What's the best Final Fantasy game(s)?

[Drain_Bead]

Almost every undead boss can be defeated with the Phoenix Down trick, actually.

[Anaamika]

@Drain_Bead

Almost every undead boss can be defeated with the Phoenix Down trick, actually.

Except later on they “fixed” this by making it not work 100% of the time, so sometimes you had to try multiple times.

[Mahaloth]

@Hoopy_Frood

But the most memorable boss fight is head and shoulders owned by game 5. Early in the game you fight an undead train. Undead, like in most gaming systems, are hurt by healing. Now, at this point you should have the white mage job, so you can give everyone white mage and cast cures on the thing to kill it. Fairly effective, really.

But that’s the long way to go about it. The cheeseball way is to take a Phoenix/Fenix (I believe they used the second spelling in this one) Down item and use it on the boss.

Instant defeat of boss. I believe this is the only “boss” in a Final Fantasy game and possibly any JRPG that can be obliterated by a one shot.

I thought that was the Doom Train in Final Fantasy 6, not 5. Am I wrong?

[Anaamika]

@Mahaloth

I thought that was the Doom Train in Final Fantasy 6, not 5. Am I wrong?

It is 6. It is where you find your samurai’s wife and child.

[cckerberos]

I’ve played 1, 7, 8, 9, X, and X-2. I’m pretty sure that I played some of the other early games on emulators, but don’t remember which ones.

Of those, X is easily my favorite. I loved the story and the characters. I’m not much for unlockables in games, but I invested the time into making sure that I did everything in X.

My second choice would be 9, but it’s a pretty distant second.

[Mahaloth]

@Anaamika

It is 6. It is where you find your samurai’s wife and child.

Right. That game is so moving compared to just about every other FF.

[Mosier]

I’ll rank them in order of playtime I spent on them.

1. Final Fantasy Tactics.
2. FF 6
3. FF 4
4. FF 7
5. FF 1
6. All the others.

Tactics and 6 were something special, where all the others were just good games.

[Least_Original_User_Name_Ever]

@Anaamika

It is 6. It is where you find your samurai’s wife and child.

Isn’t that Final Fantasy 2? Well, by the US numbering, which is how I’m familiar with them.

[Hoopy_Frood]

Maybe it was 6 with the train. I stand corrected.

I think there was one in 5 you could do it with as well, but I don’t remember which one it was.

Regardless, starting from 7 they nerfed the Fenix down trick.

[c_goat]

4 and 6 have such childhood nostalgia for me that I can’t help but say they’re my favorites. I can’t say which I like more, probably 4 because Rosa and Cecil are so heartwarming and I like how they had a special hugging sprite (after she’s saved from the giant boulder). I’m loving the WiiWare sequel to 4 right now. Plus Rosa’s theme is my favorite song of any FF game.

I really liked the story of 10, the ending made me choke up. I don’t remember that with the ending of 8, but I only played it once, I’ll have to go through it again some time to see. All I remember is floating in space. I also liked how you could switch characters during battle in 10.

12’s battle system got in the way of my enjoyment of that game. I still haven’t completed it. I’ve tried twice so far. Each time I stop playing after a while and by the time I feel like playing again I forget the storyline, since it’s just kind of ‘meh’ to me and not that memorable. It’s the only one so far that I’ve been unable to force myself to finish.

My ordering would be something like:

1. FF4
2. FF6
3. FF10
4. FF7
5. FF9
6. FF8
7. FF5
8. FF3 (DS Remake)
9. FF12
10. FF1 - still good for a character themed challenge, though
11. FF2

[Drain_Bead]

@Hoopy_Frood

Maybe it was 6 with the train. I stand corrected.

I think there was one in 5 you could do it with as well, but I don’t remember which one it was.

Regardless, starting from 7 they nerfed the Fenix down trick.

I know in 8 the trick works…there’s a boss that comes up right before you get to Esthar that you can pretty much three-shot with Phoenix Down. Instead of just killing it, it just does more damage than a Curaga.

[Mahaloth]

@Hoopy_Frood

I think there was one in 5 you could do it with as well, but I don’t remember which one it was.

I checked. The Tyrasaurus in FF5 is a boss in the underground river that can be killed with a phoenix down.

[Mogle]

@c_goat

4 and 6 have such childhood nostalgia for me that I can’t help but say they’re my favorites. I can’t say which I like more, probably 4 because Rosa and Cecil are so heartwarming and I like how they had a special hugging sprite (after she’s saved from the giant boulder). I’m loving the WiiWare sequel to 4 right now. Plus Rosa’s theme is my favorite song of any FF game.

I would like to point out that in the original japanese version(and the playstation port) it was a guillotinish thingy, not a boulder, and the hug was apparently supposed to be a kiss, but when the sprite is 36x34 pixels it’s kind of hard to tell the difference

Anyway, my favorite Final Fantasy games:

1. FFVI, it was the first FF game I played so it has special place in my heart.
   2-3) FFIV and FFV, in fact the entire 16-bit era has a special place in my heart and both these games have good gameplay so there is nothing bad I can say about them.
2. FF12, such great gameplay simply deserve a high rank.
3. FFVII, it was fun and it was the the first 3d FF.
4. FFIX, just plain fun and the characters had clearly defined classes making them all unique.
5. FFX, not much to say about it.
6. FFVIII, good graphics and good story(even if it fell apart a bit towards the end) but awful gameplay. If I’m going to play a game I expect some decent gameplay, without that I might as well read a book or watch a movie.
7. FF, it was the first, it was hard, I have the playstation remake, it has a quicksave feature you can abuse, without that I would never have finished it.

[Mahaloth]

@Mogle

I would like to point out that in the original japanese version(and the playstation port) it was a guillotinish thingy, not a boulder, and the hug was apparently supposed to be a kiss, but when the sprite is 36x34 pixels it’s kind of hard to tell the difference
.

I remember the blade. I had played the English translation(DeJap did it I think) of FF4. It was harder to and there was a bit of a more serious and intimate relationship implied between Rosa and Cecil.

[smiling_bandit]

@Mahaloth

I remember the blade. I had played the English translation(DeJap did it I think) of FF4. It was harder to and there was a bit of a more serious and intimate relationship implied between Rosa and Cecil.

Amusingly, for the American release somebody decded that Rosa possibly being decapitated was too violent.
So they changed into a boulder, so she’d be gruesomely crushed b a 10-ton rock into a fine meaty paste. Weak, but hilarious at the same time.

[GameHat]

My list:

1. FF IV

This was the first proper JRPG I ever played. I was 12. I had previously played FF1 and Dragon Warrior, but these were both turn-based combat games with some really minor “role-playing” elements. So it does get some nostalgia points. The idea of a game with a story was completely new to me at the time. I was gobsmacked.

2. FF VI
   I’ll admit, this is probably a better game than IV. More depth. Less linear. More mature. What keeps it out of first place is that there really wasn’t a strong major character (who is the central character? Terra? Locke? Celes?) A great game, but the lack of a strong central narrative (cast of dozens but no proper hero) puts it at number two.

3. FF I
   Nintendo Power, damn them, previewed this like six months before it was released. I had loved Dragon Warrior, this sounded to me like gaming perfection. I read the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide probably one hundred times, cover to cover, before I finally got the game for Christmas in 1989. I played it to death, still love it.

4. FF VII
   Final Fantasy enters the PlayStation era. I probably liked this one more than I should have - it was new, it was shiny, it had polygons. This one drew a lot of new people into the genre, which was cool. It hasn’t aged well.

5. FF X
   PS2, wooo! Looked gorgeous. The plot was a bit of a mess. I did tear up a bit at the end. Oddly, the grid leveling system was one of the better ones. I really enjoyed it.

Final Fantasies that I hated:

FF:Tactics
I love the idea, I love the music. I hate the lack of balance and the very real possibility of creating a party that will stall out and be unable to advance. I did this twice before quitting forever. It’s strange that normal FF games are so easy (from a strategic standpoint) but that FF:Tactics is so punishing - roll a few bad classes and you’re blocked from advancement forever

Ditto for FF:T Advance. The characters and story are a lot more engaging than in tactics. But it’s still too easy to deadend your game with a few poor character choices.

FFVIII
The story was a mess of crap. The battle system was worse (really? The best thing to do is to spend thirty minutes “drawing” magic from trash mobs? This makes a good game?)

Don’t get me started on the summon animations that both took up a good ten minutes as well as requiring you to mash buttons like a meth-head. The story was shit too.

[otorophile]

Final Fantasy X was pretty much the only video game I played during 6th and 7th grade, so I logged in some pretty ridiculous hours. I maxed out the sphere grid in a few characters and all my summons and 4 of my characters could do 99,999 in damage. I was able to beat Nemesis in the monster arena, too. But IIRC in the international version there were even harder bosses.

I also played Final Fantasy XII but I thought the story was a bit boring.

Is anyone else exited for Final Fantasy XIII? It’s coming out in 2010 sometime. With that and Starcraft II, I’ll be obliged to start playing video games again.

[Mr_Buttons]

From the ones I’ve played:

#1- FF 2 US- I’d played FF I on my friends system before, but this is the title that led me down the RPG path of video games from age 11-23’ish.

#2- FF 3 US- Was 12-14 when this came out, but instantly turned me into a FF fanboy.

#3- FF 7- It was just so HUGE for the time it came out. And it managed to turn a lot of my friends into FF/rpg fans too, so bonus points for that.

Honorable mentions to FF9 and FF10, both were very fun to play.

Dishonorable mention to FF8, the only one I’ve never played to completion. I never read a strategy guide while playing it, so I probably didn’t build everything right. After about 12 hours of mindless plotlines, fighting weak mobs, and having to invoke a 5-minute Guardian Force summon every fight, it went into a crappy storage place where it got so scratched up to the point I couldn’t play it again. Didn’t mind that one bit.

FFXII is hard to place, after playing FFXI online for 2 years, FFXII held that MMORPG feel… but it was single player. I’d put it around #5-8 in the series.

[Stealth_Potato]

My top three would probably consist of one from each of the major generations: Final Fantasy VI for the SNES, Final Fantasy IX for the PS1, and Final Fantasy X for the PS2. Actually, squeeze Final Fantasy Tactics in there along with IX; I love both those games to death and wouldn’t readily rank one above the other.

I also liked VII and VIII, and while I can agree that they were, respectively, a little bit overhyped and a little bit stupid (everybody had amnesia? Come on!), they were nonetheless solidly enjoyable games.

@Anaamika

Leveling system/combat system: Final Fantasy 12 blew them all out of the water for me. I can’t play the old ones anymore. I love being able to see my enemy wandering around the landscape. The story wasn’t as good as the others but DAMN! I hated training in the old ones.

Really? I thought it was interesting at first, but this quickly became one of the most jarring and immersion-breaking aspects of Final Fantasy XII. Seeing all the baddies wandering around on the landscape just raised uncomfortable questions that, in the old system of having them pop out at you from some kind of magical swirl, were all a part of a neatly sustained suspension of disbelief. Specifically, it made me start to wonder: just what the heck are all these huge monsters doing wandering around on the landscape?! :dubious:

It really started to look ridiculous after a while. They weren’t doing anything. Just walking back and forth in a highly implausible manner. Overall, it made the game feel so fake.

In a lot of ways, Final Fantasy XII felt like an MMORPG, which was a huge turn-off for me. The whole game world was too highly connected, too centralized, too “theme parked.” With little exception, every town was a homogenous collection of shops that was within walking distance of every other location, and the interstitial regions were simply shooting galleries in which the enterprising tourist-cum-adventurer could grind out piles of loot and experience points. These statements could be made about a lot of other JRPGs, but FFXII really made you feel it. It felt like Disneyland: an enormous expenditure on style with no substance in sight. (Not to mention the profusion of complete non-sequitur bosses. Those pissed me right the hell off. Nothing says “trying to build pointless irrelevant spectacle” like suddenly having to fight a spectral fire horse in a sewer for no apparent reason.)

Add to that the fact that the whole game was just a series of dungeon-crawls and fetch quests loosely related to some story that might have just been interesting if the game had actually managed to keep its head out of the arse regions of some repetitive cave-hole for five minutes to actually develop it.

Also, I found the soundtrack incredibly disappointing. It was just so dull and forgettable. I managed to play through the entire game, fairly recently even, but I can barely remember what the game sounded like. There was just none of the intensity and immediacy of Uematsu’s soundtracks, which were always so essential to framing and developing the game’s emotional and narrative landscape.

Also, grinding. In most other Final Fantasy games I’ve been able to play more or less straight through, without really going out of my way to build experience or accumulate items (excepting the occasional harder-than-usual sidequest or some special goal). But XII was apparently really trying to recreate the MMORPG experience; I found myself needing to spend hours doing incredibly boring and repetitive fights just to get enough money to buy basic equipment and potions or to avoid getting smeared against the wall by some boss or other. Just not very much fun at all.

[Max_the_Immortal]

Roughly:

1. Tactics. Far and away my favorite story, and I found the battle system the most engaging.
2. VI
3. IV
4. VII
5. VIII
6. X
7. XII

I did not care for IX; I stopped playing it partway through so I’m keeping it off my list. I played a smidge of I way back when, but have little recollection of it, and haven’t played the others (aside from maybe a few minutes on an emulator to check them out).