I'm going to be vague here, as not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it yet, but the ones who have should recognise the piece I'm talking about:

About halfway through FF6, there is a small branch in the game, in which one path causes a main character (non playable) to die, depending on your actions. This has some follow up consequences to a playable character. To me, that was my saddest moment in an RPG.

Now, I played FF6 through the old piggyback conversion method for SNES cartridges, and since I live in a PAL region, certain aspects of the game were inaccessible, particularly the items screen in certain areas. The point is, the branch that determined this NPC's fate usually involved checking the item screen, which I couldn't access, so I thought it was a linear path, and there was no way to save him.

I've played FF7 too, but Aerith's death did not move me as much as this for a few reasons:

1. The character in question died slowly, and during the process, said a lot of depressing, negative things as their condition grew worse. Aerith's death was just sudden, and it didn't seem to soak in as effectively.

2. The follow up actions from the playable character after the NPC's death seemed to be a lot more plausible. There was a sense of hopelessness felt from this character when it happens (environment needed to be taken into account, too).

3. I know a few will disagree with me on this one, but the music played a role into it too. The music for the scene in FF6 at that moment was a lovely mix, in which the samples seemed to merge together nicely. When the theme of Aeris kicked in at that sad point, my initial cringe was, "There's that goddamn blaring trumpet in the background of the tune again"

Call me a sadist, but even now that I have local versions where I can see the item screen and potentially save this NPC, I still choose to let him die, just for the dramatic after-effect that entails.

I fully agree with you. Please refer to my previous post to see what I meant by my statement.

That's completely wrong.  You are not accounting for such things as region differences, media influences, genre differences, etc.  Just because a game such as Drago nQuest isn't popular or well marketed in America and only sells 10,000 units, doesn't mean its comparatively 100 times worse than a Final Fantasy game just because it sold 100 times worse.  Especially since it sold BETTER in another region (Japan).

Likewise, a game such as Mass Effect or Fallout 3 would be deemed better at face value by your example, but only in America.  In other regions, such as Europe or Japan, it would have mixed results, as it didn't sell as well as other RPGs or do as well as it did in America.

In other words, your statement is completely watered down and doesn't work.  Sales are only a part of how you measure a games popularity.

No, no, no, Carnival Games really is better than almost every game out there.

The moment you reference is my saddest, too.

It's the character involved... and the music that strikes up, calling to mind an earlier, much happier sequence.  Oh it's brutal and beautiful and to this day, whenever I think of VI, I think of that tune and sequence and feel something for it.

Please read the posts I made shortly after that one as well, before you go off on some stupid rant about how wrong I am, when I actually agree with you.

Man, do people here look for posts that are easy to disagree with and then completely ignore everything else?

My post was directed at the multiple walls of text trying to argue why FF VII was objectively bad, bringing in lots of subjective points. I tried to explain that it is actually impossible to quantify a game's quality objectively, since the closest you get is popularity, which is derived from sales.

Anyone else wanna completely miss the point and take a jab at trying to convince me at something of which I'm already certain?

I mostly just respond like I did to people who generalize or try to boil arguments down to absolute statements.  And that's what your comment sounded like.  The rest of your post above sounded like you were trying to chastise someone for having an opinion while not providing solid facts for why FFVII was bad.  But that's just it, its always going to be someones 'opinion' if a game is bad or not.  Which goes back to my pointing oit that the end of your post seemed to hit on you watering your point down into a generalization.  And frankly, your end point didn't seem to make any sense in connection to the rest of your post, unless you're trying to defend FFVII by saying what you did.  And as I pointed out, sales is only one part of measuring a games popularity.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Personally I think that I made my point quite clear, especially with the additional explanation in the post that followed.

And when it comes to actually quantifying popularity, I actually think that sales is the most reliable factor, and the only really relevant. What other ones can you come up with, that also keep things on a completely objective plane?

Read my previous post.  I outlined three examples and provided a detailed example of how sales is not the ultimate example of popularity.

If companies, not just game companies but any company, just used sales as the ultimate measure of 'popularity', then the only things we'd be using would be one product in every field.  Every vending machine would serve coke, every fast food chain would be Mc Donalds, and every game would be Wii Sports.  But are all those things the most 'popular' accross the board?  No.  But they produce the most sales accross all fields.

I was happy she died... Tifa ftw