Balls or Dolls?

[Bob]

Not making a poll, just open suggestion. Swords and guns are pretty typical, so I'm seeing what you guys think are some of the best original weapons put forward by the Final Fantasy genre. Feel free to list non-original ones that you like, too.

I'll put in my input later, but for now, let's just say that despite the title, Wakka and Lulu are winning no points with me.

[nobodyspecial]

Swords and guns aren't an option eh?

Obviously the clear choice here is the Swordgun!!! Er... Gunblade!!!

In all seriousness, I think the gunblade was a pretty creative weapon, but probably not the most creative one put forth. Barret's gun-arm, while technically a gun, was a cool modification to the typical gun weapon, but then they went and had Vincent use a gun too.

Not really a fan of the hairclip or megaphone from VII either though, pretty lame weapons if you ask me. Yuffie's oversized shuriken was pretty cool though.

Rinoa's wrist-launcher thingy was pretty cool, but I don't know how the hell one would effectively use that in real life.

The rackets from FF9 were also pretty interesting, it was cool to see a weapon that's actually magic-based, since the game takes place in a magic world after all. Eiko's flutes were pretty dumb though.

Wakka's ball was creative for the game, since guns wouldn't make sense for X, and they wanted a range weapon, but Lulu's doll was pretty limiting. Her and Yuna's attack animations were so damn slow, even if you got them to 255 strength, it was still not worth attacking.

Spears/Lances/Polearms and the like are always a cool weapon, and their wielders are almost exclusively complete badasses (e.g. Odin, Freya, Kain, Kimahri, etc.)

Anyway, assuming we're talking strictly final fantasy genre here, I'd say gunblade was best. It may not make sense in real life, but in a world where you fight T-rexuars and dragons and alien overlords on a semi-regular basis, a sword where you fire an explosive bullet pointblank into the enemy's flesh upon strike in addition to cutting the shit out of them is a pretty fantastically useful weapon.

Seriously, cut a person through the upper torso with a Lionheart, and they won't have an upper torso left.

[Fleck]

For personal favorite non-conventional weapons, I'm gonna say Umaro throwing party members, and Lightning's gunblade (not Squall or Seifer's). Throwing party members is always fun, although I must admit that Bowser chucking Mario in SMRPG is my favorite instance of this type of attack (but we're only going with FF right now). And Lightning's version of the gunblade addresses most of the concerns people had with FF8's gunblade by making the handle actually useful as a sword-handle and by making the gun actually fire bullets (it's important to note that FF8 gunblades do not fire projectiles). Granted, the transition between gun and blade is a little slow, which would suck in an actual combat situation (especially if it got jammed halfway between transitions), but I still like the concept.

[nobodyspecial]

Yeah, Lightning's gunblade is pretty sweet. I like the classiness of Squall's original gunblade for terms of appearance, but Lightning's is much more practical.

I know Squall's doesn't fire an actual bullet, but in mind, it does. The whole "vibrating blade" bullshit that's supposed to be what actually happens is lame and ineffectual. I mean, if you're gonna stick a sword on a gun, it had better fire actual bullets.

A sword that, when triggered, fired a bullet down the length of the blade and into the enemy mid-swing, with a recoil strong enough to make the sword rend the flesh would be much cooler. Especially if you go putting FF8's AP ammo or something in the chamber. Better yet, give it a machine gun fire rate, so you can unload a clip of bullets in their flesh all the while swinging, practically turning it into a chainsaw of bloody ruinous death.

And then of course, junction ultima to your elemental attack because you're a badass and can totally do that now, to evolve your attack into... basically a rapid fire mega-flare murder attack of infinite badassery. That is, if Squall doesn't go flying back halfway across the world from the ungodly amounts of recoil.

Although, in the end you'd probably still have to quad cut Emerald Weapon with this attack a good 25 times to kill it, and rendering it would kill the Playstation.

[Fleck]

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

I think I managed to make gunblades pretty sweet in Future Bound without going against the original concept. I admit, the idea of a "vibrating blade" makes me think of electric carving knives that lazy dads use at Thanksgiving, but the idea is that it's supposed to amplify the force of impact by creating a shockwave, and I just upped that into "now it straight up throws people across the room," which I think is a good compromise between "what is canon" and "what is cool."

[nobodyspecial]

That's pretty cool, I can imagine it'd get annoying to use though.

>run 6ft to hit enemy. Enemy flys back 10 ft.
>run 10ft to hit enemy again, enemy flys back another 10 ft.

If you could pin them to a wall though, they'd be pretty screwed.

I haven't had a chance to look into Future Bound yet, but I'll probably take a look at it sometime soon. Likely as procrastination for working on the game I'm programming. Most of the extraneous stuff is mostly done now (menus, characters, parties, equipment, buy/sell, jobs/classes, etc.). I doubt it'll be done before the end of November though. I could probably finish the program itself relatively soon, but populating it with enemies to fight and everything will take much longer.

[Fleck]

No hurry for checking out FB. My production cycle is currently averaging 2 finished chapters per month, of a projected 59 chapter story so... you've got a LOT of time to catch up. At the rate I'm going, I won't even be ten chapters in by the start of 2013.

And I'll check out your game whenever it's ready. Apparently I'm the resident "guy who has nothing but free time" around the forums, so I have time to sink into an RPG.

[Bob]

Finally weighing in on my own comment.

Hard to beat Fleck's mention of Umaro using "other people" as a weapon. And yeah, Gunblades are great. I personally like Squall's better than Lightning's, despite hers having more practicality. Then again, I might be slanted just because I think gunblades should've been a one-shot deal from FF8 and didn't love the re-use.

Other things to mention: love Kiros's katal/katar. Just plain cool.

Also a fan of the gambling junk like Setzer's cards and dice. Make sense? Not really. But fun? Yup.

For some in-game help, anybody else love whips? Mostly Rydia from FF4. Toward the end of the game, she had great magic to use, but sometimes it was great to just have her whip somebody. Those status effects were pretty badass.

And gotta give props to Barret, like NS, for a badass weapon. I'm sure Barret thought about it after he lost his hand. "I could CARRY a gun to defend myself, but then somebody could just TAKE it. Naw, I'll glue it to my fuggin arm-stump." Because, yeah, anybody was going to mess with the biggest, blackest dude in the Midgar slums as is. Go Barret.

[Dale]

Hope's boomerangs in FF13 that could hit targets more than twice. I kinda liked that twist on a boomerang, especially since Yuffie's in FF7 only hit twice.

Pretty sure Barret got his gun-arm grafted in, in place of his artificial one, though.

[Bob]

I know. I'm just commenting on how the biggest, scariest dude in the ghetto mounted a gun on his arm. Kind of a strange life choice. I'd hate to see what happens when he eats at a formal dinner.

"I CAN'T CUT THIS @#$*#$ MEAT WITH A DAMN GUN!" (because...you know...need a fork in one hand, knife in the other...)

[Juice1300]

Nov 9, 2012 0:52:05 GMT -8 Fleck said:

For personal favorite non-conventional weapons, I'm gonna say Umaro throwing party members.

Yes.



That being said, I'm also a fan of the cards/dice/darts of Setzer's.


Nothing, however, beats Ultros' razor sharp wit.