Best Final Fantasy poll !!

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
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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.