I don’t like Ashe either, she can be a real bitch. Besides I like looking at Balthier’s ass in those pants.
This is why I use cheat codes. Tank gun FTW! 
Part of the reason I loved her.
Fran stayed in my party for much the same reason.
Seriously! She’s one of the more dressed viera too; just look at some of the ones in the village, who are practically wearing lingerie.
Fran is interchangeable with Penelo to me, though, and one run-through I had Penelo the whole time.
Ah well. At least we both agree on Basch.
I played the hell out of 3 and SA. I played the 360 version of 4 for about a week and then got bored with it. True Crime did a much better job of depicting NYC. I didn’t list the GTA games because although I did enjoy them (although by the time 4 came out, I was burnt out from the series), I wasn’t looking for that type of game again.
I stuck with it right up until the big underwater dodgeball tournament. When it turned out that all the game would let me do was WATCH the event, and not actually get to play it, that was the last straw, and I erased my saved game immediately. I hated how the game didn’t give you ANY ability to think or explore. It would just hand you the next section, and had a cursor list of areas rather than an actual world map! There was also no challenge at ALL to the game, and I remember being bored even during boss battles. The black mage woman was cute though.
Well, partly true, but you did get to participate in the underwater dodgeball. And it was actually quite open ended by the end of the game.
Wow, I think I disagree on almost every point! I didn’t like the blitzball, but I just avoided it, but you do get to play it, and the difficulty is normal for a Final Fantasy. And once you get past a certain point, it’s open-ended - all Final Fantasies take time for that.
But yes, there is no real “world map” and you don’t really see your airship “flying” from place to place. I was OK with that, though.
Oh, almost forgot. Were the spinoffs for Final Fantasy 7 worth checking out? I did enjoy FF7, but not in a fanboyish OMG BEST GAME EVAR way.
I’d also say if you only played FF 10 to the first blitzball tournament, then I’d argue you haven’t played it enough to get to know the game. You don’t even have all of your characters by then!
Meh. It’s far enough. I didn’t think the game improved. The plot, as a whole, only makes less and less sense the farther you go. (C’mon. For serious. You kill the final unkillable boss by being high enough level to kill it. That’s the only special thing you do. It’s the big invincable “no one has ever been able to defeat it without terrible sacrifice” boss and then you just go and hit it a lot and it dies.). The characters, except for Auron, are insipid (C’mon. Vaan was lame, but Tidus was beyond stupid.). The battle system was tedious, invisible random encounters are an idea whose time has come and gone.
I’m not actually sure I found anything redeeming in FF10. But there must’ve been something, because the sequel looks even worse.
FF12, at least, should please fusoya’s desire for a less linear world where you can actually do some exploring. That was one of its stronger aspects. Sadly, I found the MMO-esque combat to be incredibly bland. If you’re going to make combat realtime, some effort should be made to make it interesting.
I’d skip the FF7 spinoffs. Well, the PS2 one anyway. Dirge of Cerberus is, by all reports, fairly intensely bad. I hear good things about Crisis Core, but that’s a PSP title. Is there another FF7 spinoff I’m forgetting?
Bully was a very underrated game. It’s a Rockstar game and it’s got the usual writing and quality of lampooning student life.
Get it for the 360 instead, though. I’ve heard they added a few things for it.
I’m totally late to this thread, but…
I know you elaborated later that you know what a JRPG is but just never called it that, but I read that first sentence and my head exploded, and I was like, well, I guess his name didn’t come from where I thought it did…
Eh, I thought that FFX’s grid sphere leveling system was great. I really enjoyed being able to choose the way I trained my characters in that grid. I also liked being able to change all the characters in and out of the fight, so that I wouldn’t have to settle on one party of three or four. No more choosing between the thief and the black mage, and the black mage might have stealing abilities and the thief might be able to cast magic (if she ever gets over her fear of thunder, that is). If I want to train a whole group of thieves or mages, I can.
Auron is a great character, with a great story. The other ones…gah. The Ronso is halfway decent, as is Lulu the black mage, but Tidus and Yuna, the main characters, are beyond insipid, they’re nauseating separately, and even worse when they start getting involved. The swimming scene is nice, like all the movies scenes. Rikku is a mascot character. I don’t know why Square is enamored of mascots and thieves, but I’m not terribly fond of either one, so of course a character who is BOTH will really irritate me. Just once I’d like for Square to put out a FRPG without having one or both of these characters in the game.
The limit breaks were full of meh for me, too. They were much too random for my liking. I don’t particularly like slots for my limit breaks, or similar devices.
Getting the ultimate weapons SUCKED. In some cases, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t win the Chocobo Race (and I still contend that the AI cheats on that race) and while I could get some of the others, pressing a button 200 or more times in a row to coincide with a flash (or whatever it was) is not my idea of a fun time. It didn’t feel like a challenge, it felt like an impossible chore. If a game isn’t fun, why should I play it? Especially since I have FFIV (3a), Chrono Trigger, and others ported to the PSX, and that’s not even counting the other PSX/PS2 original games that I have.
I didn’t buy FFX-II, because I felt that after IX and X, Square had lost my goodwill.
I have to admit that I never finished the game. It’s hard for me to play a game if I hate the main character(s) and don’t like many of the other characters.
Whereas I found the idea of needing to find magic rocks to unlock skills tedious and irritating. 
Whereas I found my saddled with an irritating desire to make sure -everyone- participated in -every- fight so they didn’t miss out on XP. (Because if I recall, XP wasn’t split, just given out to everyone who participated in the fight.). I’m one of those people who will rotate his party -anyway- and the in combat rotation just seemed to add micromanagement to the whole affair.
Actually, you probably can’t, because you’ll never get enough spheres to get the whole party over to that part of the grid.
That’s why he got the exception in my comment above.
Wise choice. It was cheap and I thought to myself “maybe it’ll be funny” which it was, but not in the “ha ha” sort of way.
Don’t worry! The end makes no sense anyway.
Fair enough. I still rank it as one of my favorite games of all time. The sequel was beyond disappointing; I only played it to get some plot resolution for the first game. I loved the characters. I still love Yuna. And I liked Tidus; I thought he was the first FF char who actually grew as a character and didn’t just stick with what he knew.
I liked Rikku a lot, too. 
Well, characters are a matter of taste, anyway.
I encourage you to go check out Tales of the Abyss, which had the best cast of any RPG I’ve played, all of whom get to grow in some capacity during the course of the game. The plot is reasonably coherent, personally grounded, and the battle system is a heck of a lot of fun. Not as visually shiny as FFX though.
Hmm…I’ve made it about 10 hours into both Abyss and Vesperia, and sort of lost interest, in part because I thought the battle systems in both were terrible (I’m really not a fan of the real-time systems where the CPU controls all characters but one, like these games and Star Ocean). I also found the characters to be pretty bland (Vesperia) or annoying (Abyss); people talk about Tidus being whiny, but Luke has to be one of the most irritating, self-centered lead characters I’ve ever seen in an RPG. I realize it’s supposed to be part of his character, so I guess having him grow out of it would be a welcome development.
So I’m wondering: did you start enjoying the game immediately, or is it one that grows on you as you play more? I didn’t really dislike either of them, and I’m still thinking about continuing on in my Vesperia playthrough (Abyss was too long ago and I can’t remember what had happened in the plot, so I’d probably have to start over).
There was a way to jump over to another part of the grid. I think it was a friend sphere? I never made a party of just one class, but I sure did have several characters learn how to steal.
As for leveling up…most FRPGs will have some leveling up, and I usually rather enjoy it, if I don’t take it to an extreme. I regard getting the Ultimate Weapons and Ultimate Skills as a form of leveling up.
Did you not play FF8? Squall learned how to rely on other people, he learned to be a leader, he learned to be a good friend, he learned to love. Tidus, on the other hand, learned not to whine so much. Maybe. He was an attention whore/drama queen. And let’s not forget that he’s a Star Ball Player.
Yes, and return spheres, and also other spheres that you could use to jump around.
I liked the sphere grid a lot.
I actually liked Squall a lot, but I didn’t like that plot much…it was just too weird. And for the first half I wanted to strangle Rinoa.
And I am proud to say I have played every Final Fantasy except 3,4, and 11.