Sorry, have we had major disagreements in the past? I don’t remember them…unless you are allowing P&R to bleed into other forums! But that’s a no-no!
I’m betting you never played 2.
Are you guys talking about the PS1 game? I bought it several years ago on buyers impulse, but never really played far into it. Is it really that good to go back and try playing it again?
No it doesn’t. Tactics Advance omitted two of the best gameplay elements: the cast time on spells, which made careful attention to the turn meter necessary, and the ability to slap any class on any character, which let you cheese the unholy fuck out of it.
Also, the story was horrible. The original Tactics was the best attempt at a plot I’ve ever seen from post-SNES Square (although I seem to recall it getting a bit generic at the end). I put down FFTA in disgust right around the point where the girl, whatever her name was, declared that she was staying in the fantasy world, fuck her family, fuck her life. Her reason: in the real world her hair was white, so she dyed it red so no one would make fun of her. In the fantasy world, it was naturally red, so hey! Easier morning routine!
So yeah, I guess I’m gonna say Tactics too. If restricted to numbered entries, I have to say 7, as it was the first console RPG I ever played and one of the few I’ve ever finished. I doubt I’d like it as much playing it for the first time now, though. As far as the others, I liked 9 until the end of the first disc, then the twist crushed my interest, I skipped 8 and 10 because they were obvious crap, and I thought 12 would be a train wreck, but it looks a lot better than I expected (haven’t played it yet though). Never have gotten around to the earlier ones.
Also, Crystal Chronicles is the direst thing visited upon humankind by Square, and I saw The Spirits Within. On opening week.
Although Earthbound is my preferred pick, abiding by the original post I’m still a stalwart fan of FFVI. All the unique characters have interesting contributions to the captivating storylines, even the antagonist Kefka.
Sorry folks but tactics is automatically disqualified because of one technical oddity.
Orlandu.
It’s like having a cheat code built right in. If the new PSP version fixes this I will declare it best FF game and best console game ever.
I don’t remember Orlandu, or even what that is, but it’s been a while since I played. Anyway, I don’t remember using exploits, except for getting certain jobs that were really powerful.
Orlandu (Thunder God Cid) was an inhumanly powerful character you get somewhere around Chapter 3, I think. He had all the great Holy Knight abilities like Lightning Stab, Night Sword, Holy Explosion, Statis Sword, et cetera, et cetera. I sent every custom-made hard hitter I had on Propositions and just ran around with Ramza and Orlandu a few times; you almost had to be asleep at the controller for him to be overwhelmed and defeated.
I used him mostly as my trump card, and had him assist with minor things until it looked like I was going to lose, and then he’d go clean all the enemies out without breaking a sweat.
Orlandu was that tough because some of the later missions had pretty unfair setups. He didn’t automatically win every fight automatically.
If you want the game to be too easy and you have the patience to grind, a party of characters with fully mastered calculator as the secondary skill could win most fights before some of the monsters had a chance to go.
I got sick of all the grimdark currently in games/movies/news, so decided to play something silly and romantic to help me relax. Thus I turned back to the Final Fantasy series. I played I thru VIII years ago, and read that IX was one of the better titles. It’s fun so far, but the inability to save anywhere is frustrating. I’m playing the Steam version, so there’s weird stuff going on with the graphics as well. Apparently, the character models and movies are HD, but the level backgrounds are not. It’s really hard to see where to exit a level and enter a building sometimes. Things just sort of blur together. (Too much Lanczos filtering maybe?) Hopefully this game remains good all the way to the ending.
Quoted for truth.
On the consoles, there is a button that turns arrow indicators on showing exits/entrances.
My favorite FF changes every now and then but I have these three in the top spots:
- Final Fantasy IX
- Final Fantasy XII
- Final Fantasy IV
I own but still have never played the first two games beyond trying them out for about an hour each.
Final Fantasy III on the DS was a decent game. Enjoyable, but nothing special. Tough combat was a plus.
Final Fantasy V is extremely underrated and it’s probably a close 4th, fighting it out with Final Fantasy VI. V wins for the fun combat/skill system and humor, VI wins for story and one of the best soundtracks in gaming (also, if you’re going to make a one dimensional villain, then go all out and make him a truly twisted, evil son of a a bitch and VI did just that).
Final Fantasy VII was incredible for its day, definitely groundbreaking in terms of presentation, but in retrospect it is nowhere as good as the games that came before or after with the exception of Final Fantasy VIII…
I wanted to like Final Fantasy VIII but could not. I never finished it, though I was close to when it was released. Playing it currently on the Vita to see if I have a different view of it almost 20 years later.
Final Fantasy X had some of the best combat in the series and I liked the story - though that was another I got far in but never finished. Have the Vita port on my backlog list. My only problems with that game: I did not like Yuna’s voice actor and more importantly, those stupid temple puzzles really messed up the pacing, especially the later, more difficult ones. Puzzles were never part of the series and it should have been left this way.
Final Fantasy XIII - what a shame. Incredible graphics, fun, fast paced combat that really changed up the formula but what a fail as far as telling a cohesive story and as good as that combat was, going through corridor after corridor for the 20 hour “tutorial” before the game opens up (a little) and not having any real towns really dragged this one down. Didn’t finish it. Started Final Fantasy XIII-2 and was enjoying that far more but then got an Xbox One and put my 360 away. Waiting for this to become BC along with Lightning Returns which I own but have not played.
Final Fantasy XV - have not finished it. After a few starts, finally got into the groove and started enjoying the combat (set it to the “pause-while-standing-still” option which worked out for me). Music was much better than FF XIII which was completely forgettable. Weird not to have any female characters in your party. Not sure how I feel about this one yet. Need to get back to it at some point.
So looking forward to XII coming to Xbox One!!! Maybe then, I will know which is my absolute favorite (well, after replaying IX…definitely one of those two is my absolute favorite).
I wouldn’t go that far but definitely in my Top Ten.
I got very far (almost finishing) in FFT, but did not find it memorable. So many better tactical games on the PC. I also enjoyed Shining Force more.
Final Fantasy IX is a new release on Xbox/Windows 10 this year. It’s a Play Anywhere game, and I’ve always been curious about it, and I’m a real sucker for always being tempted by any Play Anywhere game (I’m getting a copy on Xbox and on PC!) so I bought it during the current sale for $12.49.
After playing through the intro yesterday, a couple of notes:
- Intro Movie shows a place named Fifa
- You play a character named Zidane
- Was this game made by Football fans?
- I really like the visuals so far. I was afraid that such an old game would look horrible, especially an original Playstation game, which generally didn’t look very good to begin with because they insisted on pushing early 3D. But this game is heavy on detailed hand-drawn 2D backgrounds so far. It all looks really nice.
- I’m already lost. Apparently I’m some kind of wizard trying to see the play being put on, but the ticket I was given was fake. A kid offered to get me in the show if I’d be his slave, but I said no to that. F that shit young lad. I’m no one’s slave! But now I have no idea where to go, so I’m just wandering the town. Will a solution present itself? Or did I screw myself by saying no to being that kid’s slave?
Find the kid again and say yes.
No idea, but hadn’t noticed that previously!
FF IX is still at the top of my list for best FF game. The writing is so good, relatively speaking, thanks to the great localization work. Just started playing it again on the Xbox.
Stick with it, the game really picks up soon after that. The pacing in the original release was really good until much later (3rd disc in the old PS1 days), but that should be less of an issue on this remaster being that you can turn off the random battles (you will want to at certain points to be able to navigate your way to destination points without losing your mind with the constant battles).
Though I list this as my favorite FF, I never finished it back then for that same reason (too many random battles) but I got to the 4th disc and close to finishing.
And yes, the game does look great, still. Though a shame they weren’t able to increase the background resolutions. It would have looked gorgeous. This game also has my favorite FF soundtrack.
I played FF XIII again on Xbox One this year. I will say I enjoyed it more than I had when it originally released. Had fun with it but although VERY close to finishing it, I burnt out in the last area with the really difficult and drawn out combat. In my Mediocre FF mediocre pile.
Haven’t made a dent in FF XV, but I was enjoying it. Will get back to it eventually.
And so glad the PS FF games had remasters. Now that FF VIII is also out on Switch & Xbox, I can play that version and stop playing the original on Vita. Also liking it more than I did back in 1999.
My favourite Final Fantasy VII is Phantasy Star 2.
XII was my favorite, although X wasn’t bad either.
Phantasy Star 2 and 4 are better games than many JRPGs.
I would give your left nut for Phantasy Star 5.