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FFT: War of Lions vs. Original FFT - Which, for PSP?


zircon
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I recently picked up FFT: War of the Lions, having heard such great things about it. However, I've already noticed a few problems. One, which many reviewers pointed out, is the slowdown. There's immense slowdown even on simple actions like "Throw Stone". I actually don't like the retranslation all that much, as it's confusing when it comes to skill categories/skill names. Additionally - and this may be a minor quibble for most people, but it isn't for me - the audio seems to have changed significantly. In the original FFT there was reverb on nearly everything, from music to sound effects. Now, all the audio sounds dry and lifeless, plus overly compressed. There's a constant high end buzzing that hurts my ears on headphones.

What I'm wondering is this: would it actually make more sense to dump my original PlayStation FFT disc into ISO form and load THAT on to my PSP? Would I still have the same issues? I miss the fluidity of the original FFT's gameplay and the drenched audio :(

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Yeah, the slowdown can be annoying. I had to clock my phat PSP at 333 mhz to not really notice any significant slowdown, but it's still there unlike the old PSX version where everything was pretty smooth. The PSP FFT was so bad though, despite the overclocking, I felt the need to turn off all those prompts I would have just left on when I played the PSX FFT. The only reason I'd much prefer the PSP port despite the slowdowns is because of the multiplayer aspect just like how the PSP Disgaea has forced me to give up it's PS2 counterpart.

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Preferring War of the Lions in my case. The re-translation is just awesome. Just give it a chance. Ability, job and weapon names are more authentic this time around instead of some of the absurd names in the original.

Additionally, you have some nice little extras with the PSP port. The new cinematics are extremely stylistic with that unique cel-shading technique. Voice acting is well-done, too. Two extra jobs. Two extra characters to unlock. Playing as Delita in some parts is pretty cool even though not very significant.

Despite the annoying slowdown, the PSP port is definitely cleaner in my case and some of the special effects seemed to be modified (which is what's possibly causing the slowdown).

If you can ever get someone to go multiplayer on the PSP port, then you're going to enjoy those missions.

Interesting that the slowdown isn't present in the PSP slim, Hawkwing. And what's this about clocking your PSP phat to 333 mhz? How do you do that?

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The slowdown is DEFINITELY present on a Slim. That's what I'm using. There's like a 2-3 second lag in the Throw Stone animation, of all things. I can't imagine how bad it is for everything else.

Aha. Too bad. Well...in my case the extras more than make up for it.

Hate to deviate from the thread's topic a bit, but has anyone picked up FFT A2 for the DS? I'm really enjoying this one. Storyline kind of sucks, but everything else kicks ass.

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I must say I loved the relocalization of FFT, and strangely enough I did not notice any slowdown, however it has been a considerably long time since I played it's PSX counterpart.

Also to note, this is one of the few games that have had voice overs I like.

And if you really want to reduce the slowdown, it has already been mentioned that you can clock your processor to 333mhz (I think the PS1 emulator clocks to this speed by default anyway).

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And if you really want to reduce the slowdown, it has already been mentioned that you can clock your processor to 333mhz (I think the PS1 emulator clocks to this speed by default anyway).

I'm using a slim, overclocked to 333mhz, and tried TWO different iso's of war of the lions. The slowdown on some skills is still there :|.

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The slowdown is built into the programming. No amount of overclocking or modding will allow you to do anything about it. It's probably all in your head.

The slowdown is a killer for me, and the new classes don't really do anything for me, but I absolutely love the new cutscenes and retranslation. It's about damn time this stuff starting making sense.

That said, unless I get a friend I could regularly play against with wireless, I may just go back to the PS1 version. I dunno.

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I haven't played the original so I don't have much to compare with, but I'm on chapter 3 of War of the Lions, and it seems to me that the only time you'd see slowdown was the *first* time you used an attack in a given battle. It seems like there's an initial load time to read the information for the animation from the UMD, but once that's done for a given battle, the skill can be used without any slowdown. Seems to me that it's a tradeoff between long initial load times going into a battle and some slowdown during a battle. I haven't found it to be more than a slight annoyance.

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well there you go

In the original that shit runs fast and and is smoother than a baby's ass.

Fair enough. The point of my post wasn't to say that the PSP version was or wasn't as fast as the PS1, but to point out that the comments about slowdown may be misleading. What I said makes sense.

Taking it a bit further, I suspect that it might not even be an issue of sloppy coding, but is possibly due to the fact that the PS1 can, in theory, keep the CD constantly spinning in the drive since it has a continuous power supply, but the PSP tends to stop the CD spinning when it's not needed. Judging by the sounds when loading an animation, this sounds like it's what's happening: the lag is due to the time required to get the UMD spinning from a completely stopped state. Of course, turning off the spin is necessary on a handheld or else the battery life will be worse.

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Oh yes, I also forgot to mention that I loaded it from ISO from memory stick, which probably has a lot to do with me not noticing as much lag i skills, however, Brycepops has already said that he tried it with two different ISO's and that he still notices lag in some moves.

So while loading an ISO from a fast memstick probably helps with slowdown, it does not remove it entirely.

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Personally with the cut scenes, a new class to play, and a new dungeon, along with multiplayer I love the new version, I prefer the new localization. I love the original on PSX and I do wish the new one didnt have the lag, but it really wasn't as bad as everyone says. I just booted the two up and I swear its only a tad slower (except throw stone for god knows what reason)

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Fair enough. The point of my post wasn't to say that the PSP version was or wasn't as fast as the PS1, but to point out that the comments about slowdown may be misleading. What I said makes sense.

Taking it a bit further, I suspect that it might not even be an issue of sloppy coding, but is possibly due to the fact that the PS1 can, in theory, keep the CD constantly spinning in the drive since it has a continuous power supply, but the PSP tends to stop the CD spinning when it's not needed. Judging by the sounds when loading an animation, this sounds like it's what's happening: the lag is due to the time required to get the UMD spinning from a completely stopped state. Of course, turning off the spin is necessary on a handheld or else the battery life will be worse.

I played the PSP FFT version off of my memory stick...that slowdown was definitely there. I got used to it though, so it wasn't so bad.

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