Well, it was easier for cartridge-based games for two reasons: no seek time (gets really bad on DVD) and much smaller content. That's still not an excuse for developers. For some reason RPG developers seem to be worse in that respect. KOTOR was driving me nuts with loading times (funny, it runs faster on XBox360 with emulation). There are a few games that show how it should be done. My favorites in that respect are Burnout 2 which always looks like it starts even before you put the disk in XBox and Dead or Alive 3 which makes really good use of the hard drive.

Sorry to hear about the bad experience... As a non-console gamer, Jade Empire is about the only game I'm interested in seeing on the XBox as well.

If she doesn't care about playing on Xbox Live! you could always put in a mod chip (and optionally a bigger hard drive) and run the game from the HDD to reduce load times. This is how PC games have managed to keep down load times despite being gigabytes in size.

Yeah, she doesn't care for XBOX Live!

I've been telling myself to mod my XBOX for the last 2 years but have never gotten around to it....eventually I will. It's just sad to see how little the XBOX HD was used for caching and it doesn't look like this will change for the XBOX 360.

There are so little games that interest me on the XBOX that it's not really worth it to bother Moding it unless I use it for other purposes (stick in a 500gb HD, put tons of DIVX/music/emulated games on there).

Might as well just get a cheapo laptop then.....

Actually I think it will be even worse for the XBox 360. Isn't the HDD missing in some of the lower-end models?

I think the console load times are due to the limited resources they have. Doesn't the Xbox only have 64 megs of RAM? Having to load from slower media like dvd instead of a hard drive will also make the load time longer.

I remember an old game, Gobliiins, that had fairly long load times especially when run from floppy. Installing it to the hard drive speeded up load times dramatically. I may be thinking of the Amiga version though on that one. The Amiga alway seemed to have slow drive access.

I don't have an Xbox, but I got a hard drive recently for the PS2 and copied all my games to it to keep the media out of the hands of my young children. One game, Crash Bandicoot had nearly 1 minute load times between levels. Running it from the hard drive reduced that to about 7 seconds.

Are there any Playstation fans here? 😀

DosFreak said that he had not missed much by not playing xbox games but I cannot say the same about Playstation 1 and Playstation 2 games. Over the last two years I finished some ps1 games and most importantly I finished Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII (including the Crash Bandicoot games for the ps1). Now I must say that the final fantasy games totally rocked and are something that we do not have on the PC (except for the strange pc ports which I will not try). For this Christmas I got a Playstation 2, and my, wasn't I happy... 😁 The ps2 has unique titles and there are many of them as well. So far I've finished God of War, which is an amazing game, one just has to try it. I've also been playing Soul Calibur 2 and 3 with my brother and again I must say that fantastic is the smallest word I can think of about these games. And they are not available on the PC. All of them have fast loading times. And for New Year I got my hands on Final Fantasy X. Now this is something you do not see every day. It is a 2002 game but of such quality that rivals (and excels sometimes) contemporary games in every aspect. I think that the Playstation 2 is a much better buy than the Xbox due to many reasons, one of them being the fact that there a lot more quality titles, but it seems that people here prefer Xbox, and I don't know why. There are, of course, many more games for the ps2 in addition to those that I mentioned that can totally change your idea of fun.

That does not mean that I do not like computers, I've been using computers since 1989 and I've had so much fun with them, so much. But people should not be narrow-minded and consoles should not be dismissed. There are games that load fast on consoles and there are some that load slowly, but aren't there games that load slowly on the PC as well? I think there are, and they are not one in a thousand either. I was sceptical at first about consoles but quickly changed my mind after trying some games. They are, after all, machines that are purely dedicating to gaming, and the playstation 1 and 2 clearly show that. You just have to see it to believe it.

XBOX simply gets more attention because it's newer and it's not Sony. That's it. 😀 (Oh and XBOX Live for people that like that, I don't).

I didn't mention the Playstation because I play all of my PS1 games on my computer (I don't have friends over to play console games). As for PS2 It's not enough of an incentive to bother when I have tons of excellent PC games to play and the PS2 would simply gather dust like my XBOX 95% of the time.

Basically any optical media will be slow on a console unless devs take advantage of an HD. We'll see what Sony does and this may provide an incentive for me to bother with a console.....but I haven't really played a console heavily since NES/SNES days, (mainly for addictive gameplay which is pretty nonexistent on today's consoles but also because Suprise! NO LOADING TIMES!) so the PS3 isn't very interesting to me either.

I'll get around to playing PS2 games when they are emulated on the PC. 😁

I do agree that the PS(x) has far more titles that interest me than the XBOX (Suprise Japanese gamers are "real" gamers). Never got much into the Final Fantasy series but FF7+ never interested me much. (Console RPG's generally suck compared to PC/paper RPG's and I don't like interactive movies....and CG really sucks).

There are games that load slowly on the PC. The trick to those? Don't buy them until the PC catches up enough. The rule for me for quite awhile is to not buy a new game when it comes out, wait, wait and wait some more. When you finally pick it up your PC is more than powerful enough to overcome the shortcomings of the game engine.

DosFreak wrote:

I didn't mention the Playstation because I play all of my PS1 games on my computer

Me too. 😀 I am not running ps1 games on my ps2 when I have the option to play them on the PC... 😀

Basically any optical media will be slow on a console unless devs take advantage of an HD. We'll see what Sony does and this may provide an incentive for me to bother with a console.....but I haven't really played a console heavily since NES/SNES days, (mainly for addictive gameplay which is pretty nonexistent on today's consoles but also because Suprise! NO LOADING TIMES!) so the PS3 isn't very interesting to me either.

Nes is good but some (even most) games require you to play a level thirty times before you stop dying on every step. It gets irritating. SNES is also good but I like the megadrive2/genesis more. I think the ps2 also offers addictive gameplay and what's more, I think there are tons of it. And not all games load slowly, most load quickly. The ps3 does look interesting to me after watching the mgs4 real-time trailer and some other trailers too.

I'll get around to playing PS2 games when they are emulated on the PC. 😁

It will be quite a while before a working emulator is out. PCSX2's already 0.8.1 and games are still unplayable, in my humble opinion. I waited more than a year and a half for this emulator to come out at least nearly as working as the ps1 one but finally decided to buy the ps2. I am definitely not sorry. 😀

I do agree that the PS(x) has far more titles that interest me than the XBOX (Suprise Japanese gamers are "real" gamers). Never got much into the Final Fantasy series but FF7+ never interested me much. (Console RPG's generally suck compared to PC/paper RPG's and I don't like interactive movies....and CG really sucks).

Yeah, there are more titles for sure. I don't think that console RPGs suck. One thing's got nothing to do with the other. Play ff7 for at least two hours and you will change your mind. I had the same opinion like you before booting up ff7 for the first time and playing it for three hours. You don't like CG? I'm surprised. 😕 Don't you like movies then? Or more specifically movies that feature lots of cg or even movies that are full cg? Like quality CG movies? Seriously, I think that CG rocks and next-gen gaming is geared towards making games look more realistic than ever. It is said, for example, that with the advent of next-gen consoles like the PS3, CG pre-rendered animations will become obsolete because games in real-time will look like these CG animations anyway. Cool, huh? 😀

There are games that load slowly on the PC. The trick to those? Don't buy them until the PC catches up enough. The rule for me for quite awhile is to not buy a new game when it comes out, wait, wait and wait some more. When you finally pick it up your PC is more than powerful enough to overcome the shortcomings of the game engine

That's an old method. 😀 I've used it more than once for classics like Ultima IX and some others. But I want to play a game when it's out and when it's hot, not three years later when it looks old compared to other new 3d games. Some new games will play great but still load a little longer, so the loading problem is evident even on PCs, not only on consoles. This is especially true for 3d games. 2d dos games and the like are always fun and always looking great. 😁

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I wanted to like FF7 but keep putting it down because I always get disappointed whenever Square interrupts the awesome dark atmosphere with cheesy carnivals, cute animals, beach resorts, bad dialogue, scenes that are too long and/or have too much "fluff" dialogue, etc.

Also, FF7 is way better on PC than PSX because you get higher res graphics and your choice of MIDI synth. I've heard it said that the PC ports of FF7 and FF8 are considered by some to be the definitive versions of those games.

My newest console is a PSX with a mod chip, and after playing dozens of games on it I can really only recommend:
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- the Armored Core games
- Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (hey, it's a roguelike)
- Metal Gear Solid (except for all the long, cheesy fluff dialogue and silly boss characters; also, the PC version is probably better)

I haven't found a single RPG for PSX that I really liked. I beat Chrono Trigger but was disappointed. I put down Xenogears multiple times after drowning in boring fluff dialogue and talking animals. Most of the rest had some combination of horribly cliche plots and/or gargantuan amounts if inane fluff dialogue. It eventually dawned on me that, being a PC RPG gamer and a member of the Atari generation, I just can't connect with Japanese RPGs. The sole exception to this is early 16-bit and especially 8-bit Japanese RPGs, which were light enough on plot to allow the player to fill in the gaps with imagination instead of inane fluff.

Why can't Square-Enix make an RPG with:
- a coherent plot
- no cute stuff
- a reasonable amount of dialogue, which also happens to be interesting instead of boring
- male characters that are not exaggerated to be super-effeminate/weak/uncertain or super-aggressive/big. Or in general, more realistic, adult characters that you actually give a rip about

I would say that Chrono Trigger came closest to meeting these goals, but was a little too cutesy and had the cliche of kids as main characters. Also, the overall plot should have been stronger.

Also, there need to be more RPGs - Japanese or western - that are purely sci-fi themed (or maybe sci-fi with a little magic thrown in, a la Shadowrun). The fantasy thing is way beyond old at this point.

HunterZ wrote:

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I wanted to like FF7 but keep putting it down because I always get disappointed whenever Square interrupts the awesome dark atmosphere with cheesy carnivals, cute animals, beach resorts, bad dialogue, scenes that are too long and/or have too much "fluff" dialogue, etc.

Are you sure? Final Fantasy 7 has one of the best stories ever. Are you sure that the scenes are too long or the dialogue is ... what do you call it ..."fluff"? The scenes with the "cheesy" carnivals actually rule. And hey, did you check out the music? I think that what Square has achieved with Final Fantasy 7 is something outstanding. In the end Final Fantasy 7 is just one of the best games ever. If you don't believe me check out some of the numerous reviews out there, everywhere, from gamespot to mobygames.

Also, FF7 is way better on PC than PSX because you get higher res graphics and your choice of MIDI synth. I've heard it said that the PC ports of FF7 and FF8 are considered by some to be the definitive versions of those games.

I don't think so. The music on the PSX is the way it has to be heard, don't really think it could be better. The soundtrack that is sold sounds exactly as the psx version. Better res ... maybe... more buggy... sure as ever. FF7 didn't crash a single time throughout the whole time that I played it on the ps1. I really doubt that the pc port of ff7 can boast such an achievement. Let's not even mention the FF8 pc port.

My newest console is a PSX with a mod chip, and after playing dozens of games on it I can really only recommend: - Castlevania: […]
Show full quote

My newest console is a PSX with a mod chip, and after playing dozens of games on it I can really only recommend:
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
- the Armored Core games
- Chocobo's Dungeon 2 (hey, it's a roguelike)
- Metal Gear Solid (except for all the long, cheesy fluff dialogue and silly boss characters; also, the PC version is probably better)

I haven't found a single RPG for PSX that I really liked. I beat Chrono Trigger but was disappointed. I put down Xenogears multiple times after drowning in boring fluff dialogue and talking animals. Most of the rest had some combination of horribly cliche plots and/or gargantuan amounts if inane fluff dialogue. It eventually dawned on me that, being a PC RPG gamer and a member of the Atari generation, I just can't connect with Japanese RPGs. The sole exception to this is early 16-bit and especially 8-bit Japanese RPGs, which were light enough on plot to allow the player to fill in the gaps with imagination instead of inane fluff.

Try Medievil, try some platformers like Crash Bandicoot if you like jump&run games. I haven't really played Chrono trigger or Xenogears but I heard that Chrono Cross is good.

Why can't Square-Enix make an RPG with: - a coherent plot - no cute stuff - a reasonable amount of dialogue, which also happens […]
Show full quote

Why can't Square-Enix make an RPG with:
- a coherent plot
- no cute stuff
- a reasonable amount of dialogue, which also happens to be interesting instead of boring
- male characters that are not exaggerated to be super-effeminate/weak/uncertain or super-aggressive/big. Or in general, more realistic, adult characters that you actually give a rip about

Having played through Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, I can readily say that they've achieved more, much more, than that. And after playing Final Fantasy X for fifteen minutes my jaw simply dropped to the ground, no more, no less. And yes some bosses are big, heavy, and difficult but that just makes you think more and makes you try to discover new ways to defeat them, which is fun, in my opinion.

Also, there need to be more RPGs - Japanese or western - that are purely sci-fi themed (or maybe sci-fi with a little magic thrown in, a la Shadowrun). The fantasy thing is way beyond old at this point

Haven't played Shadowrun either but Final Fantasy is exactly that as far as I know. There is sci-fi and there is magic. It is not just fantasy. It is a unique blend of the very same genres that you mentioned.

I really haven't dug into the later FF's but I can see where HunterZ is coming from.

If you've grown up playing paper RPG's, any older RPG before Baldur's Gate on the PC, and any RPG before the PSX/N64/XBOX then your used to a totally different RPG experience than the newer RPG's which just seem to be overloaded with extra "crap".

I really haven't dug deep into FF7 but I don't believe HunterZ said the story was bad:

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I wanted to like FF7 but keep putting it down because I always get disappointed whenever Square interrupts the awesome dark atmosphere with:

cheesy carnivals
cute animals
beach resorts
bad dialogue
scenes that are too long
too much fluff dialogue

This is typical of Japanese game design which doesn't seem to mesh well with the rest of the world. I can understand a cute animal game here or there but they seem to be everywhere in japanese games.

As for the bad dialogue.....Since I can't read original japanese I don't know if the original source is usually that bad or if it's just the translation. Also there is alot of the japanese culture that relies on the dialogue so it can be kinda weird translating it to America.

Fluff dialogue.....Yeah, games have never been known for good dialogue. I think overall it's better than it used to be but not that much better. They really need to incorporate real writers into games than just whatever the developer's felt like writing down one day to give the game some sort of plot (Not talking about the FF series here which is better than most).

I don't think so. The music on the PSX is the way it has to be heard, don't really think it could be better. The soundtrack that is sold sounds exactly as the psx version. Better res ... maybe... more buggy... sure as ever. FF7 didn't crash a single time throughout the whole time that I played it on the ps1. I really doubt that the pc port of ff7 can boast such an achievement. Let's not even mention the FF8 pc port.

Yeah, from all the trouble I've seen with people trying to play FF7 on PC I just recommend they play it in their original PS or use an emulator. FF7 on PC requires 3rd party hacks to make it playable and they took years to finally make it playable.

Why can't Square-Enix make an RPG with: - a coherent plot - no cute stuff - a reasonable amount of dialogue, which also happens to be interesting instead of boring - male characters that are not exaggerated to be super-effeminate/weak/uncertain or super-aggressive/big. Or in general, more realistic, adult characters that you actually give a rip about

I'm with HunterZ here.

Again the Coherent plot thing which is difficult with a port of a Japanese game (not I haven't played any game greater than FF7 but I have played a few Japanese rpg's).

Again the cutesy factory as noted above which is grating.

And finally exageratted characters.

Oh yeah, The FF characters have never really "done" it for me. Every time I look at a new FF's it's like WHOAH! LOOK AT THAT SWORD! Or WHOAH WHAT'S WITH THE STUPID ASS HAIR! LOOK AT THOSE MUSCLES!

Yeah, I never identify with the characters.....it's like celebrity FF over here. They might as well put Johnny Depp and Angelina Joley into the next FF game. (Picked those 2 because they look kinda weird and would probably fit a FF game).

doomer wrote:

Are you sure? Final Fantasy 7 has one of the best stories ever. Are you sure that the scenes are too long or the dialogue is ... what do you call it ..."fluff"?

Yes, I'm sure. Don't get me wrong - FF7 was not nearly as bad in this respect as games that came later, but there was still a lot of scenes where you just sit there hitting A,A,A,A,A,A for 5-10 minutes to get through non-interactive dialogue. This is a very boring and non-immersive way to tell a story, and there are much better ways to weave it into a game. It probably would help to use speech instead of text, but they didn't do that because of the enormous added cost (plus it would cheapen the game if not done well).

The scenes with the "cheesy" carnivals actually rule.

No, they were stupid (in my opinion) - at least for that world they were. They painted this picture of a dark world where a greedy corporation was plundering the earth, oppressing the people, and conducting horrifying experiments; they wove into this the story of soldiers and resistance fighters. Then, they derailed the whole damned thing with supposedly humorous cross-dressing quests, beach resorts, carnivals, etc. Why? It would have been so much cooler if they had just stuck to the theme they started instead of going off into cutesy land. Unfortunately they seemed to get attention deficit disorder, or maybe they felt that they needed to break the dark mood to keep the game from being too scary, or something.

I've had this discussion with numerous people and I respect that most of them don't share my opinion (in fact, I even got a dozen people really mad at me on gamefaqs.com once). However, I still believe my opinion is valid.

And hey, did you check out the music? I think that what Square has achieved with Final Fantasy 7 is something outstanding.

On that I agree. I've always loved the music in Squaresoft games, starting with the early FF games on NES and Gameboy.

In the end Final Fantasy 7 is just one of the best games ever. If you don't believe me check out some of the numerous reviews out there, everywhere, from gamespot to mobygames

Sad, isn't it, that with all of the things I don't like about it, it's still one of the best Japanese RPGs ever?

I don't think so. The music on the PSX is the way it has to be heard, don't really think it could be better. The soundtrack that is sold sounds exactly as the psx version. Better res ... maybe... more buggy... sure as ever. FF7 didn't crash a single time throughout the whole time that I played it on the ps1. I really doubt that the pc port of ff7 can boast such an achievement. Let's not even mention the FF8 pc port.

The PC version runs fine if you install the appropriate patches. The MIDI on the PSX is just a low-grade wavetable synthesizer, and the PC version actually comes with the instrument sounds they used on the PSX in the standard soundfont format used by wavetable synths on the PC. I think you may have an aversion to PC games that is not unlike the one I have to Japanese console RPGs 😉

Try Medievil, try some platformers like Crash Bandicoot if you like jump&run games. I haven't really played Chrono trigger or Xenogears but I heard that Chrono Cross is good.

What I played of Medievil was good, but I didn't play it until recently and wasn't able to give it much of a chance. I also don't tend to enjoy platformer games, as they tend to get too repetitive and boring with all the collecting of useless stuff. I finally tried Chrono Cross for a few minutes recently, but I really think from the reviews that I've read that it's just more of the same.

Having played through Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII, I can readily say that they've achieved more, much more, than that. And after playing Final Fantasy X for fifteen minutes my jaw simply dropped to the ground, no more, no less. And yes some bosses are big, heavy, and difficult but that just makes you think more and makes you try to discover new ways to defeat them, which is fun, in my opinion.

That's just it - battle tactics isn't what comes to mind first when I think about RPGs. What makes or breaks the game for me before you even talk about combat or statistics is the plot, and no modern Japanese RPG has ever had one that I could stand long enough to play all the way through.

Haven't played Shadowrun either but Final Fantasy is exactly that as far as I know. There is sci-fi and there is magic. It is not just fantasy. It is a unique blend of the very same genres that you mentioned.

The majority of the Final Fantasy series (and Square games in general) is fantasy with a little bit of sci-fi sprinkled in. I really did like FF7's mix, but then as I said they ruined it with the cutesy stuff.

HunterZ wrote:

I think you may have an aversion to PC games that is not unlike the one I have to Japanese console RPGs 😉

Only this needs replying. Now that's a joke. 😁 Maybe you did not see my avatar, maybe you didn't read my nickname, maybe you haven't noticed that I'm hanging in a forum where dos is something quite important, (dos...., dosbox, anyone...), or maybe you just pretend you didn't read my first and/or second posts in this thread. Whatever it is, you just got it totally wrong, couldn't be more wrong if you intended to do it that wrong.

Aversion to PC games? Hell no. Aversion to crappy console->pc ports? Hell yeah. Now that's a big difference, isn't it?

Yeah, that was an obtuse observation on my part - sorry. It's really not a crappy port though (unless you only played that stupid pirate rip that I heard was floating around rather recently). In fact, other than having to patch it, the only complaint I have is that the videos aren't as good as those of other PC games of its time due to the fact that they were likely converted from the PSX videos and not the original source material.

No problem. 😀 And about Final Fantasy, I'm just trying to show you this world of fun I've discovered. 😉 If you don't feel like playing it and/or you don't like it, then, of course, you are free not to play it. I agree that Baldur's Gate and the other different rpgs are also great and I had a wondeful time playing them. The game I can think of right now is Ultima IX. It's amazing and I instantly became an Ultima fan - finished u8, and I'm playing u7. I so hope for a new official single-player ultima but don't have high hopes that it will happen. I also had great fun playing the Eye of the Beholder trilogy, incredible games, I've always been a huge Westwood fan. And there are many more other great rpgs. 😀

It's that I really enjoyed ff7 and became a fan of the series after finishing it so I decided to show other people that it's something rare, different, and fun. This topic is about consoles and I thought I could mention the game. That's all.

That's cool. I recognize that many people really liked FF7, and I have no intention of trying to spoil it for them. In fact, sometimes I think it's a failing of my own that I don't find those games enjoyable; most likely it's that I'm too old and cynical to fully connect with Japanese video games and anime.

Going off topic even more: I never got into the Ultima games; I tried the early ones a couple of times but not seriously. Same thing with EotB, Might & Magic, and similar. I did get into the last Wizardry trilogy though, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Yeah, I constantly wonder why I don't like things that most other people to like. I just chalk it up to everybody else being weird instead of me. It works out much better that way. 😉

Ultima 9 was a pretty average game. I couldn't really get into it. Ultima 7 was far superior to it.

Isn't Ultima 9 the one that was really, really, really buggy? One of my roommates in college was way into that one, but it drove him nuts.

Yes. You need to patch it at least twice. An after that, you still got crappy D3D performance. It would run well under 3DFX hardware though.