BackFire
Blood. It's nature's lube
Originally posted by Ushgarak
As it happens, I just went through this on emulator, having in earlier years played 4, 5 and 6 on SNES emulator. I am not a console person but I consider it a opwrthwhile exercise to check out as many classic games as I can.Actually I wasn't a huge fan of materia; I prefered the class system of the earlier ones. The characters felt very indistinct when you could basiclaly make any of them do anything by shifting coloured blobs around.
But in general, yes, the game was very good.
Onto VIII next...
I agree.
The materia system offered a nice range of customization and all, but like you said, the characters didn't feel very seperate or unique because they could all just use whatever spells you wanted. Aside from limit breaks there was no real distinction between the characters.
8 is even worse in this regaurd, I thought the characters were really poorly developed (storyline-wise) and magic was almost useless except as a stat builder. The game itself wasn't all that great, not bad, but probably the worst of all the FF games I've played. Best thing about 8 was the card game.
You'd probably like the ff9 system, Ush. It uses the old school job system, one guys a black mage, one's a warrior, one's a white mage/summoner, one's a dragoon, ect. The story in 9 isn't quite up to par with 7, but the distinction between each character and the job system is great. A lot of people like 9 better then 7, though, so who knows, you may be one of them. It's very "old school" in it's design and flow, has a lot in common with the older games. I liked 9 way more then 8, though.
FFX also uses the job system, in a way. So you may want to play that when you can, as well. Probably the third best in the series behind 6 and 7.