Yup. People will say that Final Fantasy was "always about change" from since the beginning, but that's only true as a surface level observation. They'll accurately point out that character progression systems changed a lot (Espers, Materia, Junction, etc.) and that the settings often changed from FFVI through FFX as well (Steam punk, diesel punk, modern/sci-fi, European fantasy, south east Asian fantasy) .

But these were all just toppings on the pizza for a lot of us older square(soft) fans. Things that changed from game to game to help keep the classic formula fresh. It's only when the formula itself started to change that we slowly drifted away from the franchise.

There was a certain type of level design, gameplay progression, and atmosphere that the old games had which were lost when Sakaguchi left. World maps + airship exploration system, command based combat (either true turn based or ATB), dramatic stories mixed with plenty of humor, and the distinct sound/style of an Uematsu OST.

The post-Sakaguchi FF games are all good games. But they don't feel like good Final Fantasy games because there are new captains steering the ship. Which isn't their fault. Only Sakaguchi can make a Sakaguchi type FF game.

But it's fine, nothing lasts forever. The company moved on from the type of FF game I want, so I moved on from FF. I still enjoy some of SE's smaller scale JRPGs and I can always go back to play the classic FF when I want to.

Abyss - Jade

One the best of this character archetype imo. Not just from a Tales game.

Yup. This is the thing that I see some are missing in this thread. ("How could you sit back and allow an authoritarian to take over again? Think of the future of the country!")

Not everyone thinks about voting from a lesser of two evils mentality. There are a lot of people out there who simply won't vote for any candidate who doesn't inspire them or convince them that they actually care about working people. Democrats typically win when they run on a message of hope for the future and typically lose when they run on "the other party is evil so we're the only sane option left." (The exception to this happened during a global pandemic.)

Call those voters stupid or uninformed or whatever, but those are the people who actually decide who becomes president every 4 years. And the fact that there are huge numbers of independent voters out there who feel that a billionaire real estate mogul/Celebrity TV host actually cares more about them than the average DC democrat is a huge black mark for the leadership of the party.

They simply aren't passing enough legislation to help the average working person in their day to day life, aren't willing to fight against corporate interests (and the other party) hard enough, or aren't skilled enough communicators to clearly explain the good things they have accomplished for working families. (Probably a combination of all three.)

A figure like Trump is only possible because a large number of Americans feel like their public servants (in both parties) don't care about them at all.

So the whole story of The Spirits Within box office bomb forcing Sakaguchi out of Square is actually not accurate. I was surprised to learn this a few years ago, but it's one of those old gaming stories that just got repeated over and over again on forums and gaming news websites that people just accepted as true. It turns out that Sakaguchi already had one foot out the door before The Spirits Within was even released. The real reason he stepped down was due FFX being delayed from the 2000 fiscal year to the following fiscal year, 2001. Causing a huge loss.

The timeline looks like this:

June 2000: Yoichi Wada joins Squaresoft as CFO (Sakaguchi hated this guy)

Summer 2000: Square and Enix merger talks begin

January 2001: FFX is delayed from May to July, causing Square to fall in the Red for the first time in company history. (https://web.archive.org/web/20140319043934/https://www.animenation.net/blog/2001/01/22/ffx-delay-squares-first-deficit/)

February 2001: Sakaguchi resigns from his role as Company Vice president and assigns development of FFXII to Yasumi Matsuno and Hiroyuki Ito (First FF game he won't be involved with in any capacity.) The current CEO Hisashi Suzuki takes a 50% paycut.

May 2001: Sakaguchi files a domain name "www.Mistwalker.co.jp games" (Indicating that he knows his future is bleak at Square due to the company's poor financial performance with FFX being delayed.)

July 2001: The Spirits Within releases. It grosses 30 million in Japan and about 85 million in total. But the full budget for the film, was about 137 million. But this causes a loss for the next Financial year, 2001.

November 2001: CEO Hisashi Suzuki steps down and COO Yoichi Wada becomes CEO.

The timing just kind of lined up nicely to blame it all on the movie tanking, so that's what most of the western gaming media assumed was the reason. And we all posted it everywhere and it became the "truth". But the real reason was FFX's delay causing a sales shortfall of about $100 million for the 2000 fiscal year. But FFX wasn't really delayed for us here in the West, since FF games always came out in English after the Japanese release anyway. So that part of the story wasn't really noteworthy to us, but it's actually THE reason Sakaguchi left.

Not being able to to save progress between the boss rush and the super-boss was what got me. The thought of having to do all that again just for a 2nd chance at fighting the boss was a hard pass for me. If I had a chance to save I might have went on the grind and given it another shot, instead I just went to watch it on youtube.

Atlus has an advantage of just being a larger company/publisher in general with a wider variety of titles, which means they produce a wider variety of music to fit the tone of their games. (Persona, Vanillaware games, SMT, Etrian Odyssey, etc.)

Meanwhile, Falcom primarily has Ys and Trails, which have a lot of crossover in musical style. They keep doing what they do best, but they continue to iterate on the "Grand Adventure" and "Epic rock" tracks that they've been producing for a long time. (Which are great).

But Atlus will appeal to a wider group of people due to more musical variety. And because of that I think they would win this type of poll pretty consistently.

Agree with this. Falcom produces some of the very best "Time for an Adventure" types of tracks. As well as some great kick ass battle tracks.

But Atlus OSTs are more consistently good across the board for all different kinds of music. (Rock, Jazz, Classical, etc.)

Biden only winning in 2020 because of the Pandemic situation is something that I think people often forget about.

If that didn't event didn't shake up the economy, Trump probably wins in 2020 and 2024 would be Desantis vs Newsome.

Why would I need to defend the Sanders campaign from stealing Clinton campaign data when the discussion is about whether or not the DNC was biased against Sanders (while claiming not to be)?

I'm not on either team. I don't care about tallying up points for/against Sanders or for/against Clinton. I was just trying to explain why some disappointed Sanders supporters didn't want to support Clinton in the general. (Because of all the news that came out about how the DNC was privately biased against Sanders, and the DNC leadership resignations that came as a result of that.)

Have a nice day. This could have continued, but it exhausting to read through all the unnecessary redditor snark you've been throwing at me for no reason.

Haven't I cited articles for pretty much every claim I've made so far just like you have?

You don't think the articles I linked from outlets like the Washington Post or Politico, count as a "single source"?

And then you asked for a direct source for the email of Clinton's lawyer to the DNC, which I also provided:

Here you go, I found an archive of the email from Elias to the DNC:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160726225753/https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5740

The original link in the article is there, but was taken down a long time ago.

She later leaked a question about the death penalty as well.

And what am I saying that you feel you'd have to accept "on faith"?

Here you go, I found an archive of the email from Elias to the DNC:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160726225753/https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/5740

The original link in the article is there, but was taken down a long time ago.

What about leaking debate questions in advance to the Clinton campaign? Does that count as a material action? https://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/donna-brazile-hillary-clinton-leak-regret-236184

Also, when that article was written, the author did link to that Lawyers statement (sourcing wikileaks document directly), but those were taken down by Wikileaks a long time ago.

4) A Clinton lawyer gives DNC strategy advice on Sanders

When the Sanders campaign alleged that the Clinton campaign was improperly using its joint fundraising committee with the DNC to benefit itself, Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias offered the DNC guidance on how to respond.

"My suggestion is that the DNC put out a statement saying that the accusations the Sanders campaign are not true," Elias said May 3 in response to an email about the issue sent by communications director Luis Miranda to other DNC stuff that copied Elias and another lawyer at his firm, Perkins Coie.

Elias continued: "The fact that CNN notes that you aren’t getting between the two campaigns is the problem. Here, Sanders is attacking the DNC and its current practice, its past practice with the POTUS and with Sec Kerry. Just as the RNC pushes back directly on Trump over 'rigged system', the DNC should push back DIRECTLY at Sanders and say that what he is saying is false and harmful the the Democratic party."

Elias's guidance isn't perhaps all that shocking; he's Clinton's lawyer, after all. But the fact that he was talking to the DNC about how to respond would appear to suggest coordination between the DNC and Clinton campaign against Sanders in this particular case.

My understanding is that the decisions made by the Federal Reserve (to lower or increase the Federal funds rate/interest rate) have a much bigger effect on the short term unemployment rate, stock market, housing market, etc. than any sitting President does at the time.

The President has the power to influence Congress and sign their bills into law. But we often don't see the positive/negative effects of those bills until the next term.

Perfect example right now is our recent spike of inflation. A lot of that inflation was caused by the $2.2 Trillion stimulus plan from the CARES act. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES\_Act)

From the Federal reserve: (https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/fiscal-policy-and-excess-inflation-during-covid-19-a-cross-country-view-20220715.html)

"The previous section highlighted that fiscal support boosted goods consumption demand without any noticeable impact on the supply of goods. Hence, the large increase in demand triggered by the fiscal stimulus policy, together with the slow pace of adjustment in production, likely contributed to the current imbalance in the goods market, resulting in the depletion of inventories, pronounced bottlenecks, and ultimately inflation.

The steep surge in goods consumption in countries with large fiscal support may have also created extra demand in other countries through an increase in demand for imports. This demand surge was met by limited supply capacity. Indeed, while both production, transportation and shipping capacity have adapted to increasing global value chain participation over the past few decades, the necessary infrastructure appeared to be quite inelastic in the short run."

The CARES act was designed to help Americans (and corporations) stay afloat during COVID and it was signed into law by Trump in March 2020. But it takes a while for the negative consequences of something that huge to kick in. Which it did in 2021 under Biden, and so he got stuck with all the blame for it since the bad part only showed up under his term.

Most American's don't think of it this way. They just blame the people currently in power for the economic consequences of the the leaders that came before them. OR they blame current leaders for not fixing the old problem fast enough. But only the Federal Reserve can really make decisions that noticeably curb inflation in a short timeframe, which they are trying to do right now. Congress or the President can really only pass more spending bills, which has the potential to make inflation worse.

All the leaked DNC e-mails showed was that, surprise surprise, people who've actually dedicated their time and effort to running the party didn't appreciate the 'outsider' who'd spent three decades pissing into the tent suddenly demanding that he get to lead it.

You make it sound like it wasn't a big deal, but it was. Because many of those high ranking DNC officials who were caught deriding Sanders and his campaign in those emails were forced to resign. Because publicly they were stating that the DNC was neutral and had no bias towards the outcome of the primary, but then privately they were contacting members of the Clinton campaign to discuss strategy against Sanders. And discussing how to plant stories in the media to influence their coverage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/24/here-are-the-latest-most-damaging-things-in-the-dncs-leaked-emails/

I don't think many people still believe Sanders would have actually won the primary either way. The issue they have is more so that it was confirmed by the leaked emails that the DNC heavily favored Clinton over Sanders and that they and members of the media purposely put their finger on the scales to assist Clinton in subtle ways that they thought would be undiscovered.

It's like a basketball team that's leading by 10 - 20 points the whole game, but then there's definitive proof caught on video that they cheated on a few plays back in the 2nd quarter.

Did the team that won "screw over" the other team's chance to win? Not really, they almost certainly would have won anyway.

But do fans of the other team have a justified reason to be upset? Absolutely.

The difference here though is that the winning team needed all the support they could get from the other teams' fanbase in order to win the championship. But a sizeable portion of that fanbase couldn't bring themselves to support a team that they know cheated against their favorite.

Probably Tyler Anderson. Despite a 7 - 7 record, he has a 2.63 ERA. Which is 6th best in the AL.

Yeah, when that scene happened I just thought to myself: "What is happening to this story?"

There were still a few good moments sprinkled in after that, but it continued to go downhill until the end. And the bloated cutscene to gameplay ratio in the last act did not help at all in that regard.

Good catch. I thought of the same game when Zelda summoned the captured monsters on to the field to fight for her.

For me, Mana games have always been a "nice vibes" type of RPG experience. I'm playing them mostly for the aesthetic. The artwork, the music, and that distinct setting of "Japanese take on classic fairy tales".

In terms of story and mechanics they are typically very simple. JRPG comfort food.

Secret of Mana and Legend of Mana are my favorites in the series.

Chapter 4-5 is when the story really picks up, about 4-6 hours in. For the gameplay you start unlocking some optional missions around Chapter 6-7 I think.

The optional maps have no story relevance, but are good for when you want to take a break from the story and grind for some extra coin or to level up characters you haven't used in a while.

The story + gameplay is really good from Chapter 10 onwards imo.

+1 for Triangle strategy. Dumb name and very slow pacing at the start, but when that game hit its stride it's brilliant imo.