I got interested in that question based on the Elder Scrolls series. Morrowind had a basically static world, Oblivion was basically entirely scaled to the player, and Skyrim is scaled to the player but within a min/max range.

To me, Morrowind was great because it could put appropriately powerful rewards in difficult (or just plain obscure) areas. Oblivion in particular was bad at making leveling feel like a treadmill because every time you leveled up as the player, pretty much every enemy would be that much more powerful also. Skyrim was better about that since an area would generally set its difficulty scale based on the first time you visited it, so you could leave and come back later if it was too tough, but it still felt a little off.

Another associated problem is how loot gets influenced by those leveled lists. In Skyrim, loot in containers and in the inventory of leveled enemies generally scales, but loot sitting out in the open in the game world generally doesn't. Which is really annoying, because all generic loot pretty much everywhere ends up being crappy low-level iron. God forbid there's some steel, elven, or dwarven gear in places where it would totally make sense to be (say, dwarven gear in dwarven ruins) that you might venture into before that gear becomes "level appropriate".


In a related issue, one beef that I have with general RPG mechanics is how they all feel the need to make you drastically more powerful at level 5 compared to level 1, and again at level 10 compared to level 5, and so on. By the time you're near the level cap, you're probably 100-1000 times as powerful as you were at level 1, which gives a good sense of accomplishment but just doesn't seem realistic, and leads to this problem with fixed difficulty or level scaling. Western RPGs (boiling back to pen and paper DnD rules) certainly aren't great about this, but JRPGs are completely ridiculous about it, which is pretty much why Final Fantasy 3(6) was the last one that I enjoyed. In my adulthood, I just can't handle them -- even going back and trying to play FF3 that I *loved* way back when.

I'd like to see more games where you get more skills, polish, and versatility as you progress, but overall you aren't more than 3-5 times as powerful at max level as you were at the beginning. Mount and Blade is one of the few games I can think of that comes close to that.

This really rang true for me... (Cool Story Bro alert)

I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing two different RPGs in my early teen years: Ultima 6 and Final Fantasy 3 (SNES, FF6 by Japanese reckoning).

I treated Ultima 6 as a world simulator more than a "game", and so I never actually finished it because I had discovered and thrown away key plot items, and done enough"evil" stuff to have low karma that prevented me from actually proceeding with the story. But I didn't care much, I enjoyed just exploring and steamrolling anything that crossed my path.

Final Fantasy 3(6) was more forgiving though. I put experience eggs and other stuff on each character and then ground xp in the dinosaur forest, and eventually got every one up to level 99 with 9999 health and high stats. Similar to Ultima 6, I mainly enjoyed exploring and leveling up, so I had never even tried the final boss battle (Kefka) until I had every single character up to level 99 (not just 4-person party, I mean *every* character).

I figured being the final boss meant that it would be a tough fight no matter what. So I decked out a group of 4 (I liked Edgar, Sabin, Mog, and Umaro as my favorites) all with high end stuff. Edgar had Genji Gloves (dual wield) and Offering (attack 4 times per weapon, so 8 with Genji Glove), with Atma Weapon and Ragnarok swords.

Fight my way to Kefka, and order Edgar to "attack" -- 8 attacks of 9999 damage each, Kefka dies without getting so much as a single turn. Welp, guess I overprepared for that boss!

/end CSB

He likes the Final Fantasy 9 soundtrack

I have been pretty torn about this one. Im not sure I want to spend the resources that I don't really have to get a PS4 in the first place, but I've done my best to play every Final Fantasy out there. I was worried this might be the first one that slips by, but now I'm not sure that's a bad thing. It looks pretty horrible!

Ahhhh, yes, The Final Fantasy Series was amazing!

Not exactly a boss, and not strictly killed by "us" as the player, but I remember reloading Final Fantasy 7 to just before Aeris/Aerith gets killed and refusing to press the button to advance the cutscene.

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Fallout 1 was a technically antiquated VGA (that's right, 640x480, 256 colours) post-apocalyptic turn-based tactical RPG where you could not control you team mates during combat. It was a bit buggy (and so was F2). It was Mad Max, without cars.

And yet.

Fallout is arguably the best world-building work in the history of video games. People are probably going to dispute that, but most other games are built on pre-existing lore or works, or do not have that scope*. Fallout built its world pretty much from scratch, conflating a pre-war 1950's, golden-era, overly-optimistic world-view with the bleak desolation of the nuclear holocaust that ensued (to clarify for those who really know nothing about Fallout: in this universe a nuclear war happened in the 50s**. all that's left is from that era). Beside its content which was plentiful in and of itself, this created a contrasted, yet highly coherent and mature world (and by mature I don't just mean killing friendly NPC, I mean doing Morally Very Bad Things that don't necessarily result in graphic scenes). An open world that you could roam freely, be surprised by a new discovery that you made, and at the same time find these discoveries to fit perfectly with the game's logic. In most large games you just access new areas or are carried by the story, in Fallout you would go "Holy shit I'm in the middle of a city populated by centenarian ghouls!", shortly followed by "ho, of course it's full of ghouls, that's perfectly normal". There are not many games that have this mix of unexpected/logical and dark/humorous content.

Fallout 2 had the same ho-my-God-how-could-they-get-away-with-it VGA engine (so next to zero evolution there), but quadrupled the world map (with a minimum overlap with the one from F1) and brought it fifty or so years forward, expanding the world greatly (there are now rival quasi-city-states, and your action may influence their future), while also building on the first one: some antagonists 'classes' from F1 have now grown their own identity and became NPC, and some characters are still around -- a young character you saved in F1 went back to her settlement, became its leader, built it into a town, and is now in the process of expanding it into a new state...So Fallout 2 is basically the same game, except they did that one important thing: push the game world's boundaries even more. You could never guess what next city would be like, but you could bet it would have some crazy shit in it, and yet somehow still make sense.

That's why many people don't like Fallout 3. It is not in itself a bad game, but comparatively, it's kind of coasting. Also it's too damn easy.

I'm sorry, I got carried away, you were asking if you should play the previous ones? No, you 'should' not. But you could, and for F1 & F2 you would certainly not lose your time if you know what you're getting into. And if you don't, at least go and watch their intro on Youtube, they'll give you the feel of the world.

* Possible contenders in terms of "original video game world": Elder Scrolls (vast, but less original), Deus ex (not as large), Bioshock (same), Final Fantasy (original and vast, but not as complex). Any other idea?
** Technically not the 1950s, but in practice the 50s + a bunch of high tech gizmo.

Upvote for the Final Fantasy blades and the steampunk airfilter around his neck...

FINAL FANTASY XV?!
WTF?!

adjective
Final:1.coming at the end of a series.
"the final version of the report was presented"
synonyms: last, closing, concluding, finishing, end, terminating, ultimate, eventual
"the final year of study"
antonyms: first
reached or designed to be reached as the outcome of a process or a series of events.
"the final cost will easily run into six figures"
allowing no further doubt or dispute.
"the decision of the judging panel is final"
synonyms: irrevocable, unalterable, absolute, conclusive, irrefutable, incontrovertible, indisputable, unchallengeable, binding
"their decisions are final"

noun
noun: final; plural noun: finals
1. the last game in a sports tournament or other competition, which decides the winner of the tournament.
synonyms: decider, clincher, final game/match
"the Stanley Cup final"


ps. I never finished Final Fantasy VII, but really loved it