*is the only game in the series with good storytelling in your path*

*is the only game in the series with good storytelling in your path*

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>multiple characters sacrifice themselves
>only one actually stays dead
Sure is great plot

ff4 is to the "fake-out death" trope what trails of cold steel 2 is to the "win the battle in gameplay, lose in the cutscene" trope.

The last FF not to go full retard at the end of the game

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ff7r has the greatest ending of all time, though.

Why not?

How many pseudo-suicides this piece of shit had?

mfw this absolutely baffling copout
And a Loli turns into a hot adult woman

plus you go to the fucking moon

and Cecil is a literal moonman

and also is Golbez's brother

Not even trolling, why do people put FF4 on such a pedestal? I've tried getting into it, but I feel its the weakest FF on the console by far. On the gameplay side, its completely dwarfed by both the game before and after it (3 and 5, with 3 being on the fucking NES of all things).

Plotwise 6, which on the same console, does a far better job to get me invested with its large cast, grandiose setting and overall plot. Which isn't even getting into how the game gives you far more options for building your party compared to 4s linear and anemic structure.

I can appreciate the cool setup in 4 with Cecil being this dude caught between his duty and his morals, but it goes absolutely off the rails that I have a hard time staying invested.

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I don't know, FFXII wasn't that retarted in the end if I recall correctly.

I didn't say it had an especially great story. it has good storyTELLING. stuff like tellah learning meteor but not having enough MP to ever use it. the dark knight cecil paladin cecil fights defeating itself using the command that you used to have that drains your health, characters explicitly trying to use anti petrify magic on the twins (and giving you the choice to try and use healing items on them for no effect), all kinds of action scenes that would be a cutscene in a later game taking place within the battle system, or how the player is shown that cecils dark powers are impressive but not actually useful on his walk to mt ordeals by having all the enemies either resist the new instant kill sword he got, or dying to it in one hit
this is the kind of stuff you don't get in the rest of the series. the games before and after this one have gameplay and story be almost entirely divorced from eachother, but in this game they really tried to tie them in-together. which is good, because that's the kind of storytelling a VIDEO GAME can do that other mediums can't do better. there's nothing gained by final fantasy 7 being a game instead of a tv series except for a bunch of parts where you wander around fighting monsters for no reason (and maybe the concept of losing aeris as a gameplay character, even though she's pretty much the same functions as everyone else)
and speaking of. even if the characters survive all the "deaths" because this is a wacky cartoony game, they still don't come back into your party. even if leviathan didn't actually eat all of cecils comrades, you still have to deal with being all alone for a while as a bunch of mages try and fuck with you. you still don't get most of those characters in your party again past a certain point, meaning you lose out on using them in the GAMEplay for this video GAME.
FF4 would make a terrible book, but it makes a great video game.

"No."

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>Cecil, you have earned the powers of a Holy Paladin because you've overcame your past and honestly faced your inner demons
>jk it's cause you're an alien

MFW the MMOs have had the best stories in the series.

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Do you mean Chrono Cross OP?

the story was so bad they had to try to add characters to the main characters and it was STILL bad

V and VI are superior

>Which isn't even getting into how the game gives you far more options for building your party compared to 4s linear and anemic structure.
these games are also extremely easy as a result. FF4 is tightly designed and challenging, and because it always knows what options it has it can design encounters around those options so theres more going on then "buff, hit the boss, heal when my hp gets low"

I much prefer FF4's constantly rotating party you have to adjust your strategy with, than FF3's "everyone is a ninja or a sage by the endgame" design and FF5's "the only thing stopping you from giving everyone the same overpowered do everything build is the honor system" design. let alone FF6/7's "every character is basically interchangeable" character development system

FF4 is a game where you fight a boss, then after you walk a few feet forward down the bridge he ambushed you on he suddenly goes "sike bitch" and comes back from the dead more powerful and ambushes your vulnrable back row of mages with his tentacles. it has a mingling of gameplay and story that later games simply don't have

somebody should get lazerbot to write a FF plot

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Wrong image, OP, let me fix that for you.

Seethe and Boomer's need not apply, you know I'm right.

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>And a Loli turns into a hot adult woman
>plus you go to the fucking moon
>and Cecil is a literal moonman
>and also is Golbez's brother
All of those things are awesome. FF4 is cool because it's so simple and the story doesn't try too hardand it's also the only game that ever made me cry, I'm not sure what's up with that

*heroically sacrifices self in your path*

FFX had a decent ending. Just ignore everything that came after it.

> On the gameplay side, its completely dwarfed by both the game before and after it (3 and 5, with 3 being on the fucking NES of all things).

relatively early game FF4 boss
>cecil and yang go in the front row to try and take as many hits as possible, using their defensive abilities to reduce damage.
>porom buffs, debuffs, and heals attacks that can 2 shot anyone besides the frontline
>palom buffs his spells and does big damage, using lightning on the boss when he starts generating water so he doesn't wipe out most of the party in one attack he's building up to
>tellah does both of the things the mages are doing but better, but since his MP is so low he can only cast a few times unless you use a rare item or drain the bosses MP, which only happens a few times.
>whenever you attack or cast a spell on the boss he will counter with a status spell that shuts down that strategy (hold on physical attacks, silence on magic ones)

basically any boss in the other 2D final fantasy games
>lmao just buff up your physical attackers and him the boss until it dies while casting healing magic

JK, haha

every final fantasy game is full of absurd content you can take out of context. even the "serious" ones like 6/7/8 have shit like gau, the honeybee inn, or that time squall fought a bunch of ice hockey players

how FF4 shows that an enemy is impressive and out of a heroes league
>an actual fight using the battle system between the two, where the hero uses a spell only for the enemy to counter with the same spell but much stronger so you can get a direct comparison for how much better he is using the numbers

the same in any other game
>a cutscene happens where the two guys fight using basic swings instead of any special abilities the game is too lazy to keep track of you having or not, and then after a while the goodguy loses

In 90 percent of battles in FF6 you didn't even have to worry about MP either as even without the relics Osmosis was ridiculously powerful in that game.

ff4 has edward the bard, who isn't a trained solider or some kind of prodigy like the rest of the party. he's just a queer prince who likes playing the harp. this is shown by him being weaker than a literal child when it comes to fighting for most of the game, although over time as he gets more confident he gets a bit better.
when other games in the series have a party member who has the character arc of feeling/being useless, they're actually not really any worse than the rest of the group, except then sometimes theres a cutscene where they mess up and then later another cutscene where they become competent now. all development happens in the cutscenes, with the gameplay being politely ignored.

likewise FF4 has tellah, the legendary sage whos now past his prime, shown by how his MP is extremely low and can't go up even as he gains levels (and in fact leveling up makes several of his stats actually get lower). meanwhile FF10 has auron as a similar retired badass character that has jokes about his age made by the other party members. but then actually auron is the strongest character in a fight by a longshot and even though he's fucking dead all along he gets healed and is weak to poison and other status effects the same as everyone else because it would spoil the twist cutscene they have 20 hours later that reveals all this. again the gameplay is just something you do as busywork between the cutscenes.

most final fantasy games, most jrpgs in general, feel like reading a book by reading 1 page and then doing one lap around your house before you read another page. FF4 doesn't.

It was almost an ambiguous, which would have been interesting, but the children laughing in the end and the fact that AC is a thing ruins it.

>AC is a thing ruins it
AC is not canon to the remake yet user

FFVII has my favorite story in the series, but it's not very well presented.
FFIX's has a far inferior story but it's so well presented that you're inclined to believe it's a better one.

Take the Lifestream Sequence vs. Pandemonium. The former far superior storywise, Zidane's plot twist is the most generic shonen one they could have possibly come up with, but people still remember it more foundly because You Are Not Alone plays and the scenes are prettier.

Because FFVII is the more popular title, people are lead to believe it's the more shallow one, but it's actually the Final Fantasy game with the most substance and arguably the worst presentation.