Final Fantasy 7 was ment to be easy...

[Travis]

I am currently playing through the hardcore mod and I am loving every minute of it as usual.

But, I will say one thing about Final Fantasy 7. It was ment to be easy. I am not bashing the hardcore mod, but I just have to say that if you want to really think about it, the game was ment to be easy.

The fact that the game was easy helped the overall storyline of the game. It was so well balanced and you were never away from the story for to long trying to level up. It was the perfect way to do it.

It was just really well paced and you were never forgetting what just happenned that was important to the story.

People say, "oh Final Fantasy 7 isn't the best FF game because it's to easy." Mainly FF6 fanboys have said this to me.

Sorry, but I found Final Fantasy 6's story to get stale because it took so long to level up to make it so I could beat certain parts of the game, especially at the beginning of the World of Ruin.

[nikfrozty]

Another story of FF6 fanboys hatin on FF7. Anyways I think the difficulty of the game really depends on how you leveled up. If you just keep on continuing the game without taking the time to level up at all it will be hard. And I do agree with you, if you keep on leveling up for a long time the game will be somewhat boring. I mean look at FF12, it is fun but we take more time leveling up and attacking thousands of monsters we see and keep on using the same style of fighting so that makes it boring.

[Marc]

I don't recall every needing to level up in any non-NES ff game except maybe the hardtype ff4 for the final dungeon.

Just do sidequests throughout the game and you'll be plenty powerful.

FF1 need not apply though.  That sucked.

[Bosola]

I am currently playing through the hardcore mod and I am loving every minute of it as usual.

But, I will say one thing about Final Fantasy 7. It was ment to be easy. I am not bashing the hardcore mod, but I just have to say that if you want to really think about it, the game was ment to be easy.

The fact that the game was easy helped the overall storyline of the game. It was so well balanced and you were never away from the story for to long trying to level up. It was the perfect way to do it.

It was just really well paced and you were never forgetting what just happenned that was important to the story.

People say, "oh Final Fantasy 7 isn't the best FF game because it's to easy." Mainly FF6 fanboys have said this to me.

Sorry, but I found Final Fantasy 6's story to get stale because it took so long to level up to make it so I could beat certain parts of the game, especially at the beginning of the World of Ruin.

But difficulty and pacing are not quite the same thing. A succession of spam-tastic, high encounter rate fights will be far less fun than a smaller number of more engaging encounters. And 'engaging' need not mean 'absurdly difficult'. You don't need to harshly punish players to nevertheless make them aware of useful tactical decisions and enemy attributes. The real issue with VII is how samey fights are. Can you remember the difference in strategy between a Kyulviduns and a Head Hunter? Or between a Flower Prong and Razor Weed?

Not that VI is much better in this regard - it's even more unbalanced than VII. Quick, anyone? Only X and, to a lesser extent, IX really did battles well.

[Kudistos Megistos]

Only X and, to a lesser extent, IX really did battles well.

...and whilst IX may have been a bit less samey, it was even easier than VII. Far easier in fact, until the last boss. (which is strange, since the difficulty of the last boss is usually the most disappointing thing about a FF game)

Oh, and it's yet more hilarious hypocrisy from those FF6 fanboys. Not a single enemy in that game challenged me and I beat Kefka on the first attempt. At least VII had Ruby and Emerald weapon. I found VII far harder, but that was because it was my first RPG. I suspect the reason they found FF6 harder is because it was their first.

[-Ric-]

6 isnt hard at all...
as far as easy goes, nothing beats FF8

[nikfrozty]

Only X and, to a lesser extent, IX really did battles well.

...and whilst IX may have been a bit less samey, it was even easier than VII. Far easier in fact, until the last boss. (which is strange, since the difficulty of the last boss is usually the most disappointing thing about a FF game)

Oh, and it's yet more hilarious hypocrisy from those FF6 fanboys. Not a single enemy in that game challenged me and I beat Kefka on the first attempt. At least VII had Ruby and Emerald weapon. I found VII far harder, but that was because it was my first RPG. I suspect the reason they found FF6 harder is because it was their first.

I agree. I found FF8 and FF9 much easier because I got used to the ATB system of the Final Fantasy and only little changes were implemented so its like continuing the game just with new added things.

[Kudistos Megistos]

6 isnt hard at all...
as far as easy goes, nothing beats FF8

Not even FF9?

Besides the last few, all of the enemies were designed to be beaten by players speed-running the game so that they could get Excalibur II. I remember finishing FF9 without a guide in less time than I finished FF8 with a guide (I probably didn't need a guide for FF8, but there was one lying around in a magazine I had and I couldn't resist looking at it out of curiosity).

[obesebear]

6 isnt hard at all...
as far as easy goes, nothing beats FF8

Not even FF9?

Besides the last few, all of the enemies were designed to be beaten by players speed-running the game so that they could get Excalibur II. I remember finishing FF9 without a guide

Not easy.  I can't remember how many times I died in the sewers where those two white monsters jump out of the water.  F Final Fantasy IX

[Kudistos Megistos]

Really? Am I the only one that found FF9 to be the easiest game in the series? I'm not showing off (I'm actually a pretty bad gamer), but I can't remember anything in 9 causing me any problems. With all the other FF games, there was at least one thing that made me get stuck for a while

[obesebear]

I gotta go with 7.  9 I died quite a few times.  8 I died a few times.  But 7 I ran through as a young teenager, I only ever died figuring out how to beat Ruby and Emerald.

[Bosola]

Only X and, to a lesser extent, IX really did battles well.

...and whilst IX may have been a bit less samey, it was even easier than VII. Far easier in fact, until the last boss. (which is strange, since the difficulty of the last boss is usually the most disappointing thing about a FF game)

The fights remain more varied, and enemies more individualistic, although to an extent the separation of abilities across characters helps emphasise that (the differences between foes become important when it influences your party choices). The real issue I have with VII is how similarly the enemies play; how complex AI gets wasted; how the game forgets the importance of elements pretty soon into the first disc, and long before st. magic even becomes available.

X was really the antithesis of this - a small number of statuses, individuated characters and a streamlined element system.

[Covarr]

Another story of FF6 fanboys hatin on FF7. Anyways I think the difficulty of the game really depends on how you leveled up. If you just keep on continuing the game without taking the time to level up at all it will be hard. And I do agree with you, if you keep on leveling up for a long time the game will be somewhat boring. I mean look at FF12, it is fun but we take more time leveling up and attacking thousands of monsters we see and keep on using the same style of fighting so that makes it boring.

I have only ever played through FF7 without grinding. I only go out of my way to grind in games if I absolutely need the additional levels. Other than that, I fight every random encounter but never look for more.

This is how the game was made to be played, I suspect, because I was always just about at the right place to beat the bosses, albeit with a bit of difficulty.

[Miseru]

 Console games generally are ment to be easy.

 Well the early rpg's required lots of grinding, but I don't consider lvling on constant battles hard, it was just boring. Through people then could play whole day with excitement in galaxian/arcanoid/tetris, so the boring part was quite understandable and not soo noticeable then.

 Maybe people feel FF7/8 is crappy easy couse magic except restore and rarely support is useless in most cases making it seen as possible to complete the game with using just attack command, but it's not like FFVI with great magic was harder, the magic there actually was making it same or more easy. Through I kind of was disappointed from Giga Flare from FFVII for example. 9999 dmg at most after animation under which I could attack 2-3 times with 4-cut dealing lots of more dmg without even using mp.>.> Hopefully now we can mod it to cut all physical dmg down to make magic and summons more usable.

 Saying something is easy is the worst to say if you want to say something bad about a game. Games shouldn't really be hard as real life as they should give FUN not be another timewaster making you do hard WORK(like some old pc rpg's did>.>). Maybe kids having just school can't understand that, but sooner or later you have enough of "slow gather of coins" or the thing your "party members" can die just couse you were crossing a street while some drunk driver didn't saw red light;P, your lack of strength when you were alone and meet a band of bored skinheads while returning home in the night and all other stuff soo common in life. I would say to go and play sims to anyone that need life simulation while dunno his life's still on ultra easy lvl.=]

 I consider whole FF series very possitively becouse it haven't got a single game that was hard. I hate moments in games like bosses you can't kill without hours of grinding or jumping for 30 minutes in small arena(literally 30 minutes of jumping if you didn't die in the process>.<, action based j-rpg one of the -YS-, forgot exactly which one), it's all boring, nothing hard, at most tiresome.

 Actually as I remember there WAS/IS ONE console RPG hard for me, through not from FF series. It was Slayers Wonderfull which I got while being fascinated in this anime as a teen;P and... well it was never translated(or it was and I just missed that?=_=) to english or any other understandable-by-me-language, so it basically was hard couse I didn't understand a single kanji playing it. >.>

 Sometimes I just wish more RPG's would come out of Japan, then maybe USA and EU would produce less maniacs of FF that quarrel which game is better/easier/harder after seeing like 2 games a year instead then talking about them instead of playing 222 different games that come out every year there.^_^

 PS. My fav materia in FF7 was/is Enemy AWAY, through it didn't really made the game any harder, more pleasing for me as I hate too much of those random encounters.

[DLPB_]

It was made easy by the values which were chosen and yes they made it easy to cater to a general audience, and so that makes business sense.  They should have added a difficulty option.

Since they didn't others are doing it (and I will be soon enough too)

[gjoerulv]

FF1-4 were pretty hard, 'specially near the end of 'em. 5 and 6 were so-so. Kinda a transition. At 7 it started getting easy. FF10 have to be the easiest one. It's the 1st time I played through a FF without a game over (not even by carelessness).

All of 'em are ridiculously easy with too much grinding (duh).

But I agree. The story goes more smoothly in "easy" games. Take dragon age for instance. I actually cheated a lot the 1st time I played through just to see the general story (either that, or start on easy the first time). The FFs definitely should have difficulty settings; at least a new game+.

[Kudistos Megistos]

Squeenix should focus on ways to make FF games harder (or at least more interesting) without requiring grinding. Bringing things like elements and statuses into play more often would help with that; there would be enemies that would be harder to beat than the ones in FF5 onwards, but the player wouldn't need to waste time grinding and disrupting the flow of the storyline.

I also like the idea of difficulty levels in FF games; it's a complete mystery why they don't have them. However, if they were to introduce them, they'd have to do a better job than they did with Crisis Core; hard mode in that game was wildly unbalanced and there were, for example some missions that were rated as easy but were incredibly hard and others rated as hard which were comparatively easy because the difficulty of each enemy did not increase by the same amount.

Required grinding is a failure of gameplay and evidence of laziness on the part of the people making them.

[Furzball]

I sorta am in the middle where sometimes I like grinding and others I just want the storyline. Take FFx-2 for example. I found that I had to grind more then FFX in it. Especially since they should have done just a minisode thing like the one they gave away on demo disks before hand. (was going to put a vid up but cant find it on youtube) (was the one where it was yuna in her summoners dress, saying she's been practicing holding her breath and other things thinking about tidus)

But yeah back on topic, I like how in world of warcraft it does missions to help level you up and you get storyline, that's how it should be in final fantasy. Instead of just monster grinding you should do side mission or other missions having to do with main story to level you up as you go along. Make monster grinding only good for getting certain items, statistics, more money, that sort of thing.

[DLPB_]

One way to make a game harder and fun at same time is to introduce puzzles.  FFX had Cloister of trials (but that is just 1) and I loved that but Breath of Fire III imho beats any FF game hands down in terms of some of its gameplay.

FF games could add little things like puzzles without the need to be grinding and battling.

[The Seer of Shadows]

I actually enjoy games that make you grind a bit, but within reason.  Too much grinding makes a game boring.

I hated the Cloister of Trials in FFX.  Almost as much as I hated Blitzball.  Throughout both, I was just dying to move on with the game.  Found them too long and tedious.

I suppose that in the end, it comes down to personal preference

[yoshi314]

One way to make a game harder and fun at same time is to introduce puzzles.  FFX had Cloister of trials (but that is just 1) and I loved that but Breath of Fire III imho beats any FF game hands down in terms of some of its gameplay.

FF games could add little things like puzzles without the need to be grinding and battling.

harder yes, more fun - NO.

i hate those mini games in ffx requred for celestial weapons. catching baloons, dodging lightning and that annoying blitzball. it's just too arcade (except for blitzball), for a (semi) turn-based rpg.

cloisters of trials were cool, though.

[Tuxedo]

I don't think a game being too hard would affect a game's story. And you had to grind in FF6? Really? Anyways, I like my RPGs with a little difficulty, once the game's battle system is fun that is. The sad thing is though, is that most FFs (IMO) don't have a fun battle system.