I think the real crux of the matter is that Squeenix has probably not allocated many people to the project. I imagine all that work would take quite a while if there were only a couple of people working on it.
I doubt that only a couple people worked on it throughout the lifetime of the project. Perhaps there were a few times where only a couple of people were working on it where more people would have been unnecessary or simply get in the way of development - unlike the myth of "man hours" sometimes a project just has to wait due to one or two people who just need time to get something figured out or completed. Not everything in software development can get done in parallel. If I had to totally guess at the reasons for their delay it would be that the project perhaps had someone leave (or get reassigned) who was instrumental in getting it completed on time or for some other reason they found that the game just wasn't meeting their own internal QA standards close to release last year and decided to polish it some more. After all, FFT will be their biggest iOS release yet - perhaps even bigger than Chaos Rings - certainly their biggest port so far (until FF6 or FF7 perhaps ) and this release has to be big news outside of just iOS gaming circles. The delay sure is disappointing but I'd rather them not compromise their quality just to get it out sooner plus their reputation would take a huge hit if this came out as a perceived half-assed port (and their reputation isn't currently real great right now anyway).
Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to play this when it first came out, but I am a huge fan of the Chaos Rings series, mainly because of the story. Can you guys explain what makes FFT so awesome and anticipated? I've never played an SRPG before either, so this might be my first!
At the risk of opening the can of worms, I'd say that like FF7 with JRPGs, FFT introduced a huge group of gamers to the SRPG genre, and did so with a really accessible, yet sufficiently challenging game. Though some of us old-timers might remember the likes of Shining Force, or Master of Monsters, I would say FFT took the SRPG genre to another level, or at least exposed the huge SquareSoft (back then) fan base to that level. Trust me when I say that if you're a fan of games, you will want to play this game.
I would also add that FFT was one of the first SRPGs that became popular that took it's audience serioulsy (this is in America, of course). Games like Shining Force are awesome, but had a less serious and more comical quality thrown in, which detracted from how serious the story was. American gamers that were not importing or emulating games like Front Mission or Tactics Ogre had never seen that level of character diversity/complexity paired with an in-depth and mature plot. I would also hasten to add that I don't feel that SE has managed to top FFT since it was released, all of the quasi-sequels, while a ton of fun, did not check all of the same boxes that FFT did.
Haha thanks I also should add that when FFT came out, a ton of people bought it expecting another FF7, and were bitterly disappointed. Within 6 months used copies were selling for $10-15. Less than a year after that, it was impossible to find and everyone wanted it. Strange times!
I also missed FFT the first time around but I did manage to play through the first few missions on an emulated copy . I played enough to decide that I'd rather wait for it to come out on iOS so I could really get into it and lavish attention on it. I've also been listening to the game's soundtrack and I'd say the soundtrack is easily one of the best that I've ever heard - for video games or movies - it truly *is* epic. And I use that term very very sparingly. The story and plot seem to be taken from a novel or a really deep mini-series. I've read through most of the "Game of Thrones" books and I'm not saying that the plot for FFT approaches the depth of Game of Thrones but a similar style is present to me. The plot for FFT is like a fantasy version of the War of the Roses and has a nice history and lots of characters. Its kind of like Shakespeare meets Final Fantasy - sorta. The gameplay itself (the little bit that I experienced) was sheer awesomeness. It reminded me of my old RPG days playing D&D with miniatures on an erasable grid. Movement, positioning, range of spells and weapons, flanking - its all there and adds such an extra layer of depth to a RPG that standard turn based RPGs just don't have. Its like comparing two dimensions to three dimensions - without the tactical movement and positioning you're missing an entire dimension of additional gameplay. So this all leads to some really neat setups and depth you just don't get with most other types of games. An example I experienced was that prior to one of the missions I had upgraded one of my chemists to a black mage and gave him a fire spell. During the next mission, I positioned him on a rooftop behind a chimney so he was mostly out of line of sight of enemy spellcasters and archers. I managed to pop out of cover and rain down a couple of area of effect fire spells on the CPU controlled enemy group before he was finally taken out by the enemy leader climbing up to the roof and stabbing him. My black mage even managed to kill one enemy mage and severly injure another one on the street below who were close enough to both take damage from a single fire spell. Overall the AI of the game isn't lax and does offer a challenge. They don't just "bumrush" you. They will position the units around to try and flank you, they will retreat or pull back injured units and heal them, etc. They will even sometimes gang up on one of your units. So proper positioning is essential. And these are simply the impressions from my playing a PC emulator of the game for just a couple of hours. Hadn't had such fun playing a deep and involving game in ... well, years. So yeah, the excitement for this game to be released is certainly understandable to me.
Just an FYI for new players to this game: by the end of the game (and mostly during), the most dangerous battles will be random ones. They scale the enemies based on your levels, and they do not pull punches.
FFT is easily exploitable w/ a variety of different classes. FFT is relatively easy, just getting the rare items and such can suck.
Exploitable yes, but those who know how to exploit are not who my message was aimed at. And yeah, the special weapons and items can be tough. Deep Dungeon is so much fun Honestly, I don't even use Calculators any more, because they are just that damn broken.
Yeah, accumulate too is broken. They should've defo maxed how much you can get w/ that, esp. w/ monk. Luckily it makes grinding the game a ton easier though. Calcs are cool to mess w/ though. So is anything added in this version, or is this a direct port of the PSP version?
So far, SE has only said this is a port of War of the Lions, the PSP remake/port/enhancement or whatever you want to call it. I doubt there is added content or characters, but WOTL was a pretty beefy upgrade: new script, new characters, fixing some of the bugs and item dupe tricks. I love this game, but I am unsure if SE is imaginative enough to add anything to this release or even plan on DLC.
Yeah, i've already sunk in some decent hours on my psp on it. It'd be nice to have it on my cell though since I have almost completely stopped playing console games. But the new character classes are nothing to get excited about. Dark Knight and Onion Knight are meh~ The game is a lot more fun when you don't spend time grinding though. I remember the first time I played it, I had to retry stage 4 multiple times.
I have played through this game twice on the PSX, and once on the PSP, full runs with getting all characters and items, and I am still excited about this release The new classes are meh, but the new characters were fun, I loved Balthier and Luso.
I remember being so stoked when the PSP version came out, as i really liked the look of the new cutscenes and thought it was going to be suitably epic. Then when i actually played the game, i was treated to this awesome new feature that none of the mainstream reviews had mentioned: the horrific lag during the actual gameplay- like your moves were being done in slow-motion. Why SE chose to lavish such obvious care and attention on the presentation of the game, but then hamstrung it like this is completely beyond me. I'm cautiously optimistic for the iOS port, though- perhaps we'll get to see WotL as it was truly meant to be.
The lag was seriously a deal killer for me. I basically just leveled up to see some cut scenes and also get the new classes. I will say this though, in the PSP version I believe you were unable to xfer to HDD. Even if you had CFW, it didn't make much of a dif. So I am wondering how loading times will be in this game since it will be directly on the iPhone's HDD. Hopefully it'll be better, if not, it sure as heck is better than lugging around a PSP.
@kimdoocheol: definitely with you on that one, my friend- i actually tried the CFW approach, and transferred my (legit, store-bought) copy to my memory stick, to see if it would specifically help with the lag, but it did nothing. Having read around a little about the subject, it appears that the lag is to do with poorly-optimised code, not loading times, which is why they did nothing to fix it- guess it would have required too much work. I'll definitely hold off on this version until i hear whether or not it's suffering from the same crippling issue. But hey- perhaps fixing it is why they've taken so long to bring it out for iOS- fingers crossed!
Yeah, doesn't help at all. I seriously think they added that delay in anyways b/c they were expecting there to be a delay for the animation. That is why I am hoping that they actually spent making this game unique to iOS instead of a 'direct port.' But I, like others, am hoping that this will bring another sale around to the SE games. I want to grab Tomb Raider (heard it was pretty fun) and Summer Story. Anyways, hopefully this comes out soon.
Amen to the talk about lag! It was rough. After a while I sorta phased it out, but I also played the majority of the PSP version while watching TV, so I was only half paying attention. I would love to see this version run buttery smooth more than anything else.
