-NT
“The definitive FF XP remastered for GBA”. I loved that ad.
I’ll be getting it. I won’t be able to get it right away, but I’ll pick it up as soon as I’m able to swing buy a store selling one.
I kinda regret selling my original SNES cart of FFIII (that thing was in mint condition too, with booklet and map and everything) but now I can make up for it at least, sorta.
The only thing that bothers me about the GBA ports of the FF games is that it more or less eliminates their chances of being put on the Virtual Console in their original forms, at least for a few years, anyway. Same reason I don’t expect we’ll see many Mega Man games on it, because the Anniversary Collections are still readily available.
Me wanty gamey! Me wanty gamey!:biggrin:
Seriously though. I wanted this game ever since I first heard it was being reremade since I didn’t get when it first came out, and both of my PSX’s have bricked on me.-_-
Also, I like the new box art for the game. It’s probably the only picture of Terra(Tina) that doesn’t make her look like she’s just waking up/dozing off.
I know what I’m importing next. 
Mainly because they’ll never pull their fingers out and release it over here. :-/
Buying it today at my earliest chance (so probably after work) and I’ll promptly love it to death or something.
I just got it about two hours ago, and I’ve already got some things to say about it. First, is the game’s intro (not to be confused with a New Game intro) I noticed a couple of hiccups with the intro like the phrase used when you would first use a save point found it’s way on there. The intro also seemed to stop as the Magitech armors walked off the screen, but nothing froze or anything bad and it worked the second time after I had started a New Game and the intro’s dialog itself was changed almost whole sale with hit and miss results. (For example: the last line of the narration from “Can it be that those in power are on the verge of repeating a senseless and deadly mistake?” to " “…Could anyone truly be foolish enough to repeat that mistake?”)
I like most of the changes to the names and diolog, like changing Vicks to Biggs, the Moogles names from variants of Kupo to Mog, Safe to Protect, the game’s first boss’s name Whelk into Ymir, ect… However, there are three things of perticular interest of this translation all of which are pertaining to Kefka. First his name is still Kefka instead of Cefca (which is good), Second his diolog has remained almost entirely thus far (which is really good), and thrid point was the only thing they changed (and it’s the biggest one by far) was his Son of a Submariner line which now goes Son of a Sandworm (Ouch! It’s just not the same. ;; It’s like changing FFIV’s scene of Tella calling Gilbert/Edward a spoony bard into a silly bard. ><)
Other wise the road to Mt. Kolts has remained largly unchanged. But I still can’t forgive them for changing that classic one-liner as almost all of the other one-liners have been perserved.
I’ll review it eventually, but my first impression is negative. First of all, the sound is very flat and tinny. I was actually surprised by this, because the sound in the FF4 and FF5 remakes was quite good, maybe even better than the originals. But then again, those originals weren’t perfect to start with, whereas this game really was.
That’s the problem. For example, in FF5, all they had to do in order to make a colossal improvement over all the previous versions was write a competent, readable script and stick some jokes in it. They did that, and it worked great. But FF6 already had a good script, albeit with a few grammatical mistakes. Granted, they used it as a guide, and I appreciate the fact that they kept many of the original lines. But after all, you know, as strange as some of the “Woolseyisms” might have been, at least they showed some individual style. But here, for instance, they change “That’s Shadow! He’d slit his mama’s throat for a nickel!” to “That’s Shadow! He’d kill his best friend for the right price,” which is a bit more bland in my view. Same with “Son of a submariner!” as opposed to “Son of a sandworm!”
Furthermore, I don’t think they got the speed quite right. It’s fine to be able to move faster about the overworld, but the story scenes are much faster than the original, whereas the battles are slower, with lag. It’s even slower in Mode 7 scenes like when you’re riding a chocobo. Worse still, the colour scheme seems much brighter in the remake. This game was distinguished by a very subdued, dark colour scheme. It created the atmosphere in a location like Narshe. Here, though, it seems like they made everything brighter, and it really makes everything look more boring.
I’m sure that I’d overreact to any change, but hey, this is my favourite game of all time. It’s more difficult to remake it well than FF4 and FF5. So, I think that I prefer zSNES.
Picked it up earlier today, just finished up the opera scene. Differences:
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Music - remastered or whatever, very similar but just a bit different. I don’t know if it’s my DS Lite, but there’s static on the higher pitched sounds, kind of annoying (this goes for FFIII too).
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Translation - a lot of items are renamed, which is frustrating, because I have to check the weapons to see what they do. Dialogue is a lot different. Some of it I like, some I definitely do not, AKA no “rip your lungs out” :thud: In the prison scene with Celes, the soldier does not strike her. I guess that would be too violent. But it’s okay for all of Doma to drop dead, including women and children. Just don’t hit Celes, that warrants an M rating.
As was mentioned above, there is some brief lag here and there, but I don’t think it’s that big a deal.
It’s funny I went to EB Games earlier today to pick-it up and the guy there said that I would have a hard time finding. At first I thought, “wow, this is more popular than I thought,” but then he told me how “they had stopped making GBA games.” This was when I knew he was on crack. So I asked him, “didn’t it just come out yesterday?” So he looked at his relase list and in the system and saw that the shipment just hadn’t arrived yet (a little surprising since this is the LA area, but whatever).
There is one good thing for all of you rage lovers out there and that is a viewible Beastary in the Config menu. It makes hunting for Rages MUCH easier. Espeically if you don’t look at the entries until after you reach the Veldt.
This guy rocks!
So…is it a good buy or not worth the money? I gotta conserve with V-Day coming up.
My advice would be to stick with emulators for now. The changes aren’t really good enough to warrant paying for them.
I think there might be one other advantage to getting this version that everyone seems to have forgotten about, and that is that you can play FFVI on a handheld. Fuck the half&half translation, screw the sound quality, and to hell with the new features. Playing one of the greatest RPG’s of all time on the road, in the dentist’s office, or at an otherwise boring as hell sports game is worth the price of admission alone.
Thank you killmore for bringing up a point that we’ve forgotten. Also, no one seems to have gotten the extra goodies yet to decide if those are worthy.
I bought it because I wanted a portable version. I had the SNES cart and the Anthology version, but I can’t exactly carry those around. Now, if I had a GBA flash cart, maybe I would have stuck with emulation…
SK, you’re right about the sound, even with the DS speakers. I noticed that FFIV Advance sounded better when I played it on my DS (hell, it sounded better when I put on earphones through my GBA), and I was sort of hoping for the same with VI. However, I haven’t tried it on my GBA yet for a comparison. It also bugs me how the Mode 7 effects in these games choke up a little. I’ve only just passed Figaro, but I like the reworking of the dialogue (so far, that’s my out). Overall, I think I’m okay with buying it.
I got my copy already.
Get a PSP and download a snes emulator for it… there, problem solved.
There’s something about playing Nintendo games on a Sony system that makes me feel dirty.