Best Final Fantasy poll !!

lol remember when these took like maybe 20 hours to beat?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6f/Final_Fantasy_III_US_Wedge_talks.png

iv

jon have you seen the newest remake?
http://www.jeux-france.com/blog177998_Alexkidd
http://robotbling.gametrailers.com/gamepad/index.php?action=viewblog&id=163016

Dancing Mad for the win.

I've never played any past IX. If they ever put one out on Wii, I'd probably play that.

I went for VI (US: III)

If they ever put one out on Wii

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_Crystal_Chronicles:_The_Crystal_Bearers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiisa_na_%C5%8Csama_to_Yakusoku_no_Kuni_Final_Fantasy_Crystal_Chronicles

Don't think a proper numbered sequel will show up on the Wii, unless they pull a Dragon Quest for XIV or something.

no x-2, no credibility

jim otm. not that i've played any of the others.

vii, because he am the besht.

I still haven't voted, I can't decide.

VI for sure

VI, but the fan-translated ROM of IV hardtype is a close second

VII for no other reason than it was probably my favorite thing ever for 8 or 9 months in 7th grade

I voted for VIII because of the tricks it played on VI/VII players. Levels? Useless. Magic? Useless. Gil? You'll never use it. Equipment? No equipment; equip your magic instead. The big military corporation? Good guys!

my favorite thing ever for 8 or 9 months in 7th grade

haha, the rest of us were in college n' shit.

Well maybe you were, gramps.

hell, when even my BROTHER was in college. He would talk about how the guys on his football team got hooked on this game, even tho they(business school types playing for a Div II school) were not really the JRPG type.

I think I was in grade 8! I am not the youngest! Yay!

I think I picked VII, but I am waffling now. I think VIII was criminally overhated (the battle system was one of my faves!) and XII was really, really amazing as well! Plus, five was really awes too. Good thing Tactics wasn't in the running though, it would have been no contest imo.

I'd like to vote for I or II/IV for enthralling me as a kid, but I got the most thrills and replay out of VII for sure.

VIII was eh, okay. I sped through it in college, got to the last boss and couldn't beat it.

i even bought the score on CD as performed by some symphony orchestra

wth? I thought I'd be haha contrarian look @ me by voting VIII but other people dug it too?? :(

I only ever played VII; I was more of an Ultima guy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I was in 4th grade when FF7 came out, I wasn't allowed to get it because it was rated "Teen"

vii is the best game ever

Also JESUS FUCK YOU PEOPLE ARE YOUNG

i remember playing ffvii once in high school and once my senior year of college (after i had ceased giving a fuck)

7 was my last year in college and I stayed more focused on that than anything else in my life.

co-sign HI DERE. When I was in the seventh grade I had nothing to play but Forgotten Worlds, you little brats!

I don't know if there have been better RPGs since VII, but that was the last one I had time for. I'm trying to fuck with Oblivion and Mass Effect right now and I can see right away that there is NO WAY I can put in the hours for these games.

The best RPG I've ever played is probably still Planescape: Torment, with Baldur's Gate II as a very close second.

HI DERE: Planescape :: GZeus : Chrono Trigger

(sorry that was mean)

I voted for I, actually, because none of the others ever felt quite as amazing. #1 felt completely Epic and New and Holy Shit, everything afterwards felt like formula (I know it's all really a bunch of dragon quest clones but I didn't get my own copy of the first dragon quest)

trying to get the rat tail and squeaking out of the dungeon with like one dude left with 2 hit points is def. in my top 5 most intense gaming moments

(and then having all my dudes hit puberty!)

and you missed out on it because you were at home playing video games?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

holy shit 6 for the big win

i woulda voted X but these games are too exhausting to even think about. I spent easily 12 hours on the soccer side mission on that one.

there was one after X where you could only play the girl chars and their outfits got +5 points in slutty.

The fuckin' CARD GAME! And the arcade in seven! I spent WEEKS.

VI for the low-level game alone. Best game ever.

All Final Fantasies after IX have been awful.

Shit I missed this poll! 7 was the last one I ever played; you guys know they made a Cloud/Tifa/etc MOVIE right?

Every time I've played FFI I named my white mage a girl's name at the start, then spent the last half of the game trying to force myself to pronounce it in a manly way, once they adulted up and I realized it was obviously a dude.

Snrub so wrong on XII. That game is actually phenomenal and I wish I had voted for it.

Actually, when I really give it thought, for me it's something like...

12 > 7 > 8 > 5 > 6 > 1 > 4 > 10 >>>>>> 9 >>>>>>>>> 11 >>> 2 > 3

I can't believe I have played every FF. :/

You ranked IV below I and VIII? Damn. The first one, I can maybe understand, but VIII? Ugh. Even VII doesn't always hold up as well as the SNES-era games.

I'm guessing by the poll results, most of the voters here are in their mid-20s or older (like me).

IV failed to grab me every time I played it. In fact, I have a mild vendetta vs. 6 and 4 for being overloved in comparison to, well, pretty much every game ever. But particularly V. That game is so overlooked!

As someone who hasn't played a mainline FF since VIII and gave up, do I want to play FFX and/or X-2 for historical interest, or is it not worth it and should I skip to XII? Would you consider these games still fun and worth playing in this day and age, or are they relics by now, having relied on graphical wow of the time and cutscenes?

Since you dudes voted VI as the best you are hereby trustworthy. I don't think I've played a traditional JRPG since Tales of Symphonia. not counting RGC's Guadia Quest. (Also, I heard X-2 is actually pretty enjoyable if you can roll with the sass.) But what say you all?

man I have played FF6 about the 75% point and gotten to the final boss of FF7 but have never beaten either. I guess it's like getting to the last chapter of infinite jest and going "ah, fuck it."

i replayed FFX last year having only played half of it when it came out. the battle system is pretty good and the boss fights got quite tactical, but the cutscenes were lengthy and really dreadfully voiced/animated. and i was still getting tutorials about 5 hours in! have never played FFX-2, am curious though.

X is great with the sound down and skipping through boring bits as quick as possible, X2 is fucking awful and headache inducing, XII was really well done but my PS2 died about 75% through it :(

god FF5 is amazing. It's the first game that's gripped me in a long time.

9 needs more love. the only bad thing about it was the useless card game.

and i stand by what i said up there. voice acting in final fantasy is a very very bad thing.

The other day I read that whole FFXIII review by tim rogers on action button -- all 18000 words of it -- and it convinced me not to play it. but, i wonder-- did i save any time? after all, that article took me quite some time.

how can you believe Tim Rogers about anything anymore though

i think i was already ready to not play FFXIII, to be fair, it just confirmed it in so many (SO MANY) words

of the ones I've played through at least mostly:

VI > V > IV > VII > I > IX

I played the first part of X but got confused and discouraged and the graphics + story development gave me a headache. surprisingly haven't played FFVIII.

what version of V did u play? iirc the famicom version is significantly harder than the psx/nds rereleases & a little more interesting to play. it probably is the most challenging ff

also ffIII is p great if you have a nds

i am enjoying this tim rogers piece whilst simultaneously wondering whether i shouldn't be doing some work instead

i have a copy of XIII sitting on my shelf, unopened, waiting for the critical revisioning that declares it a misunderstood classic

I played the fan-translated super famicom ROM. FF5 was the easiest final fantasy for me!! I love the job system.

I just started FFIII. It's a terrible translation but I think that is just going to make it all the more entertaining for me.

I really liked the car game in IX

I thought FFV was almost identical in all versions... FFIV on GBA had a combat bug where the enemies don't get a chance to attack, and of course the SNES version was seriously butchered. Was that what you were thinking of?

iirc some of the classes were rebalanced for the na release of V. also some of the monsters had their hp and other stats reduced so there wasnt as big a jump btw difficulties. cant remember if they "fixed" the ridiculous drop rates or not but i think it was less expensive to buy equipment.

what made V so difficult for me was a) the # of one shot items b) the randomness of hidden items/dungeons/bosses c) the amount of grinding required to get job skills c) timed dungeons

timed dungeons u just throw a thief in your party and you're golden

which Final Fantasy was the last to use this theme tune?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiHK06a-zWQ

not the one with the harp arpeggios which I suppose is technically the theme song of the series but I've always considered this the Final Fantasy theme proper. I haven't played a lot of the recent FFs but it seems like it might not have been used after FF5.

i guessed what song that was before i clicked play - immediately thinking V was the last one to use it, though since I haven't played any of them since VIII i can't say for sure

all of them have it somewhere, to my knowledge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yQ9x_iVUSQ

ff13 changed it a bit (start at 1:50)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BucX_Wdzba4

7 and 9 used it in the end credits.

ah yeah 6 uses it in the end credits too.

battles in ff1 are so slowwwww

Missed!

would've voted for X-2

highly recommend staring @ this

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkicqxXP591qb01n4o1_500.gif

while listening to this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONdHEDeWifs&feature=related

i read the mention of an 18,000 word tim rogers article on ffxiii and thought 'i wonder if i want to invest the amount of time it will take to actually read that'. and then two posts later it turned out i had already wasted that 45 minutes of my life and had forgotten it and now have nothing to show for the process.

xpost ade otoh that was a very well spent six minutes

haha im currently playing through ffIII ON iPHONE its p good actually

p terrible that V didnt get any votes shits p tite imo

I am playing VII again. It's barely a game but the story is great.

i finally got around to beating ff7 a year or two ago. i thought being older would make it easier to understand but it was still confusing as shit.

XIII wtf is wrong with you

vii might be my least favorite if only because i was such a vi fanboy & cld never really get any ~distance~ from it. ix was the psx iteration i like the best partly because of the reintroduction of character classes

think i'd say ix now, but i am very milquetoast after all

now that i think abt tho theres no way vi is worse than viii - thats probably my least favorite

FF9 never really did much for me! FF7 is way better imo. I never played FF8, but I feel like they should have gone further in the FF6/FF7 steampunk dystopian direction.

iirc FF9 starts out great but after you pull off the opening heist or w/e it really loses steam imo - that was the game that made me go "i guess i've outgrown JRPGs"

FF8 has a lot going for it

i agree w/what lamp said in the challops thread re: finding something to like about every FF game (that i've played) though i dont love any of them unreservedly either

haha ive been thinking that starting w/ viii in particular they began to lose the ability to match depth of gameplay with the scope & ambition of the game's story & the games become plodding & uneven. part of it too seems to be a desire to do something superficially new w/o really confronting the core problem - battles are mostly boring & the most foolproof strategy for beating the games end up making them uninteresting.

i mean theres a lot of things i like abt the more 'modern' final fantasys - xi in particular is pretty fun - & tbh id probably have to replay them to have real 'opinions' abt them but i think the series really manifests a disconnect btw intent & execution around viii that theyve never recovered from...

part of it too seems to be a desire to do something superficially new w/o really confronting the core problem - battles are mostly boring & the most foolproof strategy for beating the games end up making them uninteresting.

otm

though i think scope & ambition wrt the story ceased to be important somewhere around ix too - an incredibly lazily written game

viii was mega interesting to me at the time b/c of how it encouraged lateral thinking when it came to the battle system. this otm iow:

I voted for VIII because of the tricks it played on VI/VII players. Levels? Useless. Magic? Useless. Gil? You'll never use it. Equipment? No equipment; equip your magic instead. The big military corporation? Good guys!

― abanana, Monday, November 12, 2007 11:44 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

i always seemed to find X and X-2 way more enchanting than most other fans

with X i think it was a combination of a few things wrt the combat that really clicked with me (true turn-based + extremely rapid battles = perfect 2 me) plus having cut scenes with actual voice acting makes a story-based game way more immersive imo, plus having non-static environments - it all just felt refreshing at the time

X-2 also felt refreshing just by dint of not taking itself very seriously plus i thought it was cool that it was female-centric instead of being another brofest - i think i remember tombot dismissing it as fanfiction at the time but 2 me that feeling of being unafraid to be trivial struck me as somehow brave in the context of the genre

oh and X-2 had the best combat system

yeah i recall the junction system being laboured & limiting but that cld be my own bias talking. also i havent played that game since i was ~15

i mean i liked the non-intuitive xp system in ii, which is cleverly cruel but its really simple - you get better & the things you do consistently & lose capability w/ the skills you dont so you always have to make real choices abt what your characters are doing - whereas all viii did was make stat maxing more complicated

i liked x-2 on release but im such a sucker for class changes & the sandbox-y nature of it was a fun departure. but i think its kinda ugly or least really dated looking now

i generally have low standards when it comes to graphics, and i haven't played it since it came out, but i bet i'd still find it easier on the eyes than FF7

whereas all viii did was make stat maxing more complicated

yeah i'd say this is otm

FF5 is my fav in terms of overall gameplay. Love the class system!

materia still the best magic system ever. just such a constant pleasure to level up in vii, kinda gives me a glimpse into that super otaku world of dudes who kill time dungeon grinding in like Megami Tensai or whatever

p terrible that V didnt get any votes shits p tite imo

feel like this really does deserve consideration as the best final fantasy

the real qn tho is should i continue playing them in order or skip to 6 and 7 and go on to 8

tbh my predominant memory of ff5 is grinding the basement of galuf's castle w/lv5 death to get mad AP. which is a tedious memory

though its still a p good game!

i say play it

in order

yeah ive played through every ff game this year in order although i raced through iv on a rom version cuz i dont really like it very much & didnt really fuck w/ any sidequests or even trying to level. but ive spent crazy hours on vi and vii already so im tempted to

v has a lot of grinding but i think it generally 'interesting' grinding. i mean it even gives you time mage spells to facilitate grinding! also i think part of the challenge of the game is finding ways of quickly accruing ap (esp in hard-to-grind jobs like bard), which is kinda neat to me. but i think the best part is that there are multiple objectives that you can work on simultaneously while grinding a handful of which have real in-game value.

hey are any of those fuckin dissidia games worth the trouble?

i tried a 4-class run of FFV last year and i had to quit around 2/3rds of the way through. god it was boring.

yeah i think trying a single class challenge run p severely mistakes what makes this game good

how are people playing FFV, is there an alternative to the GBA version?

roms

also PSN/Wii VC releases are coming soon (i own the lousy ps1 anthology, too)

the ps1 version is truly horrible

im playing the gba version on an emulator because i want to try the bonus dungeon/classes

one of the things that i think i liked best about ffv is that it very rarely interrupted my attempts to more efficiently make #s go up w/ bullshit story stuff. getting kinda annoyed w/ ffvi and all its stupid plot twists

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/07/final-fantasy-is-dead/

surprised that IX didn't get any votes. if/when i replay a final fantasy game, it's probably going to be my first choice.

i stopped with 8, but i'll probably finally play X when the HD remaster comes out in a couple months

you shouldn't skip IX! it didn't break new ground, but it wasn't trying to, either. iirc they were pretty transparent about their intentions to make it a amalgamation of the most beloved qualities of the previous entries in the series. it wasn't perfect by any means, but it plays like comfort food.

haven't played any of these since IX but X-2 looked so goofy that I was pretty tempted

I've heard it's fun it you just accept that it's super light and goofy (unlike most FFs)

re: IX, it's REALLY hard to go back to 3D PS1-era games

X-2 intro movie is either the worst thing ever and/or pure genius. The game is decent (if stupid) as long as you don't go for 100%.

the combat in IX is slow as a glacier. X-2 has best battle system of any FF game

yeah ix feels like it doesn't really have a game attached to it

Its cool that you can play up to FF6 on your phone now

http://www.novacrystallis.com/2013/10/square-enix-has-formed-a-final-fantasy-committee-to-ensure-series-quality/

I read this as an attempt at deposing Nomura.

I've played/replayed a couple of these in the past 5 years and I am sure my ordering is not even close to what it was then

Nhex OTM when he said I put IV too low, that one holds up.

big whale bros

The Lightning Returns ending has leaked, and it's ridiculous.

Spoilers, in case anyone cares about the Lightning Saga
.
.
.
.
.
.
Lightning creates our Earth, moves to France.

hahah wow

I've played through X, and I'm at the Zanarkand ruins at the end of the game, but I am rapidly losing interesting. I think much of it has to do with just deciding to play through these FF games one after the other and getting burnt out. Another reason is that I picked Expert Sphere Grid and listening to everyone who said it was really secretly an incredibly linear leveling thing that only LOOKS confusing. Now I am fighting monsters that have Aga spells and none of my characters have an Aga spell or is anywhere close. Well the closest one is Rikku, so I'm grinding (thank God PCSX2 for FF) and having her get the Aga spells and then I guess I can use the 2 black magic spheres i have to give some of those to Lulu? I think I really screwed up, I guess I deserve it for picking EXPERT SPHERE GRID but then again the game clock is over 60 hours. Ugh. The leveling system from VIII made more sense than this.

Also, to hell with Blitzball. A mini-game that locks you into playing for a minimum of 10 minute stretches, where for MOST of that time you have absolutely no control over what is going on. No control over your defense! Where's my Triple Triad cards, again....? It's a shame because the battle system in this game is definitely the best of all of them.

The English voice acting is pretty bad, Auron, Yuna, and Lulu aside. The guy doing Seymour's (the big bad guy) voice just sounds like a computer programmer or maybe a college-age barista or something. Tidus is insufferable. Every single line he speaks sounds like he's whining whether he's whining or not.

never heard of Expert Sphere Grid, you must be playing the PAL version

FFX is actually my top ff game but im in the minority w/that opinion

haha yeah uh wow

the expert sphere grid is like, nominally you could spec your characters way more have-it-your-way instead of having x guy be good at y monster. it seems like, the game being balanced the way it is, there's little point except for voluntary challenges? like if you wanted to do it with a three-person party, or something.

i found the idea of spending points just to move on that grid (rather than to activate things) really frustrating and broken? or if not broken, i don't know -- what i mean is, it left me paralysed with indecision in case afterwards i faced some kind of buyer's remorse

Well, yeah, ideally that would be cool. The thing is, I didn't spend enough time looking at the whole sphere whenever I leveled up, so now many characters have ended up tracing over each other's paths, and to get a spell like Ultima (that I would just HAVE at 60hours in any other FF game) I need to save up 20 or 30 S.Levels because the good spells are on the far side of the grid and my characters are all swarming over each other, gaining MP and HP but not any useful spells.

Is the normal sphere grid idiot-proof? My next playthrough (definitely w Japanese voices) I'll probably use it. I'd rate it above VIII (but below VII and VI) just because the battle system is so great.

It sort of sucks that the battle system is so cool, you really want to use all the characters, but yeah maybe just doing a Wakka/Yuna/Lulu game would be fun on it's own.

I've been playing Final Fantasy X again, and loving it.

POWER LEVEL LIKE NEVER BEFORE W THIS ONE NEAT TRICK
press the TRIANGLE button during combat to quickly skip a turn

This time through FFX it's on a Japanese-voiced copy, which matches the mouth movements more and is far less grating than the English dub (though that one is still charming in its way). I'm also playing it mostly in original resolution on PCSX2, with Blend tff interlacing for a nice CRT-like fuzziness. First off the music in this game is incredible. Some of the main themes, the first time I heard them, sounded like something from an old movie or something that I heard years ago. Secondly the combat is AMAZING, definitely the best in the entire series. It is incredibly fast, from everything like the menus popping up on the screen to the latency between you choosing an action and the character performing it. At some points you can input the next move WHILE the current character is attacking. The turn-based system is brilliant and simple and capable of some deep chess-like strategy.

At the moment I am power-leveling in Thunder Plains. I'd like to stay here all week but we'll see if I get bored or not.

This dodging lightning thing is such a massive troll on FF players. Has anyone here done it 200 times?

And now Lulu has -aga spells, pretty sure I'm done power leveling here =)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HbIHVoTY2M

I'm at the very end of the game now, just got the airship back, and I am going to take my sweet time before killing Sin to do a bunch of sidequests. Monster Arena seems like good kleptomania fun. But i haven't played a single game of blitzball and I don't intend on doing so. It looks like I'll only be missing out on upgrades for Wakka, who is one of my least favorite characters anyways, so whatever...

Some short reviews of the FF games I've played so far:

Final Fantasy I - Great game! It's kind of amazing how much of FF is all laid out in this first game. Fighting is super slow though. Wwhen u fight 6 bad guys and they all attack and you have to wait for each one to hit, you may fall asleep before it's your turn.
Final Fantasy IV - My introduction to the series. Wonderful gameplay, pretty streamlined story, music and graphics are great.
Final Fantasy VI - Easily the most epic game, with the best stories, the best character selections, and the best open world. You could probably play this over and over and over and have a different experience each time.
Final Fantasy VII - The first half of the game is like the newer FF's, all linear and plot-based, yet the open-world second half is a nice continuation of FFVI. The shift to 3D results in the best summons EVER (seriously this is one of the main things that makes me want to replay it), and I also think this game maybe has the best enemies ever, just such a huge variety of random encounter models. After this one I think they dropped the ball on the enemies and this is the peak. Story is kind of meh and confusing but the sense of humor and off the wall goofiness (Chocobo races, the Gold Saucer, snowboarding mini game) paradoxically bring things down to Earth.
Final Fantasy VIII - Eh.....the combat is dreadful, and the enemies are so scant. Feels like 1/5 the amount of unique bad guys that were in VII. Fighting fucking caterpillars for 40 hours. Also by the time it gets to the end game it's clear they just kind of gave up w making new environments (except for the sweet final castle). Main character sucks, but the music is nice, and the lame story does have some incredibly cool setpieces (fighting zombie president on a train). Triple Triad is probably more fun than the rest of the game, at least until you get drowned in a pile of confusing rules. It's worth owning this game solely to bring up Triple Triad and just leave the music playing while you clean your room.
Final Fantasy IX - Haven't played more than an hour or two but the art direction turns me off. I do think I'll get into it in earnest some day but I want to find a nice mod that speeds up combat when I do.
Final Fantasy X - Combat of the Gods. Storyline is pretty great too (Yuna's character, despite being kidnapped every other scene, has a really interesting arc to it). If they ever do an HD remake of FFVII they need to use this combat system so you can just switch out Tifa and Vincent et al in the middle of battle.

I decided to try winning one of the butterfly catches during lunch, just ended in complete and total frustration. You have tenths of a second to spare in this, it's so ridiculous. Why couldn't we have a full minute to do this in? Anyways after a dozen tries I started using save states and even then it was nearly impossible. After a bunch of tries I finally caught the last butterfly and a treasure chest appeared and.... dropped... off the map.... Eff this I don't have time for this. Eff the celestial weapons, eff the Omega Ruins, I'm just going to beat the game and move on to something sane.

My favourite Final Fantasy game is Fire Emblem: Awakening.

Ok I figured I'd give FFX another shot wrt to post-game bonus stuff, did some grinding in Omega Ruins, then decided to go get the remaining Aeons. I had to go into 2 temples and find the destruction spheres, which was easy to do in Zanarkand but I couldn't go into Macalania because Dark Shiva was waiting for me and INSTANT DEATH. So I decide to track down Yojimbo first and his BFG attack is instant death to even a dark aeon. So Dark Shiva gets whiped out, I get that last destruction sphere, go to Baaj and collect Anima for my troubles. One of my main goals at this point is to take out One Eye so that I can get Triple AP weapons, yet I can't really take on any Monster Arena bosses without dying. That is, until I get Yojimbo and Anima. So I finally start getting these Triple AP weapons and I captured a Don Tonberry earlier so I have been doing the AP farming trick to level everyone up ridiculous amounts.

So yay life is good.

so is anyone going to get type-0 HD? wasn't thinking about it but annual bonus is making me have dumb ideas~

i feel like i'm going to google what that is and end up spending half an hour on wikipedia following all the links i need to understand and then despise myself

someone make a best final fantasy trilogy poll i am curious how that would pan out

-- NES ones
-- SNES ones
-- PSX ones
-- Tactics / Tactics Advance / XII
-- X / X-II / ... something else
-- XIII / XIII-2 / Lightning Returns

tactics/tac advance/ and then not tactics advance 2?

also xii could get paired up with revenant wings haha did anyone else play that :/

actually i think maybe

tactics / vagrant story / XII

trying to split the non-trilogy games into trilogies kinda feels like a square peg problem... 1/2/3 and 4/5/6 and 7/8/9 works but after that... 10/10-2/12 maybe? and then fft/ffta/ffta2? then 13/13-2/13-3... and then i guess like xi/xiv/mystic quest

I started playing the first FF a little while back. It's inestimably comforting. At least partly because it bears such a strong resemblance to Sword of Vermillion (which I played a ton when I was younger and which is basically a carbon copy of FF1). I plan on slowly working my way through all of the ones that are available on PS3 & Vita.

Despite what my shitty username suggests I find FF6 overrated. FFVII is still the best game ever to my nostalgia-riddled mind. Awesome soundtrack too.

As an aside, the next FF needs to be bloody good after two sequels that no-one asked for to a game that no-one liked.

They really need to ditch the current mythos. I made it through XIII but XIII-2, even though the gameplay was 10 times more appealing, I did not care for that world. Same with Type-0. Here is hoping the "Fantasy based in reality" is actually a real thing and it doesn't start the game with a bunch of capitalized nouns that only reveal their meaning through reading some datalog or wiki entry.

For some reason I bought FF Type-0 HD (only in part for the XV demo, mostly jsut because I don't have a lot of PS4 games yet and it seemed like it might be kinda fun and I just got my bonus). Played some of it LATE last night when I was kinda falling asleep, I really don't think I get it yet. Then I played a few minutes of XV and I also really don't get it. I DON'T THINK THESE GAMES MAKE ANY SENSE ANYMORE. (will try both again when less sleepy tho).

XV looks incredible tho, I am legit jell of Ps4 owners for the first time.

Was playing XIII-2 for a while, and enjoying it, but after I beat Caius Ballad for the first time it opened up some new worlds and they were locked up. Now I have to backtrack and talk to everybody hoping the next story thing triggers. I tried looking it up in a walkthrough but the story is so incomprehensible I don't know where I am in it.

Tried playing IX again, and my PS1 is skipping every time I get to the same part, which is a cutscene in that first forest, after you save Garnet from a carnivorous plant. Is there any way around skipping cutscenes on a real system or am I effed?

tried looking it up in a walkthrough but the story is so incomprehensible I don't know where I am in it

man i just don't know how you manage to enjoy some of the stuff you enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kznek1uNVsg

Gonna be crazy.

I think enough time has passed now that doing a straight remake is out of the question, but there is a lot of stuff in FFVII I hope they don't throw out. For instance the crossdressing section that a lot of people think will need to be cut could be spun in a more modern way. It is front page material. As are a lot of themes in this game (terrorism, environmental catastrophes, the military-industrial complex, rising awareness of wealth inequality, etc.). Plus the game had cell phones .... in 1997!

i sure do like that game.

The scope of this will be insane though. Just imagine going around w the submarine and coming upon Emerald Weapon under the ocean.....in HD!

Hope they do something special for the Chocobo Races, they were the sublime psychedelic Yellow Submarine cartoons of the polygonal age.

i kinda don't think this game needs super sparkling graphics? it sure hasn't helped the later FFs. Everything looking like a michael bay film is a bug, not a feature.

agreed, i'm kinda excited about this because i haven't played FF7 since '03 (and that was a nostalgic 2nd playthrough after graduating college and before getting a job), but it might turn out that block hands were part of the magic.

weirdly i'm most excited for the submarine mini-game.

kupo

Everything looking like a michael bay film is a bug, not a feature.

^^ can't be stated enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8-CSDeeVtI

Michael Bay this.

currently on the FF7 wiki :)

in 2015 E3 announced the REMAKE of FINAL FANTASY 7 is true, and on going until the release date sometime around 2017, and many fans are REJOICED, and HYPE like Crazy on many Social media. same did happened with SQUAREENIX Holdings, it was rising sharply as the announcement goes. TETSUYA NOMURA is the Director, and Yoshinori Kitase as the Producer. many fans think it will be PS4 Exclusive, but at the end of the trailer credits section, it is written -play it 1st on PLAYSTATION 4- this lead to many oppurtunity that it may come also to XBOXone and PC later years.

it is written

I have no idea why this game is like the cultural touchstone of gamers younger than me.

it's the first RPG for which I remember seeing a television commercial

Came out when I was 16, and I got it for PC. Didn't finish it til years later on emulator and it was really fun to play. There weren't many games around that had cool CD stuff, and it made really good use of all that storage space. I don't think they recycle a single enemy from one area to another. Music is incredible. Summon animations are still jaw-dropping if you've never seen them before.

Also upon replaying it I found a lot of the quirkier elements were actually really cool and ahead of their time and maybe things that I wouldn't see in USA-produced entertainment circa 1997. Thought provoking stuff about many deep issues from the politics of war and scarcity to environmental pollution, social/economic stratification, and philosophical/psychological ego explorations. You don't see much of that written into entertainment made for 16-year-olds and explored at any length.

I think for a lot of American kids that grew up w FFVII it opened some intellectual doors to concepts from a non-Western viewpoint that they would otherwise have missed. Having grown up in Reagan's America and the following Gulf War it was probably the first time I had encountered a popular media object that took a long look at environmental pollution and the costs of war and the profit motives of its cheerleaders.

Im just jealous there's no ff6 remake for next gen consoles

^^^absolutely. that's the one i really want to see.

me too, and it looks like FF director Nomura wants it as well

FFVII was also the big steal for Sony from Nintendo, and they were supremely dickish about it - I remember a TV ad claiming that the latest iteration of one of their Nintendo competitors (Dragon Quest?) would fit six times over into FFVII's opening cinematic.

http://finalsfantasy.com/

So I had intended to play through the series from the very beginning, but I have to ask: is there a point where these installments dispense with the super-fun feature of an insurmountably-insane difficulty spike late in the game that forces the player rage quit for the sake of his or her own sanity? I'm three deep and all three have wound up like this. Increasingly challenging, forcing you to develop particular skills and allocate particular resources, and then...blam, you're instadead. Oh look blam, you're instadead again. And again. And again. I just last night played through 30-45 minutes of FF 3 inside some floating tree castle thing sloughing off HP and items with no place to save my game but doin' okay because man this is a war for the soul of the earth (or whatever, I pay approximately zero attention to the stories in these things) but then I get to a boss at whom I throw literally everything I have to throw and he's like, yeah no bye. I may have flipped off my Vita. It's possible.

I generally find these old school turn-based RPGs very soothing, so the fact that I've ultimately found three early editions of this series very unsoothing does not bode well. Maybe I'll just jump on ahead to VII. I know that one soothed me out of a mess of college classes I should've attended instead of playing FFVII so it seems like a safe bet.

I think that gets better after III iirc? I don’t know why anybody would inflict the first two on themselves in this day and age tbh.

With those early ones you just have to do a lot of grinding before the last bit, which isn't fun exactly but nature of the beast. I only played the remake of III for the DS and iirc it wasn't too bad. But I'm playing IV for the first time, I'm near the end and it's not too bad but there are several bosses that pull sneaky bullshit like putting a death counter on the entire party and stuff like that which means I'm barely scraping through the whole time.

Oh and FFII doesn't help itself by have a teeeerrrible leveling system. I didn't enjoy that one too much.

Yeah, I read something about the leveling in 2 (I assume you mean the thing where you only level up by letting yourself get beat to shit?) so it wasn't that bad since I was prepared. I just counterintuitively ran around without armor a lot of the time.

Just downloaded 4 because I'm a masochist.

With IV (even the "hard" version) the games got much much easier. I've never made it through the NES titles.

IV has a difficulty spike when you get to a certain faraway locale.
V gets super boring in the second half. i guess that's a kind of difficulty? I tried replaying it a few years ago, and gave up during that endless forest fire segment.

I never beat it - got to the very end, found out I was a bit underleveled for the final dungeon and gave up. But someday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwxq512u8A

this song is amazing. it's also named "Underneath the Rotting Pizza"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8o9gGOKEg4&index=14&list=PL77D98F68F6DBB35D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8o9gGOKEg4

Zoso's cousin theme

playing the steam demo of Final Fantasy XV. it is so great!

so this demo for Final Fantasy XV is great. the intro area is very cool. the story is nice and understandable, it's sort of like an American road movie, at least in the intro. the music is wonderful throughout, the starting garage has this live acoustic guitar with warm Hammond organ sound that gives it a country & western (Italian western being a big US-Japan cultural influence, im watching Fist of the North Star right now and it is very much like those old Clint Eastwood movies) here we have that but with rockstar Japanese cinematic-fantasy royalty.

the battles are so fun, i love the warp ability, it is alot of fun to use. the animation all over is incredible and the character design is great. it is trying to be an HD "realistic" version of the fantasy.

luckily that has not stopped them from including magical sparks and goblins and iron giants and cactuars and chocobos only now they are rendered in HD in realtime with expensive animation and soundtrack work by people that have recently rebuffed their own studio's fantasy output through working with Disney, another studio who has long shared a love of pop fantasy. the post-battle world music makes me think of Kingdom Hearts and imo that is a very good thing.

I dug out my PS1 copy of FFVIII a few months back. Having not played a final fantasy in over a decade, I had a sudden itch to dive back in and give it another go; it was the only one I played that I never managed to beat back then. And I went in with the feeling I wouldn't get very far, just couldn’t imagine having patience for endless random active time battles in this day and age. But it pulled me right back in, all the way to the awesome last dungeon and grueling final battle. I wanna replay every damn FF now!

Anyway, here are some fun write-ups on the series by Jason Schreier, with nifty world-map artwork for each entry (he's taking his time getting around to them, though - note the dates on the entries for VIII and IX!)

https://kotaku.com/tag/ff-retrospective

Title of the VI review says "Simply the Best" so I already agree this dude knows what's up

I played through VI again after VIII and god, it's so good

Been playing through FFX for the first time. It's extremely stupid but the battles + leveling system are fun

love that big fucking grid

I've been playing through the fan translation of FF5 and uh, yeah, it can be a bit boring at times? Maybe i'm just a little tired of JRPGs after playing them a bunch this year but the battles just feel repetitive, even if you mix it up with the job system. Also the story is meh and the characters are all flat.

In contrast, iv might be a bit easy (I played the hardtype version and it was still easy!) but it has great characters, a good story, an interesting setting and an incredible soundtrack. all v has going for it is that it's challening.

like the boss theme in iv is just a straight adrenaline rush

5 has fans because some people are crazy for job systems but in general there's a reason why it was the one out of 4-6 to get passed over for global release the first time around

yeah, it's definitely not as refined as IV or VI in the storytelling/thrillpower department. it certain has its own virtues though

This is another one of those ilx polls that is just “how old are you” in a different guise isn’t it

Gilgamesh's appearances makes FFV worthwhile

been playing them starting from 4 (up to 7 now) and 5 is really just miles above the rest in gameplay. job system is consistently rewarding and thorough and the game's commitment to special statuses makes it sim-like, the whole thing is just a pile of on/off switches that all interact with each other in fun ways. later FF games always treat statuses and ailments and things of that nature like superfluous genre obligations, 5 is built around them.

FFV's job system is fun to play around with but the game still gets boring in the second half. I played through it twice and started getting bored in the forest fire section both times. I tried a "four job fiesta" run and it was so boring that I quit halfway through.

Fans of FFV should check out Dragon Quest V, released a few months earlier in 1992, maybe the first jrpg based around recruiting monsters i.e. the pokemon formula.

the first megami tensei game came out in 1987! but yes DQ5 was what popularized it and led more directly to pokemon

Gilgamesh's appearances makes FFV worthwhile

― ( X '____' )/ (zappi), Saturday, December 26, 2020 4:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh yeah the battle of the big bridge fight in FFV is obviously amazing

I need to play FF6 again so I can face the final boss rush properly — The last time I was over-leveled and cheesed my way through it by equipping everyone with Flame Shields and spamming Merton. I wish they'd release it on the Switch (not the hideous-looking mobile version)

lol i forgot about "Merton"

Now that I think about it, FFV would simply be so much better if it was possible to dash at any time. anyways i just entered "the void" where exdeath should be chilling and any enemy i see obliterates me immediately with meteo. i appreciate a challenge, but damn, getting through this feels like trying to plow through a 1000 page novel that you're only moderately enjoying

PS1 and GBA versions have a run button and it stacks with the thief's ability. In PC emulators you can just fast forward.

i still have only ever actually finished VI. lately i’ve been experimenting with believing XII is the best, but it’s kind of a spiteful opinion.

This is a podcast where the Final Fantasy games are explained to a non-gamer. I had forgotten how abstracted the early ones would be to a newcomer.

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/shabcast-41-holly-explains-final-fantasy-vii-to-jack-part-1/
http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/shabcast-412-holly-explains-final-fantasy-vii-to-jack-part-2/

Funny you mention that 2k11nostagia; pretty sure that's where I gave up on the game, if that's the final final dungeon. But I probably also did a crap build in all honesty

ff12 is the best ff game of the 21st century by a significant margin

would agree with ff12 being best this century, but ff14 is really good in terms of story & characters. would love a traditional ff game set in the ff14 world (seems like ff16 will be very similar to this so kinda hyped for it)
considering a run through the early games, never played ff2 and only a bit of ff3 on the DS before.

wait, 14? The MMO?

ff14 is pretty fun, i put ~30 hours into it when it relaunched and had a good time. the MMO life is not for me but if it were that's the one i'd play (after OG EQ and ultima online).

yeh the MMO, I burnt out of the gameplay after a while but the writing is easily the best in a ff game imo

you've piqued my curiosity, but for my own good I stay away from MMOs

ff12 had great combat but the story, characters, and settings were almost impressively bland

yeah for me 12 fandom is a giving-in to "look just give me mechanics that don't waste my time quite so aggressively and i'll stop asking to be moved." the vestiges of FFT's universe that actually remain can be fun tho if you are a huge nerd, which like, odds seem good

i was playing ffVII remake at my friends house before the latest lockdown started. thinking about playing ffX on PS3 with my gf and ffVI on my ipad to substitute

I've defeated neo-exdeath. i take back everything critical i've said about this game, it absolutely rules. love how the final battle is so intense that it feels like the game could collapse at any moment

hey now
https://ff6wc.com/

I haven't played an FF since 9 (though I did put decent hours into 7 Remake before giving up on the complexity of the combat system), but curious if anyone is playing 16? I'm not sure DMC-style button mashing combat is for me either but the discourse is what I'm here for.

Played the demo. Kinda played like a breezy God of War combat system with some seriously extended and overwrought cut scenes. Really gorgeous graphics though - feels like a PS5 exclusive for sure. Demo was entertaining enough, but I'll probably hold off. Game seems to be okay but not earth shattering with TOTL graphics. I ended up getting the cart of the FFI-VI pixel remasters and will likely bust through some of those instead if I get the itch.

Playing ffxiii right now. Such a pretty game, still holds up very well visually. I like the story movements. I heard someone say it best when they said this game is best as 1-2hr session thing, not a whole day binge. I am okay with the battle system as things move head in difficulty. Also very ahead of its time as a “plays itself” game in the vein of vampire survivors etc. perfect thing to play on the steam deck while baseball/something else is on the tv in the background.

ff16 is fun, of course i'd prefer an old fashioned Active Time Battle system or whatever but the DMC-lite character action stuff is fine. they were smart enough to load it up with TONS of minibosses and cinematic moments so it rarely feels like you are just tromping from trash mob to trash mob a la xenoblade.

looking forward to 16 when i can play it

would be interesting to redo this poll someday, i think V has increased in stature a lot over time now that its far removed from being The Weird one That Didnt Get Released Outside Japan

16 is unashamedly shallow, I'm enjoying how relatively undemanding it is tbh

The combat seems to be designed to make you think you're incredible at dodging without actually being that hard. Voice acting is really excellent, Finchy from the Office among others putting on fine work

XP of the first six V is my second fav! Thought it was a "lost classic" type back in the early 00's when I was able to play it on the PS2.

5 was the peak in terms of the core gameplay imo. Really enjoyed the remaster of 3 as well. 6 obviously towers above in most aspects.

I just realized that 7-9 are the only mainline games I played -- loved 8, enjoyed 7, but did not like the 9's story (mainly disliked the breeziness of the story or Zidane). Are the pixel remasters for the older ones worth checking out in my case?

everyone who plays RPGs should play FF6 at least once

and the pixel remaster is good

Unbelievable they’re like the only games NOT on sale on steam right now. Was expecting to buy that bundle today but can’t stomach the $100 asking price

Are the pixel remasters for the older ones worth checking out in my case?

Absolutely! These are all the FF games made for the NES and SNES, so sprite 2D graphics for the most part. The NES games are updated to SNES like graphics which is nice. The remasters also have nice quality of life improvements like "easy modes" where you can say, get 4x XP per battle or turn encounters off while roaming the map!

The plot and story of the games get more and more involved leading up to VI with that game probably having one of the most immersive for a 2D RPG game. Kefka in VI is easily my favorite FF villain and that includes VII and beyond. Still holds up and you can see how VI specifically has influenced a ton of modern indie RPGs too (Eastward is one that comes to mind).

Pro-tip I learned from Reddit before it began to eat shit, but they only sell the cartridge of the pixel remasters for the Switch in SE Asia, but you can play this cart in the US just fine - runs great on mine. Seems to be for sale still here (though price is now $80 yikes - I paid $70):
https://www.play-asia.com/final-fantasy-i-vi-pixel-remaster-collection-multi-language/13/70g0qp

So I got some extra time in my hands lately, finally bought the pixel remasters and have been breezing through them. Finished the three NES games (1>2=3) and now maybe a third of the way through IV and wow what a jump in quality. There's like, an actual story! You kinda get the best of 3's job system with the characters who rotate in and out (I'm aware V is apparently where the job system really hits its stride?). These remasters are vry vry vry pretty too. Also, a modern mp system finally! Love the DnD roots of the spell slots, but I feel like I'm finally playing a Final Fantasy game as I know it entering from the ps1 era with mp, story focus atb. Loving how every game innovates, every one I've played so far has been classic.

Looking forward to V, VI, VIII, IX, X-2, XIII-2, XIII-3, and finishing XIV, XV and XVI...... lol