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Originally Posted by TheGame
Sly I can see your point, and have a good idea of what you enjoy... but I still disagree with you.
I. The characters are limited by their base abilities. While they can learn any spells, it's still more efficient to make the casters (Lulu, Yuna) pump up their casting ability.. And more efficient to make melee (Wakka, Auron) pump up their physical attacking ability. The Hybrid guys can be "good" at anything, but given the same amount of focus they'd still never be as good of a caster as Yuna or Lulu, and they'd never be as good of a melee as Auron and Wakka. And how many good melee-Lulus have you seen?
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Actually not true. If you take every character through the entire sphere grid you will have maxed all stats, except you have a choice. You can either choose to max hp or max luck, but you cannot do both because of lack of empty spheres. Every other stat maxes easily, and I believe my friend kyle told me it will max if you take each character through their own grid and 2 other character grids. Might be wrong on that point. Either way mid-way through the game you can have a lulu that hits as hard as auron and a tidus that heals as well as a yuna. I even think the characters all start with the same base stats or very small discrepancies. Yes I've seen lulu and tidus hit for the same damage, and yuna and tidus heal for the same amount.
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Originally Posted by TheGame
II. Individuality per playthrough matters to me more then any single character. If I want to play through with 3 melee, one who happens to know white magic like a paladin, and one who happens to know dark magic like a dark knight one time.. then play through with 3 casters the next time... or just play with 3 people who are good at one thing each and suck at everything else.. I just like to have that freedom. It makes the game more replayabile if it's not the same thing every time.
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Meh I think games are more replayable with limits. Take for instance the single character challenges on some of the older FF games. Challenging yourself to use the worst characters, or just replaying the game each time with different teams. FFX kinda killed that. Single characters could run through everyone's grid so no big deal. Back in the day we created reasons to run through the game again. Usually just because it was awesome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGame
III. The most popular FF games feature this freedom. It's not a coincedence that FF7 is the most popular FF game of all time. It's because of the freedom that materia gave. Since the materia could be shared, when someone was booted out of your group for one reason or another, you could just buff up someone else with the abilities you learned. If you want to talk about lacking individuality character to character, you need to talk about FF7. Because Materia makes the sphere grid look extremely linear.
I don't know, I'm just simply a fan of being able to create your own strategy.
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FF7 had enough character personality to keep the characters individual. Plus with the number of times characters left your party or you were forced to use characters that weren't your regulars, it was necessary. Either way FF7 had a complex leveling system for you materia. It was a pretty cool way to do things.
FFX on the other hand just had no personality behind its characters. I'm struggling to remember characters like rikku and kimari, even auron got swept back. Then they could all have each other's skills? Nah no thanks.
And still that's no excuse. Even with characters with predetermined skills and abilities you still had your own strategy, everyone did.
And it doesn't have to be so hard strict either. In FF6 everyone could learn the same spells, but everyone had different abilities and even limit breaks (Yes FF6 had them, they were rare but they were called desperation attacks.) For example only locke could steal and only celes could absorb magic. Individuality yet still the customization you seek. Stuff like this can be done.