May I ask why? Apart from Fran (who was obviously designed to resemble a playboy bunny), all his designs seemed logical, considering the hot environment they lived in, as well as imaginative and evocative of a Mediterranean region rich in culture and history.

Do I really have to? :(

Fine, but I don't know how you can look at those characters and not have this stuff jump out at you.

Penelo: Skintight leather onepiece that leaves part of her inner thighs bare and ends with a buckle for some reason. She's got leather... wings or something coming off her shoulders. And fat leather cuffs. And she's got these massive leather combination shin-and-knee guards that are buckled over what are either calf-high boots or socks with buckles.

Ashe: I'm not sure what Ashe is trying to be. Her clothing is part lingierie, part futuristic schoolgirl, part tramp, part battle armor. She's got a translucent lingerie top that leaves the belly bare and ends in coat tails behind, with a black leather half-corset to cover that bare belly. Rather than sleeves she's a set of armbands and elbow-guards with a bit of that translucent stuff stretched between. There's a stiff schoolgirl/sailor square neckerchief that attaches to a fancy collar. Pink latex short-shorts that go on like a diaper and are held in place only by friction with her belt, as there are no belt loops. It might be a micro skirt too for all I know. Below she's wearing elaborate ornamental cuisses, and flaring emblazoned boots encased in high heel sabatons.

Vaan: He lives in the desert and spends his days outdoors. He needs a shirt. But he's poor so maybe he can't afford one. But he somehow afforded a pair of tight, leather, armored pants, complete with cleated sabotons.

Basch: He gets to wear like 4 different things, but he settles for the Bhujerban guard's uniform. It consists of a frilly shirt with an ab-hole, a vest with an ab-hole, a rainbow colored potholder, tweed shorts overlaid with both scale armor and jointed cuisses, greaves, and sandals. Not bad actually, apart from the funny potholder and ab-holes.

Fran: No need for explanations I guess. It's easier to overlook as she's not human and the rest of her race dresses similarly. And I seem to remember reading that Viera actually walk on their toes, explaining the high heels. Don't remember where I read that though.

As I understand it the Dalmasca region is geographically analogous to the Bosporus in Turkey (or Byzantium in ancient times.) Normal desert clothing this ain't. But they are certainly imaginative. These are costumes, just like many of the strange things Nomura comes up with. I'm not complaining. But I don't think it's fair to say that Nomura's designs are shit and that Yoshida's designs for FFXII's main characters are "like normal clothing". His other designs are another story.

You mean Vaan's belly-vest, Ashe's's bikini-bottom/thong thing, or Basch's mismatched outfit, complete with tassel thing off the side there (actually I like Basch's outfit, now that I think about it)?

I liked FFXII, though. I agree the clothing designs were a vast improvement over say, FFX's Tidus outfit. Ignoring the examples I mentioned, yeah, everyone's outfits were a lot more freakin' NORMAL. All the NPCs wore normal clothing. Balthier and Penelo looked normal. Even Reddas with his pink pirate pants was fairly normal looking! I think they captured just around the right amount of strangeness the fantasy setting needed without delving into the world of stupid-looking things like with FFX.

Personally I don't mind games set in the Ivalice world as much as I do games set in the FFVII universe, simply because I liked the games set in Ivalice thus far. I mean, they can milk that stuff to the max IF they milk it properly. That's what I'm saying. They aren't milking FFVII properly because instead of exploring something we give half a crap about in that universe's history or what-have-you, they go off and explore the life of ZACK, and some imaginary made-up stuff that happens after FFVII that usually ends up paling in comparison to danger of the planet exploding or what have you. Oh, people have skin-cancer?! YEAH THAT'S A BIG PROBLEM IN COMPARISON TO A METEOR HITTING YOUR FREAKIN' PLANET AND DESTROYING ALL LIFE.

What was Dirge of Cerberus' villain, anyway, some mutated SOLDIER guy or something? Was he even supposed to be as dangerous as Sephiroth within the plot or what?

EDIT: I was going to edit out my critique of FFXII's clothing, Coinspinner, but you forgot to mention Basch's tassel thing! Also, Ents in LOTR walk on their toes, not Viera. I think. At least it's not something that you'd expect to hear out of Squarenix (OR IS IT?!!)

ANOTHER EDIT: Actually I may be inclined to agree on the toes thing, insofar as that Viera's feet and hands are not shaped like Hume feet/hands. I remember in that scene near the beginning where Fran goes crazy from the mist that her feet definitely are elongated and she's sort've suspended up with only her toes touching the ground. I think she's supposed to have the backwards joint like four-legged animals at the heel, but then not at the knee. Or something like that. But I agree, anyway.

I know I don't get out enough, but I just can't believe Penelo's clothes look normal to anyone. :whee:

And actually, Crisis Core explores the only part of the FFVII world that I had even a bit of interest in, which is the events surrounding Sephiroth, Zack, and SOLDIER preceding the Nibleheim incident. As soon as I saw the scans of guys named "Angeal" and "Genesis", each with a single wing, I lost interest though. I thought FFVII's ending was great and didn't want to know what happened after, so none of the sequels interested me.

The problem is that, where you see excesses, I see ornamental designs that add to the history and culture of a region, in this case a hot place called Ivalice. I think the best way to sum it up is this:

But it's all a matter of taste. Your criticisms are valid, though I think we both can agree that what Nomura does is far more extravagant and less ellegant than Yoshida's designs.

Hojo was the main villain, as I recall. As far as power goes, Omega seemed larger scale than Sephiroth to me.

Of course, DoC was god-awful anyway.

I agree. I haven't played it though, since I finally went from rent-only to boycotting Square entirely after DoC.

I actually had no problem with the designs from FFX. They were a bit wild, but they seemed to fit well. Case in point:

Tidus: arguable, as it doubles as a sports uniform from a society of excess. Much of it is armor.
Yuna: PERFECT example of what a priestess might wear.
Lulu: her outfit is very similar to Squall's, who is also cynical and cold, and Edea's, who is even MORE cold as the villain and is also a fellow sorceress.
Kimahri: well, all his people dress like that. :sweatdrop It probably helps with all that fur in a tropical paradise.
Wakka: again with the sport thing. Uniforms just haven't changed much in 1000 years.
Rikku: Actually resembles what Quistis would look like if she were loud and wore shorts. Except the lace. o.o;
Auron: suit is actually expressly designed to hide his eyes and face, making him mysterious and untrustworthy. It's also based (apparently) on what the ronin wore.

XII's clothes are arguably better suited to desert in general, but I personally happen to like the designs less. Mostly because of overuse of metal, jewels, and leather in places they really don't belong. Basch and Balthier's outfits make a lot of sense, given Basch is a soldier and Balthier is the elegant type who isn't as active as the others and therefore doesn't have to worry as much about sweating. Even so, his shirt is cloth. My pet peeves are Penelo's almost entirely leather jumpsuit which she wears to run errands and Vaan's metal (bronze?) vest and gloves and POOFY leather pants.

You'll suspend your disbelief for a world where people can make giant monsters appear out of thin air, but the clothes just throw you off?

What is this? The game-fashion police? Way to harp on a minor detail guys... :)

The clothes aren't much worse than some popular animes, its just that the character models are more realistic.

Of course not. They make giant monsters appear from under the ground, out to sea, from the sky, through a portal, etc. A monster coming out of absolutely nowhere is just silly.



Besides, having spent many a summer in a desert, I can tell you leather is NOT a good idea. And neither is metal. Especially when left in the sun for too long.

Those "poor" people have it good, though, what with living underground and having loose, cloth clothing. The subterranean temperature is always roughly 60 degrees F, meaning you won't freeze and you won't burn, and cotton, as a natural material, will keep you warm when it's cool and breathes to help keep you cool in the heat, should you venture into the blazing desert sun from your underground paradise.

Normally, yeah. But when I first saw FFXII's characters I thought Yoshida had designed the NPCs and world but Nomura had designed the characters. In this particular instance I think their styles overlap, that's what I'm getting at. Possibly intentionally, as there might be this idea within Square Enix that Final Fantasy requires outlandish designs.

As for FFX, I feel that game's designs also add to the history and culture of Spira, albeit with more bad designs. In fact they look more appropriate to their environment than XII's, for reasons bluestarultor mentioned. Vaan and Penelo's redesigns for Revenant Wings and FFTA2 are improvements IMO.

Oh, and this is just for laughs. :whee:

I'm not complaining about the clothes, just the thought that XII's characters somehow look more normal or appropriate to their environment than X's. I don't agree and, well, that's what forums are for. :p

Fine, they are both ridiculous. Happy?

Actually, I think the character's clothing I had the most problem with in FFX was simply Tidus himself. Now that you point out that it's a Blitzball uniform it seems slightly less garish, and I could follow the fact his one arm is covered in a gauntlet sort've makes snese, but that still doesn't explain why one leg of his shorts...pants...thing was shorter than the other.

And whatever you say I don't think you can qualify this:
http://www.geocities.com/echolunaki/Wakka.JPG

It's based on a style called cris-cross or something. I've actually seen some guy wear his pants like that on MTV with some dancing-oriented Laguna Beach rip-off. You know, the kind they list all the names any time anyone walks onscreen so you can tell them apart? And see whether they're supposed to be a guy or a girl?

At any rate, I think it's a miracle they pulled it off without him looking NEARLY as gay (homosexual) as the guy on the program.

Lets get away from this silly clothing debate. Seriously, who cares?

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions for the PSP has been released. This topic should now be about that, because as we all know, Tactics is the best Final Fantasy ever created. I'm gonna pick this game up sometime this week and I know that I'll love every second of it.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a2...10-wakka-a.jpg

Done. :p There was one really odd thing about his design, one. Anyway, my argument wasn't that FFX's designs were or weren't this or that, but that FFXII's designs were basically the same.

I do also happen to think that most of them make sense in their world bar a few oddities like Wakka's hair, Tidus' half-extended extendable shorts, or Lulu in general. Same exact deal with FFXII.

FFT may be the best FF ever, but WotL's horrible loading times exasperate me. It's Chrono Trigger vs Final Fantasy Chronicles all over again.

I haven't played it yet but I have seen some videos. From what I saw the lag didn't seem like it would ruin the game or anything. An annoyance, sure, but I could probably get used to it.

umm. How bad is it, I plan on getting it tommorrow.

What I'm really interested in is FF XII: Revenant Wings for the DS. Does anybody know when that bit o' obnoxious is coming out?

Worse than in the original. Or maybe I just played a crappy disc. Who knows.

However, I have to praise the translation, which is done by the same guy who took over Vagrant Story and FFXII.

I'm glad to hear that the translation is better. The original's was so godawful that it was near impossible to follow the story.

How are the new job classes, by the way?

I'm think Tom Slattery did this translation, not Alexander O. Smith. Or at least it's Slattery who is credited.

My friend who has it says there's "almost no difference" between the US PSP version and the PS1 version in terms of slowdown and load time. You can also rip the game to memory stick and greatly reduce the load time if you use custom firmware.

Edit: Oh, Square registered a new trademark: Lord of Vermilion.

Vermilion? Like that game Vermilion Sword? Which was an RPG back when...I don't think Square made it though, as it was on a Sega system.

Yah, FFT PS1 had some pretty big slowdown, I don't think it was actual lag, but the AI took FOREVER to make it's decisions so it probably ends up being about the same on the PSP even if it has actual lag in the spell animations and stuff.

I like that there is a new translation, I didn't have any trouble following the first one but it could've been a lot easier. My only problem with the new one from what I've seen is they transfer that way of talking they had in FFXII into this game too making it seem more complex than it is. You know, like, instead of that guy at the fort saying, "Get back or I"ll kill her" when he's holding Teta hostage he instead goes in this new one, "Go back into the shadows from whence ye came, or I'll turn this crystalline snow crimson with her blood" or something along those lines. Y'know, that sort've heady archaic talk they had in FFXII. I don't know, it just seems weird after the PSX's era of straight-forward, boorish dialogue (insofar as they could even get the translation right).

EDIT: Here it is--Note that it is a SPOILER..

It's cool and all, it just surprised me. I didn't expect it.

I doubt it has anything to do with Sword of Vermilion which is, like you said, made by SEGA. And until we see the pics it's just another Chrono Break. I'm not getting my hopes up.

And yeah, WotL translation seems to actually obfuscate the dialog a bit. I always found the original dialog to be adequate, the horrible parts were the bar talk, spell quotes, and the wretched tutorial. I don't like that the tweaks made to FFT's NA release weren't re-implemented either. Needing more JP sucks.

Okay, I absolutely love the art style of the cut scenes. Its like a moving Manga in my opinion.

Does anybody have a video of the English voice-overs in said cutscenes? They didn't have any in the original Japanese and when I hear THAT memories of the horrible DQ8 voice-overs come to mind. I don't think the people involved with FFT would make such a horrible mistake as to have bad voice actors but you never know...

Oh, and I'm glad they retained the game's art style and character design in the cutscenes. It's pretty awesome looking.

I don't like you anymore.

About the new jobs, I really haven't had the time to play with any of them, as the game is 1) not mine, and 2) school is getting busy at this point.

From what I have read the Onion Knight basically acts like the Bare/Normal class in Final Fantasy V, it can equip any armor/weapon and I THINK it has two free skill slots. So at the beginning of the game it's sort of worthless but by the end is probably what you'll be using for all your characters. The Dark Knight (which is apparently actually called a Fell Knight?) is super-over-powered and seems to require you to master and highly level in some of the more advanced classes (the ones that require you to master a bunch of other classes before they become open), so much like the Mime and Arithmetician it's probably the sort of thing you use later on in the game, like third/fourth chapter.

Also the review I read said the voice-overs were pretty fantastic, so I'm relieved.

I'm in tears.

... Lord of Vermilion?
As in Ragnarok Online's Lord of Vermilion? The spell?

Just wondering.

I don't know how you could have memories of something that doesn't exist.

POST LIMIT THREAD CLOSED.