIII, though it does show a big problem. Everything from leveling up to the "hallway" as it's aptly called. Me and burnitup were discussing it yesterday and there's just so many plotholes. It seems for every single storyline, it's contradicted completely and shows a gaping plothole later on. Even the central plot for the game that doesn't give you a clear directive, which can be okay if you still have a goal in mind and don't obsess about it for the whole game which they do. Later on, you find it bs the whole plotline, the major story of the game is a gaping plothole. That is not good writing. In an interview with the creators of XIII, they basically said: "We made it linear so the plotline is more focused on." Final Fantasy VI had fantastic storyline and deep storytelling and it was open world. VII is still considered one of the best games ever made and it was VERY open world. There's a difference. That and the characters. I notice now I still don't recognize most of the characters in the review. It is very thorough and I still can't differentiate them except I think Vanille who just irritates me and Snow who is very just bland. But that's just me, there is no depth about them, no substance. I'm sure that it's in the fifty thousand page database that is in the game, but I don't play games to read backstories in a database, I love flashbacks and storytelling that bring out the flesh of the character. Final Fantasy VI when they show Locke's backstory, you can actually feel his pain and grieving for what happened to him in the past. That isn't found on a database. You can't convey emotions through words. I have heard people defending the storyline and questions brought up about the game saying: "If you read the database, you would know." Why do you need to look it up in the first place? Why can't it be in the game itself, five minutes of explaining would help a lot more than searching through a database and reading paragraphs of info you really don't want to know to get your answer is much longer. It just paddens the game. As for the falling of Final Fantasy, it seems like they're past their peak. They either got too egotistical, got poor game developers and don't want to let them go, or something happened along the way to make it like this. The public apology alone for FFXIV which I know has massively improved since then, is a clue. You don't send out a game that is as buggy and as bad as XIV before you fix it all. The complaints from the game showed it wasn't ready to be released. Yet they did anyway for the cash cow defined as Christmas. They're just disappointing the fans more and more.
This DOES NOT include remakes. Please don't add them, it mostly involves the most recent games though it can go back as far as you like. Hell, I know someone who thought it fell apart after II. Anyway, after watching a review on FFXIII, I was wondering to everyone: Do you think the Final Fantasy series is falling apart/becoming less popular/not as good as it used to be? Why? I was a huge fan of Final Fantasy, I loved VI through X and sometimes even play the older games also. I stopped playing after trying XII and getting halfway through it. The fact that you don't earn money via monsters and you had to pay for everything to get any kind of upgrade drove me off it. I was thinking about getting XIII until I saw the reviews. I think it doesn't have the life it used to have. It used to be so expansive and had so much depth to each character. Terra is still one of my favorite characters of all time, just how much she goes through and how much she questions herself and humanity is painful to watch. The worlds were huge and expansive, allowing you to explore every nook and cranny if you wanted to and gave a sense of adventure. Note, I do love Final Fantasy X, but even then it became so linear. From leveling up to exploration. It was a set path through most of the game, and when it became exploring, you could only go to certain places and explore within that area. And steadily over time it got more and more linear. The characters just seemed to become less and less appealing. Tidus just seemed more annoying than anything else. Note: My favorite character was Auron, maybe Yuna as a female character at a stretch. Auron was the only one who had an air of mystery and depth that lasted the whole game. The rest of characters seemed shallow and never really drawn out to their full potential.
Relax, dude. I didn't take it in a bad way. I know I was more strict back then. =3
lolz... Thanks. :P I try to be more relaxed. RP'ing Sister and slumming in Gaia helped a lot. :P
True, though I do change my mind once in a while. =3
Thanks, though I can be stubborn as hell about my opinion. I think me and Patman have a truce to no longer try and kill each other over posts...
Honestly, I have been bullied myself very badly in high school. The only time it was stopped was when outside influences were used. An example was when after the last three weeks of my Sophomore year, where a bully called across a classroom that I was basically a whore and several other things without the teacher doing anything and threatening me with suspension when I finally had enough and told the bully where to stuff it. He started harassing me during the summer. Including calling out insults from his car while nearly running me over when I was walking near my house. It reached the peak when my mom woke up to find spit all over her windshield. We have been calling the school and we were begging for them to do something and/or give us the kids information so we can do something about the situation which was massively out of hand. They didn't call us back all day until we called the police and they said to file a cease harassment order that basically made it illegal to have anything to do with me. We left a message on the school and they responded in TEN MINUTES and fixed the problem. The cops said when we told them that that's the only thing the school responds to: The police stepping in and dealing with the issue themselves before the school did anything. And I'm sorry if I rant: School's need to wake the **** up about this issue. This has been happening for decades, hell, it happened so badly that my brother was such a psychological wreck from it that my mom said after Columbine he would've done the same thing if he had the chance. My best friend who's as laid back as possible carried a KNIFE around school because of what happened to her and the Vice Principal just patted her on the head and shooed her out. We had NOTES where there was a boy who wrote threatening notes about sexually assaulting her and killing her boyfriend. And he was bullying me at the time so it wasn't the first time. No one does anything about this issue. They just sweep it under the carpet and wish it goes away. I've had clubs encouraged by teachers based on people hating me, I've been sexually harassed, verbally abused and threatened for three years in high school. One was by an ex boyfriend who I broke up with that summer and they ignored the fact he was degrading me every day in the same class. And no one did anything about it at all in the school. Not a single person. It finally took a letter to my state representative to finally get it to stop and that was out of sheer desperation. Bullying happens every day in every school, maybe to not all the kids, but the ones who go through it, it becomes pure hell to wake up. It becomes pure hell to go to the bus stop, it becomes pure hell to enter that building and feel sick to your stomach every day. It becomes pure hell to lay there at night wondering if anyone, even God cares about you or if you had an angel that was watching over you. I know because I have experienced it myself for three years in high school. And do you know what? You can't turn to the police or anyone else for help, it's just the school. Where they ignore it. Real life is different, but unless schools give over discipline to the cops or do something different, there's always going to be bullying and it needs to stop. Something needs to change. It doesn't matter why the bullying is happening, for me, it started with a third grade teacher who hated my guts enough to make a club of people hating me. It started with a student obsessed with me, it started by a random student who just hated me breathing, it started with a ex boyfriend who hated me breaking me up with him. The only time I honestly got help was outside of school. With the State Representative, with the cops, with me nearly getting killed when I was thrown viciously from my bike when a bully shoved a stick in my spokes and the whole neighborhood which was a playground/park area saw it and heard me screaming from shock. I hope and pray it changes soon, but with new technology that is at people's disposals now, it's harder than ever. There's ways to stop them, but I don't see it happening soon. Bullying starts somewhere, let it happen as a kid, and they'll keep on pushing it and pushing it and pushing it as far as they can. It'll continue until they're in jail or worse. I do know some grow out of it, but some don't. If you don't teach them that this is wrong, they'll not learn until they finally get punished. Maybe it's the parents, maybe it's their nature, maybe it's something else, but schools and parents are responsible for this stuff to end. I see it less and less happening than ever. And it deeply saddens me.
I edited it a bit due to confusion. I'm asking whether or not marriage should last forever or instead of having to go through divorce, should it just be a cancellation of the contract. Marriage as of right now is for life unless you have a different arrangement or you go through divorce which can be extremely messy and hard on children especially. I honestly don't know about other cultures other than the US and haven't gotten married myself, so it might be different. I still think there should be a time limit on a marriage. Times have changed, the vows made a long time ago was before modern medicine so people have to live much longer with the same person. Or go through divorce which ties up the courts and is hard on everyone.
Actually, the fact that the Wii U and the Wii combined aren't selling as many as the 360 and PS3 alone by 30,000 isn't a good sign. Like I said before: Wii was made for casual gamers. They made a fortune at the beginning of the race and are quickly losing ground due to shortsightedness at their part. They really need to bring new blood in. Look how 360 and PS3 are doing with stuff like Valve and Ubisoft. (Note, I don't know when they entered the market, but I know Valve hit stride in PS2 era.) I haven't even thought of buying Skyward Sword seriously, nor any of the Mario games. I know they still have fans, but a lot of them are seeing the same thing I am: The games aren't made for serious gamers anymore. Skyward Sword seemed like a joke with the graphics and the fact that there seemed very little ways to die in it. But that's my opinion and I won't get into it because it's spam. Maybe it's EA, but I think Nintendo is also driving away the powerhouses now, maybe it's just NOA, but sales are hurting for it and third party companies are smartening up to it. At the same time, it might be NOA also telling them to get lost. It's a sad thing alltogether.
Oh God... Sorry, initial knee-jerk reaction. I liked Sonic on the Genesis. Grew up with it and still love it. The fact they're doing another Sonic racing game causes my mind to immediately go to Sonic R, which I have seen but never had the "pleasure" of playing. I have seen how badly Sega has done with the Sonic series as of late. Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic Unleashed, etc... 2006 could bring a full blown adult rant on itself. If Nintendo does it well, I'm happy. But they have to do it right, and the current state of Nintendo games gives me little faith that they will do it right. Make a good original 2D platformer that doesn't go into 3D, that's the bane of Sonic existence. Make it back to what it was when it was on the Genesis. If they do that, I would gladly even maybe buy a Wii U at some point.
I think the wedding in a church is legally binding, correct me if I'm wrong. Either way, divorce is hell for everyone involved usually. Also by the fact that most people don't marry over 25. My parents married before then, and well... It didn't go well. My godparents married AFTER 25 and they're happy as clams. What's the big deal of 25? The brain doesn't fully develop until you're 25 years old. Most people's personalities change when they reach adulthood and mature. What you loved and thought was great at the age of 20 can be annoying as hell at 25. There are probably a lot of successful couples who married before 25 who are happy all their lives, but it's an example. If both couples are miserable, they should be able to leave the contract willingly without going through divorce hell to do so.
"To Death Do Us Part." It's been in there for a very long time, but the problem is that now people no longer live until 30-40 years old. With modern medicine, people can live over a hundred. So the question is with the divorce rate through the roof and millions of couples out not all, mind you, being miserable. Should a marriage be for life? Or should be there a renewable contract for every certain amount of years? If so, how long should the contract last and what provisions should be in place for said contract? And yes, I know about annulments and pre-marriage contracts which I forgot the name of off the top of my head. I meant in general. I think honestly it should be a contract. A contract is so much easier to get declared null and void. Especially when there's terms or conditions that either party broke. An abusive husband who's wife wants to get away from is an example, or if the wife/husband goes through bankruptcy which almost always leads to a divorce afterwards is another. It can last at the most 20 years. I already listed partly what I'd like to see in such a contract, but I haven't mentioned a child. If a child is born under the marriage, there should be a trust fund set up not allowed to be touched by the parents where an allowance is given to the child every week for the parent to use for the child's needs and/or the child itself depending on the age. Or it should be an automatic withdrawal from the other parents check every week in child support. I have worked at a law firm office where there's hundreds of thousands in the state alone who are struggling raising a child on their own with no support from the child. It happens sadly all the time.
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Being bi myself and having cheered when it's passed in my state, I'm thrilled it's passed there. As for the "fear" of gays, a lot of it unfortunately goes to the church. Not all of it, mind you, my godmother is as catholic as you can be and she is the first one to hammer it home that gays needs as many rights as anyone else. Some people think of it as a disease that will spread or a "corruption" that will pass on to the next generation even through adoption. Hell, my dad was PISSED when he found out I was bi even though I had enough trauma in my life to go that way. I have heard of families kicking out the children who are gay and bi, though there's other families who kick their daughter/son out for having sex at all before marriage. There's still a lot of people who unfortunately have not changed. They don't want to give rights to others because for them it means that they are equals in society. It's the same thing with women's rights and other things. Hell, my town is as conservative as it gets and pretends to act as if there's not a huge gay community a town over from where I live. It's not going to go away if you just pretend it doesn't exist. My mom does believe in being gay, I think she changed her beliefs from it being a choice after I spoke to her about being bi myself. I think she doesn't care what orientation you are, but marriage for her was brutally hard. She's still getting over it, and she just sees marriage a lot of the time as something that will raise the divorce rate and other such things. Explaining giving them the same rights are hard for her to understand because my father and her husband didn't give a **** about her at all during their marriage. It's something I don't see changing, sadly. I do agree, it should go to the Supreme Court, living in Maine where it took three or four tries to get it passed alone is a sign they should save government money and send it to the courts. Sadly I don't see it coming soon.
Ironically enough, I got both of those sides. My school drilled us constantly on public speaking, group projects and other things that is associated with life outside of school which comes in big this time in age. I see a lot of ads demanding that you know this stuff inside out before going for their job. They did loosen up a bit when it came to some students, one of my classmates fainted when in a presentation and they stopped letting her present. At the same time, we had to break down Shakesphere, poetry, etc... I made the comment about quality of education because my brother came out of high school with a half of a year of math. He had three teachers in that time period that he never really got to understand math with. The last one humiliated him so badly in front of his friends he quit math completely. Granted, he had a learning disability that wasn't diagnosed, but me with no learning disability passed by a prayer and a miracle with math, struggled with science and my grammar is still terrible to this day through the same school system. These things are needed this day and age, yes, you need finance and other things. My school offered these things, but math is something that is needed in EVERY job that's offered now, if you work at most places, you NEED to know how to do grammar, science is more flexible, but without a strong background and good teachers, you're setting up kids to fail. When I finally understood algebra, which I needed for my college degree, it took me two classes, two tutors and hours of struggling to get through it. I spent an hour with a tutor at least every weekday if not meeting them both. It was sheer dumb luck that I found the tutor that I did and another miracle he managed to not only help me understand it, but to get me to actually enjoy math. My brother never had that chance, I still am very bad with grammar and science I'm on and off. I'm not saying every kid should be a master at all studies, but they should at least have enough of a educational background to do what they want with life. There are some teachers that I've seen that I hate to say it: They shouldn't be teaching. They are the ones who cause these problems like my brother had, my first algebra teacher was so bad I had to quit in a month within his class because he explained things so vaguely and approved work that was so bad that it would never work, that it was impossible to learn. Then he came in and yelled at you for not doing the work. As for discipline, I disagree. I was horrendously bullied throughout my high school times. My brother had cigarette butts burned onto him. Kids walked down the hallway and smacked him over the head. No one did anything to stop it. A kid in one of my classes shouted insults and basically called me a whore to the whole class from across the room and the teacher who I liked and respected did nothing, when I finally stood up for myself, he threatened me with suspension. That summer I had to go for a restraining order because the kid covered my mom's windshield with spit and was driving up and shouting insults to me when I was walking down the street. We called the school on him three times during that summer and they refused to do anything including giving us information on the kid until we called the cops and reported it. And that is one of THREE bullies that harassed me in school. On the flip side, when I was in elementary school during the summer time, one of the bullies that was tormenting me was harassing me and a friend of mine. We were at a playground and decided to leave. When I was leaving, the bully deliberately stuck a stick in my spokes of the bike and caused me to go flying over the handlebars and smash into gravel tearing myself up, I wasn't wearing a helmet at the time and thankfully didn't bust my head open though I did black out. Nearby neighbors came out and hit the roof, they told my parents and the bullies parents exactly what happened. My mom ripped the bully a new one and threatened to call the police the next time anything else happened, school or otherwise. They left me alone after that and it was the only time other than the time I wrote to a state representative asking for help from my bullies who drove me to the breaking point that actual action happened other than the story above. The high school at least around here and countless other schools, they don't try to help kids being bullied. They shove it aside and hope it goes away. Some of them pick the most scariest parents and take their side. The first bullies mom was clinically insane, the second one I never knew the parents, and the third had a stepfather who scared me to the depths of my core. These kids depend on authorities to help them, they don't want the police, they don't want the press, they don't want anyone helping them, but when it comes down to it, they are responsible for these kids and if they can't handle it, hand it to someone else, your school is going to get a worse reputation if there's bad press. Stop it before it becomes something worse. Kids don't "grow up" in high school. It is a known fact that most kids don't even reach full ADULTHOOD until the age of 25 when their brain fully develops. In my college you're on probation your first year because of how many kids fail classes due to the fact that they're on their own. There needs to be something stopping them from bullying others. They will keep on pushing and pushing and pushing... As much as they can to see how far they can go. Because after living in the real world, and my mom told me this when I was going through the hell of my high school: The real life is NOTHING like it is in high school. The bullying ends, but it shouldn't happen in the first place. Sorry for the rant, sore subject for me.
I hope it's not another Final Fantasy game. I love the series until XII, but it REALLY fell apart at that point. I translate his quote as: "We're not making enough money off this, so we're not focusing on it." I heard their demands for FFVII remake which basically summed up as: "If you don't buy our crappy FF games now, you don't get the one you REALLY want because we think sales will be the crap because all of our games now made stink." Not including the Kingdom Hearts saga, which I do love. It is starting to remind me of what it was like with Street Fighter II, an eternity of games that's labeled Street Fighter II with shiny stuff added and no III. It's actually getting thoroughly depressing because they were SUCH a power house when they joined with Playstation. Though I know people will challenge that depending on their feelings of the games made at the time, but during the nineties and early 20th century, they were like Nintendo was: A powerhouse unchallenged at the top of their game. It's sad to see how far they've fallen.
I haven't followed the Pokemon genre since Diamond and Pearl came out, I was just using that as an example. There have been many contradictions from what I heard when it comes to the Pokemon series and the Pokemon. About which one is the most ancient, or the only ancient etc. I'd have to go back and watch the review to remember it.
Considering having played through both FR and LG, not having played HG and SS, mind you... That they're basically the exact same thing with better graphics of the original, yes, it is in canon of the rest of the games. Pokemon can travel, and trainers can let Pokemon go at the new regions and they can adapt to the new regions and breed and have more Pokemon of the original. We're also looking at Pokemon logic here that says that when Mew was the creator of all Pokemon was three or four generations before Arceus was founded to be a god. Pokemon logic can be a little iffy when it comes to it's own cannon when it's making a 100 to a 150 new Pokemon per game. Give or take.