Didn't remember the amount of dialog in the first 5 hours...

[Ejl]

Playing this with my gf, introducing her to this gem. But she's getting a bit bored :/ We're at lindblum and there really haven't been much playing yet. Just talking and talking. Playing for a few minutes, and again talking and talking. She even asked today when the real game begins, sidequests etc.

She likes to play games, so it's not that she wuoldn't know how games work. And while ff7 was only Midgar for first few hours, there was much more playing involved.

And gotta admit, i'm getting bored as well. Had fun with this as a kid, remember the end battles, chocobo sidequests etc. but this beginning...

Has anyone else been a bit bored on the beginning?

[-|Nur|-]

Those cutscenes are the meat of the franchise, always have been.

[Mobius]

Bored on the beginning ??? This world is a treasure , so many things to see, to discover
But.... well the game have different levels like after "burmecia" , the escape of alexandria or the death of the garnet's mother , each time the team, the objective will evolve
Go on and discover

[Ejl]

I personally like the world and there is a lot to do eventually. It's not about that. It's just that the beginning is extremely slow, and not much to do other than press x to get a new dialoque, walk a while and pressing x again for a long chat.

We play about 1,5-2 hours some game together daily after work, and these past three gaming times with FF9, we have just read dialog. That's whats the main issue, i played this when it originally came out. So i don't remember much of it either, but i can't say that i'm too thrilled to spend another 2 hours tomorrow reading dialoque. I'd much rather watch her actually having fun and playing for a while. We were both into the story at first, but now she just skips dialoque pretty fast.

Stories in the games are good, but i still think there's a lot of useless dialoque. Like example Steiner overreacting every once in a while. It was fun at first, but now it's just "no Steiner, not again, you had your last temper tantrum five minutes ago, just stop it and let us move on".

I really would like her to experience the same thrills that i had with the exploration, see how great the worlds of some of the best Final Fantasies are (we talked about playing the other ones too, she was really interested in this at the beginning, laughed a lot in the theatre episode). She likes rpg's, she plays games on consoles and pc.

But today, she was just clearly bored. She just wanted to play, not to read again.

[-|Nur|-]

Originally posted by Ejl:

But today, she was just clearly bored. She just wanted to play, not to read again.

No Final Fantasy game is a game you just pick up and play. They were always like long movies (or, rather, anime episodes).

The exploration bits are mostly post-game stuff in all FF titles (aside from Waifu Returns) anyway.

[L.C.L.]

So what? If she doesn't enjoy it, you can't force her to. People have different tastes, different games click with different people (even if they like a genre in general). If something is boring, just do something else, they are tons of games out there.

[Ejl]

Hhhmm, i've played 7 and 8 recently and they were a lot more friendly in this department, at least it seemed like that. Dialoque-heavy, but not too much. Enough to digest it in without feeling the need to skip anything.
In the first 5 hours in 7 for example we had the awesome "dress cloud as a girl" episode what was fun and memorable. the Shinra building was also great. The sephiroth story at the in after midgar was also interesting, it kept going forward, not like Steiner shouting the same things time and time again.
In 8th we have the attack on dollet, train mission, already few guardian forces to play with.

In this one we've had the ice cavern that was over in few screens, evil forest and village of dali. And quick festival of the hunt at Lindblum. Everything else in the 5 hours was pretty much just reading, with some quick sequences of going from a to b.

Somehow 9 just haven't captured us yet, even though the world is interesting to her also. it just feels it's not going anywhere. There's stuff happening, but at the same time it feels like nothing is happening.

[Ejl]

Originally posted by L.C.L.:

So what? If she doesn't enjoy it, you can't force her to. People have different tastes, different games click with different people (even if they like a genre in general). If something is boring, just do something else, they are tons of games out there.

Of course i'm not forcing her :) This was just a thread to say how we feel about this/are there others who thinks the beginning is too slow.

[Videogamer80]

Yeah, there are alot of really slow parts to this game, where it's just alot of talking. I myself don't get bothered by it, as they don't really use very complex language, and no text box is ever more then like 20 words long, so it's easy to understand, but yeah, at times, the game gets really slow at times.

[SONIC]

Srsly?! I end this game around 10 times and i never been bored!!

[Gapaw]

Get her hooked on FF 10 and 10-2.. She will fall in love..

[Timedye]

It's a PSX era JRPG; long conversations and heavy exposition were the bread and butter of PSX era JRPGs. JRPGs from the SNES era and the PSX era were sort of the video game equivilent of reading a book. They weren't really great as a group activity.

It's a pretty stark comparison to a game like Final Fantasy XV -- which I've greatly enjoyed, but which has a serious issue with lack of story (if you really book, you can complete the main campaign in under 20 hours).

[JJJohhh]

Well your "gf" and you don't enjoy dialogue while the whole entire FF fanbase does.

[Lusus Symphonia]

Only powerful nostalgia makes games like FFIX playable these days, there is so much better games out there so of course your lass isn't going to enjoy it if she has played modern games.
Saying that, the story of Final Fantasy 9 is an absolute classic and if you're getting bored, I think you both have your priorities wrong.

[jimmer]

If you're looking to get your GF into the series I would start with FF7 since there is more action and things progress much quicker during the first 2-3 hours. FF9 is a horrible introduction to the series since it is a fan service more than anything and you reallly need to play through as many other FF games as possible before going to 9 to fully grasp why it is loved. On its own it is basically a book for the entire first disc and the story really doesnt take off until later into the 2nd disc IMO. With that said FF9 is still one of my favorites in the series.

[chaloopah]

she'll probably enjoy the ffx- ff13 series more as they have more voice over dialogues instead of typed dialogues. The older series are really amazing because the story telling from the texts are that good.