Phantasy Star (Classic) Series > Final Fantasy Series

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Sega would've cut out part of the game to include it if they wanted to focus on flawed heroes. They didn't.

The game really doesn't focus on any heroes (other than Nei and Rolf, of course). We can't say, just from the game, if most of them are flawed or not.

And don't forget, Sega did make 8 more games just focused on the heroes. Those games would be better criteria to judge their character by.

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Losing someone you care about isn't a character flaw; it's a trait of a value-driven person. Someone who doesn't take a love interest's death hard is a psychopath. That's a character flaw!

He knew her for, at most, an hour before she died. That's not long enough for such a bond to form in a healthy relationship. It's less love and more fixation.

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but the point is that story is not driven by them. In FF, the character flaws overwhelm the storyline.

Yes, you're quite right on that.

Neithird wrote:

The game really doesn't focus on any heroes (other than Nei and Rolf, of course). We can't say, just from the game, if most of them are flawed or not.

Yes, we absolutely can. The mere fact these people get together to save the world they love and don't complain about it all day long shows they aren't flawed the way the FF characters are.

Neithird wrote:

And don't forget, Sega did make 8 more games just focused on the heroes. Those games would be better criteria to judge their character by.

I've only played the classic series, so I can't comment on those others. I'll keep my judgments to PSI-IV.

Neithird wrote:

He knew her for, at most, an hour before she died. That's not long enough for such a bond to form in a healthy relationship. It's less love and more fixation.

Once he joins, the amount of time Kain is in the party is determined entirely by the player. If they level him up to go to Climatrol, it's going to take a lot longer than an hour! And that's using gameplay time. If you apply that principle, everyone in gaming is a nuerotic with a fixation anytime they develop a connection to someone they meet, because you are measuring them by the player's clock time. The same would apply to any book. This would destroy any inclusion of a love interest or any other type of relationship in a work of fiction. The amount of time a player/reader is involved with a story doesn't encompass the entire journey. Those less interesting time-spans are omitted to focus on the most essential parts of the story. We don't see every character's bathroom visit, meal, or time spent sleeping. Focusing back on Kain, again, Sega did not consider his suffering as important, as it wasn't included; further proof that Sega considered these games to be about heroism, not about suffering like FF does.