Round 2: Disgaea Hour of Darkness vs. Final Fantasy Tactics

[Aeolus]

im gonna have to disagree. i dont know many FFT fans that also play fire emblem. at best FFT fans played the FFTA series and maybe tactics ogre LUCT.

FFT was the game that got me to fall in love with SRPGs. One rental, and I was hooked.

And then the same thing happened again when I played Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) on the GBA.

The SRPGs that fail to do it for me though are the ones that require grinding for the sake of grinding. Disgaea and its ilk are all about inflating your numbers as high as you can. It's the SRPG equivalent of a treadmill. FFTA likewise demands massive amounts of grinding for little to no gain, given just how many abilities in those games are carbon copies of one another (how many spin attacks does one need?).

[Taelus]

im gonna have to disagree. i dont know many FFT fans that also play fire emblem. at best FFT fans played the FFTA series and maybe tactics ogre LUCT.

FFT was the game that got me to fall in love with SRPGs. One rental, and I was hooked.

And then the same thing happened again when I played Fire Emblem (Blazing Sword) on the GBA.

The SRPGs that fail to do it for me though are the ones that require grinding for the sake of grinding. Disgaea and its ilk are all about inflating your numbers as high as you can. It's the SRPG equivalent of a treadmill. FFTA likewise demands massive amounts of grinding for little to no gain, given just how many abilities in those games are carbon copies of one another (how many spin attacks does one need?).

This all over.

[insertnamehere]

I like that Disgaea has Geo Panels and they add a neat twist on a familiar system.
I hate that FFT does that FF8 thing with enemies leveling alongside the party, though at least not story enemies.
And this may be blasphemous, but none of the music in FFT stuck with me really well, though I did like that opening jingle a lot.
Disgaea 2 is the only game in that series I've beaten and one track stuck out to me better than all of FFT's music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FD8wf3iiZU
edit: also tried finding this song for a couple years until this topic gave me motivation to look through the entire ost.

[Aeolus]

I like that Disgaea has Geo Panels and they add a neat twist on a familiar system.
I hate that FFT does that FF8 thing with enemies leveling alongside the party, though at least not story enemies.
And this may be blasphemous, but none of the music in FFT stuck with me really well, though I did like that opening jingle a lot.
Disgaea 2 is the only game in that series I've beaten and one track stuck out to me better than all of FFT's music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FD8wf3iiZU
edit: also tried finding this song for a couple years until this topic gave me motivation to look through the entire ost.

I wont go into why it was such a terrible idea for FFVIII to do it, but in FFT it made far more sense and for two reasons.

A) To keep players from sleepwalking through the game (because if story battles didn't scale at all and with the amount of options available to the player it would've been easy to just steamroll the game).
B) To make bringing up new recruits easier (monsters benefit from this immensely since their skills are set in stone and levels are their major improvement mechanic, humans less so).

[Blace]

im gonna have to disagree. i dont know many FFT fans that also play fire emblem. at best FFT fans played the FFTA series and maybe tactics ogre LUCT.

This is sooo wrong. FFT was the first SRPG me and many people I know played and remains the sole reason we even got into the genre. Like someone said, it opened the door so "pioneer" is the perfect word. FFT is in my top 5 games of all time and I played Fire Emblem BECAUSE I heard it was similar to FFT. I've now played through all the FE games that have made it over here and it is one of my favorite series. They played differently, but FFT and FE take far more skill than the NIS SRPG's.

[Alisha]

maybe im just getting old but the first srpg me and many of my srpg playing friends played was shining force 1 or 2.

[Fadedsun]

maybe im just getting old but the first srpg me and many of my srpg playing friends played was shining force 1 or 2.

Shining Force 2 was the first srpg I played as well, but it was FFT that made a huge impression on me in the genre. I actually forgot about the Shining Force games until I read this post.

[Eusis]

Objectively, I'd say it's probably FFT for being a richer game with more to development than raising points... but Disgaea's almost like candy, you can just belt it down fast, and find some trick to grinding super fast and abuse the hell out of it. So, I only ever beat Disgaea properly, but did watch FFT through to its end.

Now if only FFT could have FE's speediness or at least its fast feel, and it'd be perfect.

[mjrpgfan]

I'd go with Disgaea. At least its combat speed and UI responsiveness doesn't feel like wading through molasses.

[Aeolus]

The saddest part is that every time Squeenix ports it, the game engine keeps getting slower and slower (you'd think that after cranking out so many ports of so many games as frequently as they do that they'd learn how to get it right sooner or later).

[Monsoon]

I'm not going to vote.  These are two of my top five favorite games of all time.  **** all y'all. 

[Der Jermeister]

Definitely Disgaea. The botard who decided that you shouldn't be able to undo movement in FFT should be decapitated, and random encounters have no fucking place whatsoever in tactical RPGs.

[Eusis]

Definitely Disgaea. The botard who decided that you shouldn't be able to undo movement in FFT should be decapitated, and random encounters have no fucking place whatsoever in tactical RPGs.

Does every design decision you don't like require violence inflicted upon the designers?

Although random encounters rather than just saying I want to start a battle IS silly, especially when they last as long as they do in FFT. Maybe with a faster system it'd be fine.

[Aeolus]

Definitely Disgaea. The botard who decided that you shouldn't be able to undo movement in FFT should be decapitated, and random encounters have no fucking place whatsoever in tactical RPGs.

Does every design decision you don't like require violence inflicted upon the designers?

Although random encounters rather than just saying I want to start a battle IS silly, especially when they last as long as they do in FFT. Maybe with a faster system it'd be fine.

Or a way to escape them if you don't want to fight get reamed by Red Chocobos on that damn Waterfall.

Also, aren't Disgaea Item Worlds nothing but random encounters stacked one on top of another (with their own set of random encounters no less)?


Edit: Of course this brings up one of the bigger problems with FFT (especially in regards to Archers) is that you never start on the high or advantageous ground in any fight (except for the occasional Deep Dungeon stage but even that manages to get turned into a disadvantage).

[Eusis]

Also, aren't Disgaea Item Worlds nothing but random encounters stacked one on top of another (with their own set of random encounters no less)?

Er, no? They're not something that happens as you walk from place to place, they're more like roguelikes in that you go down randomly generated floors and try to clear them.

Though pirate invasions and whatnot absolutely are "random encounters".