Best Final Fantasy poll !!

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

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