What is Your favorite Final Fantasy game?

[whatah]

Hello everyone, Final Fantasy has been one of my favorite series ever since the first one came out on the NES and I was wondering what are your favorite FF games and why? here are my top 5:

#1 FF8:
I liked the graphical jump this one had over 7, I liked how the junction system lent itself to abuse, I liked the item system where cards could be turned into items and then into magic, I liked the limit break system that let you use them over and over as long as your HP were weak, I liked how non-linear the level advancement was (you could go through the entire game and never gain more that 1 exp level), I even liked the card game (you can get all the most powerful items and spells simply by playing cards and you can add/remove any rules that you don't want to be in a specific area) the plot fit just right, the FMV scenes were tight

#2 Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1)
This game lets you put soooo much into it, you have 20 basic job classes that any character can master plus each of the 14 special characters have their own unique class as well as the ability to master every other ability. This game is so indepth it is so obscene. beina able to do extra damage when next to you zodiac "comliment" and being able to destroy a screenfull of enimies with a master calculator are some of my favorite things

#3 FF4j AKA FF2 (SNES)
I'll probably be flames into oblivion for putting any of these above FF3 but this game has 5 person parties, 3 worlds to explore, 2 airships and a spaceship, many gread boss battles. Favorite parts: when the main character thrasforms from Dark Knight to Paladin and when Rydia returns to the party in the middle of a Boss fight with her new summon magic ability

#4 FF6 AKA FF3 (SNES)
Many people's favorite in the series. Great plot, great characters, branching storyline, Customizable parties, great weapons, great special attacks, great bosses, long quest, opera scene, epic final boss fight

#5 FFX (PS2)
Amazing game, great graphics, leveling system lends itself well to abuse, able to hot-swap characters in combat (this is a pokemon trick BTW) I never got into blitzball unfortunatly (only played the game for about 4 days when I borrowed it and a friends PS2 to beat it) pleasent stream of boss-fights

honorable mentions:
FF7: first great FMVs
FF2j: first changing parties, most non-linear level advancement ever.
FF3j: first job class FF, greatest NES FF
FF1: great great great great great great game
FF legend 1,2,3: great GB games
FFTA: decent GBA game, really fun if you get 2 copis with 2 linked up GBA to trade items and characters

[Overlord]

Hands down, my favorit FF game is FF7. I've yet to play a game that, in my personal opinion rivals the storyline of FF7.

[razwit]

7 is most deffinately the best

8 and x-2 don't deserve honorable mentions

and I haven't played 1,3,4,6, and tactics, but I hear tactics and 6 are fantastic.

if I had to give a most un sung award to a few it'd be 9 and 11. 9 because they went back to the origional style of final fantasy, the stoyline was no worse than any of the others except for 7, and the graphics were top of the list for it's time... also it had the best buhamut ever and alexander looked cool and made sense overall the best summons I'd say.
11 because while it starts out slow there's more hours of productive game play than any other ff, it has better graphics than any ff to date, it's the only ff where you get to totally costomize your character, it has the most grand storyline, and might I add, most mmorpg's don't have a story, it's the only online ff to date, the list goes on but it goes unsung because all the people who had low patience told everyone without the game that you had to spend the first 10 lvls getting exp from worms and rabbits. OF CORSE YOU HAVE TO, YOU BEGIN NAKED AND WITH NO MUSCLE, YOU CAN'T TAKE GIANTS, ORCS, AND DRAGONS YET.

well I'm glad I got my rant of the day out of my system.

if you wonder why I hate ff8 I'll rant about that if you ask. and if you wonder why I hate ffX-2 I'm going to assume you either 1. are a woman 2. are a gay man or 3. are a man with a mental deficiency which allows you to ignore abominations.

[whatah]

I would love to hear why you didn't like ff8, many disliked the squall/laguna time switch thing, squall in general, the crazyness of the plot/story or how you have to draw 100 of each spell from enemies every time you find a new magic. personally I find the first 3 to be arbitrary and the last point moot because if you use card mod then you never have to draw any spell execpt water at the very beginning and maybe a few tornados or some other super powerful magic at the end.

I thought 9 was ok but it is the only one that I really wasn't too impressed with. the game was just so dumbed down after 8 (it was even more dumbed down than 7) it essentially told you where every secret was with the ! mark thing and the whole "party members come and go based on the storyline" thing was done sooooo much better in FF4 and FF6. I liked how they used a thief main character to compliment the equip-items-to-learn-abilities game system but this aspect was done 100X better in ff-tactics:advanced. I did like the "tree of life" finale (giant tree sucking all the life energy, fight your twin/clone/brother kill it with a spirit bomb, show mercy, the end. And graphic wise I guess it was ok, but the FMV sequences didn't do it for me like 8 or the first 4 times I played 7... I guess it was the aging hardware... and what was up with princess garnet cutting her own hair off? every anime fan knows that when the main female character cuts her hair off it is either a tragic accident (akane tendo in ranma 1/2) or done in the heat of battle for stratigic purposes (sakura in naruto) I really don't dislike ff9 but it isn't one of my favorites...

unfortunatly I've never played ffXI, I've read most of the milkman's blog on 1up.com and read a lot of other stuff about it, I wish I has played it a whole lot, I just don't have too much time to get into a MMORPG although i do play PSOep1,2&3... the game sounds great, I look forward to checking out ff12 (it has the same graphical interface as ffXI exceot you control 3 characters in the same "distance matters active battle in raltime rendered 3d landscapes"

I also have never played ffX-2 (sorry, no PS2 at my apartment) and while the job class final fantasies (ff3j, 5, tactics and tactics advanced) are many of my favorites I hear that ffx-2 is just insane fanservice and a collection of mini-quests and non-linear dungeons that many find unplayable.

I highly recommend you play ff1, ff3j and ff6 (called dinal fantasy 3 outside of japan) they are all great RPGs.

I would love to hear your rant on ff8, that game hands down is the one that divides the ff community the most...

[roy]

DOn't really play that many RPGs but I have played Final fantasy
My favorite is a tie between FFX and FF7 but X-2 and FF11 sucked personally that had no point and shouldn't of been made the way they were

[Overlord]

FF X-2 was a decent game. It's just that most of the quests and such didn't really stick to the main story line.

[razwit]

I think I'd actually have to play ff8 again to get a feel for all of what I hated about it, and give you a decent rant. but I don't care to subject myself to it again. Instead, I'm just going to attempt to recall everything that I didn't like or didn't get. though before I do, I realize, we're all stuborn geeks and if I didn't respect your point of view, this conversation could get well out of hand and become an endless bash the guy who doesn't share my opinions fest. So just know that while I may not understand your liking of ff8, I respect your opinion, and I expect you to respect mine.

with that said I present to you:
THE REASONS FF 8 SUCKED:
#1. It may have just been me but did any one else have a problem with the fact that the orphen children ended up in an elite school, focused entirely on fighting?

#2. the least of the problems in the game by far, but still worth talking about, I just didn't like people calling summons, GF's. and then they quiz you on what GF (Guardian force) means in order to gain rank. you just went to the damn school all your life.....whatever this is a dumb point anyway

3. every one in the game seemed to all be closet fanatics for Tifa.... what's with all the belts? does squall have a thing for leather?

4. I thought squall was a girl untill I was 5 minutes in

5. there was a hidden evil everywhere regardless of plot, in space, under millitary installations, in your school, up your ass and around the corner.

6. this is a big one for me, and I believe, it requires an introduction... from the dictionary and beyond.
sniper: n. a person, especially a soldier, who snipes
to snipe: shooting from a hidden position with great accuracy
assassin: a murderer who stricks suddenly and by surprise: now generally used of the killer of a pollitically important person.
Irvine: supposedly the best sniper/ assasin in these here parts, but in reallity, a little bitch who appearently doesn't read dictionaries.
but seriously, no other moment in a video game has made me scream louder than when Irvine (the little bitch) couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.
what was squaresoft thinking "hmmm a guy with a gun who wares a cow boy hat and spurs, who is a sniper who can't snipe... fantastic character design!"

7. the magic system was redundant, magic was used like Items, you had a supply of any one spell, and when that supply ran out you couldn't use the spell. at that point they should have just called them items. why have fire if you have grenades there's an element of strategy there that's entirely missing.

8. the junction system at it's core was very easy to understand, but when they present it.... oh my lord it's confusing. the first time I played the game I read the longer than needed tutorial on the junction system all the way through, then found myself completely lost, I went into the menu and figured it all out in a couple minutes. this was just annoying, but I guess not neccisarilly a down side of the game.

9. they're orphens, I get it, why do they complain and complain about nothing? they live in a rich bitch lifestyle now and they still stand in streets complaining.

10. while flashy and very cool at first glance, have you ever stopped to think about the functionality of a gun blade? guns are there incase you are to far away to hit them, and swords are there incase they get too close and you don't want to waste ammo. so why go up and hit them with both, that's a bit of overkill.

11. the characters weren't well defined from one another, aside from zell (the one of 2 good parts in the game, the other being the fire moobas or what ever the hell they were) characters were defined by there clothes and weapon and had no real personallity, though on occaision rhinoa would become the godess of pansies.



that's most of all I can think of, though this really doesn't mean much because, again, everyone has different tastes. I'll agree with you that I haven't heard any other ff cause as much dispute as 8, it's just one of those games that you can't get half way on, you either hate it or you love it.

[whatah]

1st off, I certainly don't want to be seen as wanting to argue with you or anybody, hopefully we can explain our points as to what we like/didn't like about the game.

with that said I present to you:
THE REASONS FF 8 SUCKED:
#1. It may have just been me but did any one else have a problem with the fact that the orphen children ended up in an elite school, focused entirely on fighting?

ok, first I'll say that many of these issues you have listed have to do with the plot (It seems at times like they made it up as they went along) or character-related (can I have an extra halping of angst on my texture mapped polygons? please?) according to the plot, sorceress ultimecia showed up on the orphanage's backyard and transferred her essance into the lady in charge of the kids, she planned with her hisband (Cid) to create a "mercenary school" whose secret purpose would be to thwart her whim at a key moment in the future... alriiiiight, the cheeze factor extends to the many "convienent coincidences" like how the GFs erase the characters memory so thay can't remeber some extremly important facts from their childhood (except sylphie can remeber them cuz she to young to have forgotten but she doesn't say anything)

#2. the least of the problems in the game by far, but still worth talking about, I just didn't like people calling summons, GF's. and then they quiz you on what GF (Guardian force) means in order to gain rank. you just went to the damn school all your life.....whatever this is a dumb point anyway

Yea, that seemed weak that the primary income of the party was recieved just by running around with encounters turned off (and tended to go down over time) but that is what the stratagy guide was for.. I don't think I read a single question any time I played through the game, you look at the book, input ynnynynyyn and then get a class-level, do this 10 more times every 5 hours of gameplay and you are rolling in it. It might have soomed really wierd but this game was trying to do many things differently

3. every one in the game seemed to all be closet fanatics for Tifa.... what's with all the belts? does squall have a thing for leather?

yea, "would you like some style to go with that angst?" well maybe it is because all the charaters were so tall and then, they needed them? nahh the character models were so much more detailed than ff7's they could throw extra accesories on them like belts and fur from baby animals and piericings and pansyness

4. I thought squall was a girl untill I was 5 minutes in

oh please, like square would ever make a final fantasy game with girls as all the main characters... that would suck so much... ;p seriously, look at the first scene... other than the long hair and the feathers flying around... if squall was a girl who liked swords then it would make sense that is rival would be a girl also, after all this isn't phantasy star here...

5. there was a hidden evil everywhere regardless of plot, in space, under millitary installations, in your school, up your ass and around the corner.

yea, the crazy blob living in the school's basement and the goddess of sorcery orbiting in space (not to mention the chance of stumbling upon a satalite in orbit with no guidence sytem would be pretty low)

6. this is a big one for me, and I believe, it requires an introduction... from the dictionary and beyond.
sniper: n. a person, especially a soldier, who snipes
to snipe: shooting from a hidden position with great accuracy
assassin: a murderer who stricks suddenly and by surprise: now generally used of the killer of a pollitically important person.
Irvine: supposedly the best sniper/ assasin in these here parts, but in reallity, a little bitch who appearently doesn't read dictionaries.
but seriously, no other moment in a video game has made me scream louder than when Irvine (the little bitch) couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.
what was squaresoft thinking "hmmm a guy with a gun who wares a cow boy hat and spurs, who is a sniper who can't snipe... fantastic character design!"

yea, irvine gets the wussiness (and pedophile) award... they sould have just run op there and used their sword-chucks i mean gun-blades in the first place.

7. the magic system was redundant, magic was used like Items, you had a supply of any one spell, and when that supply ran out you couldn't use the spell. at that point they should have just called them items. why have fire if you have grenades there's an element of strategy there that's entirely missing.

the magic system and junction system combine to create something of beauty, spells are to be aquired but rarely used. You use magic to make your stats 1337 and then proceed to sword all enemies to death.

8. the junction system at it's core was very easy to understand, but when they present it.... oh my lord it's confusing. the first time I played the game I read the longer than needed tutorial on the junction system all the way through, then found myself completely lost, I went into the menu and figured it all out in a couple minutes. this was just annoying, but I guess not neccisarilly a down side of the game.

The junction system and the draw system frustrated maybe 50% of all ff7 veterans who wanted to continue to love the franchise. you would think that after such a mainstream hit as ff7 they would create a game with even better graphics that would appeal to an even wider audience, right? instead square has "multiple devlopment teams" that means one year's product seems completly differnt from the company's last title.

9. they're orphens, I get it, why do they complain and complain about nothing? they live in a rich bitch lifestyle now and they still stand in streets complaining.

the most popular anime movement going on while this game was in develoment was the TV airing of neon genisis evangelion. the creen for 1997 was "one cannot have enough angst" "no, seriously, give me more"

10. while flashy and very cool at first glance, have you ever stopped to think about the functionality of a gun blade? guns are there incase you are to far away to hit them, and swords are there incase they get too close and you don't want to waste ammo. so why go up and hit them with both, that's a bit of overkill.

eh, it did provide one other thing to do other than just push the some X botton over and over for 35 hours (that and using the "square" button to boost GFs) personally, I would have prefered sword-chucks.

11. the characters weren't well defined from one another, aside from zell (the one of 2 good parts in the game, the other being the fire moobas or what ever the hell they were) characters were defined by there clothes and weapon and had no real personallity, though on occaision rhinoa would become the godess of pansies.

this is a true point, some of the characters (selphis, quistis) served no purpose other than fan-service and all the charaters gameplay-wise were pretty much the same except for limit breaks. you could move all magic and junctions with the push of a button and their normal stat advancement was nothing to worry about.

that's most of all I can think of, though this really doesn't mean much because, again, everyone has different tastes. I'll agree with you that I haven't heard any other ff cause as much dispute as 8, it's just one of those games that you can't get half way on, you either hate it or you love it.

one thing to realize about when this game came out is that the next closest blips on the radar was nintendo and it's zelda seies and enix and it's dragon quest. both of these franchises used traditional-ish fantasy worlds and bright colors, square chose to go with something darker and slightly techno that worked real well for ff7 and poured so much "angst" and "style" into ff8 that many did not like it.

here are a few point's I'd li,e to make about ff8 (I apologize if they are redundant to my original post or the above quotes)

First you have the option of never advancing in levels. You can get the ability to turn enemies into cards 1st thing in the game and then the only enemies you cannot turn into cards are soldiers (gabalda in normal time and esther in laguna time) and bosses (who give you no experince, just AP). This keeps the enemies at lowest level possible while you get to junction magic to stats forming overly powerful level 6 fighting machines. Then before you leave garden you can defeat diablo and unlock encounter none and play the rest of the game through the card system.

Second is the abilities that allow you to turn cards into items, then magic, and vice verca. you can get 300 curagas before you leave garden and they junction quite nicely if you have the game on PC it comes with chocobo's sidequest thingy that can run on you desktop and import random good stuff into your game (pulse ammo) and allow even more brokenness.

The card game system is actually playable. you can "infect" the card game with rules from other regions or by saving before you deul you can keep the rules how you like them. One of my favorite stratagies it to collect every uber card untill about halfway through the game, turn all the crappy cards into items then adopt the "random draw" rule so opponents will randomly have to put up their best cards (no holding out) and their average hands go to crap with random draw enabled. Unlike FFIX, I can (and did) play FFVIII card game endlessly (and now card based varients of rpg frachises are kinda the rage).

Drawing out magic does seem like a pain but to me it left fond memories of buying potions in FF1. Magic is to be stockpiled, junctioned, and never used. (unless for some reason you need to heal) Once you start turning items into magic you will find very few spells are needed to be drawn from enemies (good stuff from some bosses mostly) of course you will transform many a card before your game is done.

Love the limit break system. Junction 100 full life to hp early in the game and you can hang out around 2k hp and limit whenever you want. At the end of the game you will have everyone at lv<10 you can find 2 x4ability junctions and equip them to quistis and 1 other (kill the 3rd member). then load those 2 characters up with mag bonus, str bonus, vit bonus, whatever their weakest stat is. then you go to one of the islands of fattie monsters/ good draws, turn off no encounter and proceed to limit break-degenerator untill your characters are level 100, then take quistis and 2 other charactert and repeat untill your party is broken. Gining an extra 90 points in 4 stats of your choice for each character is the difference between having a few 255s and having everything maxed out.

Love the stratagy guide. you can see what enemies are worth dropping encouner-none and drawing from. I spent good times going over the item conversion tables to see how early I could get good stuff. If anything the game had too many layers of depth and turned off FFVII fans, they sure fixed that with FF"you don't need a stratagy guide"IX.

GFs rock. sure you can't skip the animations but you only use htem (cerebus) when you are fighting boss battles or are inproving their synch rates (which admittably is a good bit of time) but hey you can boost them (except diablo who is one of the best for killing tonberries) but hey the GFs are the star of the show, other than limit breaks and stat variance there really isn't much difference between all the characters. And there are so many ways to pimp them out.

Texture maps are cool. I like my poygons covered.

Chicks dig FFVIII. There is more fan-fiction about this game than any other FF.


Oh yea and the plot was a FF classic... even after you play through it half the people didn't know what was going on. EVAwhat? and the plot was something you "got around to participating in" after you have collected all the cards in the area, taught your gfs everything you could, and sorted your junctions out perfectly. What whould a FF be without a character changing sides? The whole game I guess is just an aquired taste but if you want a non-tradional RPG I think this is it.

[Overlord]

"Why can't we be friends, Why can't we be friends"

[whatah]

he started it ;p no wait, i started it, n/m

seriously, can't a couple of gamers discuss final fantasy without it being an argument?

I understand all his points, most of them are his opinions/ dislikes about the story and style of the game. I just happen to love the non-linear level advancement engine built into the game.

[Overlord]

well, that's conflicting opinions for you . everthing here is a matter of personal opinion. he disliked the game and you liked it. there's nothing to prove here. personally, I like all of the FF games because of their diversity in story lines and characters.

[razwit]

it's all opinion whatah, don't take it personal. I don't think it's an arguement, just stating opinions. you asked I told, ya know.

[whatah]

yea sorry, I guess it was rude of me to try and "refute" your opinion, i didn't mean it that way, I was just messing around...

what other RPGs do you play/have you enjoyed? I am currently playing Phantasy Star ep 1,2,&3 although I only play them in offline mode...(too many cheaters online) on gamecube you can play with 4 player split screen and while I rarely am able to get a multi-player session going it can be fun having my lv 119 character give some items to my lv25 character to let him breeze through some levels...

I'm also playing FFt:a on GBA, that game can be fun to trade items between copies.

I'm also near the end of ff3j it is probably the best 8-bit nintendo game I have ever played... (finally found a perfectly translated rom)

[razwit]

it's your right to state your oppinion, you can refute all you want, I was just saying that I didn't think it was an arguement yet, or at all.

as for other rpgs, right below ff7 as my favorite games, is chrono trigger (chrono cross can bite me I didn't like it). trigger was an awesome game, for everything except the graphics. if the graphics were better I'd like it over ff7. the game has not one, but over 13 different endings, and a much better replay value than any other rpg. the main story is deffinately the best. you can tell everything was well planned out, and the time travel issue was thought about excessively. in other words, the storyline and plot is better than terminator and time machine. while the battle system was simple enough, the characters had spcial attacks which worked a different way depending on the group that was with you. all the attacks were flashy, and the amount of flash was directly proportionate to the amount of hurt (on a side note, I hate tomberries). all the characters were individual because of style, personallity, dress, weapon, knowlege, class of citizen, time era which they hailed from. and on top of everything, there's a cool music video with the cinemas played to particle man by they might be giants (this has nothing to do with the game it self but it was still cool). the cinemas are in anime, made by none other than the DB/DBZ creator, akira toriyama. I can't go on enough about this game. if you have a PS1/2 buy FF chronicles so you can play chrono trigger and the other crumy game they pakaged it with (I'm sorry, it just didn't hold a candle to chrono trigger in all categories, and I played trigger frist, so I couldn't stand the game)

[demonslayer]

Well my opinion is that the remake of ff1and 2 are really decent. i also liked the story for ffX.