One of the greatest JRPG tragedies is that Phantasy Star 2 and 4 turned into whatever the hell PSO is.
(And while FF4 was probably my favorite, 5/6/9/12 are all so worthy.)
FFVI is best. End thread.
VI, IX, XII, V, VII
IX, Tactics, IV, XII, VI, X
XII, Tactics, VI, IV, X, V, I, IX, VII in that order, for me. The ones not on the list are fine, but nothing I would feel like playing again, where as the above I’ll certainly play again, at some point.
Doh! How could I have left out V?
That complicates things. In some ways it’s better than VI. But VI has a great cast and Kefka.
Ok, IX, Tactics, IV are in order of preference, followed by V, VI, X, XII in order of release because I can’t decide otherwise.
Played XII again recently, I still love it but it doesn’t beat my top 3 faves.
VII and VIII I will need to replay. And I really liked the first FF. 2nd one I barely played.
XIII I replayed and still at the bottom.
It’s sequels (and X-2) are still on my TO PLAY list.
XV I need to get back to. Has potential with combat set to pause-while-not-moving mode.
- I got into to see the show, but I had to become a slave.
- Apparently the queen of the nation is a clown?
- Understandably the daughter of the clown wants to get away
- God, this dialog is so bad
- I don’t know how much longer I can stand this game.
Please keep those impressions coming, it’s a nectar for FF loathers such as myself!
I played FFIX when it came out and disliked it. After reading a lot of favorable things about it here and since I’ve developed a tolerance for JRPGs again, I thought it was worth another try, so I bought it for Switch. After about 10 hours, I decided that I still hate it and haven’t been back. In hindsight, it was time better spent playing Dragon Quest XI.
I like reading your impressions though, so I second Left_Empty in encouraging you to continue to post them if you should continue playing.
Ive only ever finished XII and XV. XII i actually played through in one go and deserves a pat on the back for being the only FF to ever hook me from start to finish.
XV I got right to last level, got stomped by the mobs around the boss tower, then put it down because i didnt want to grind up a few levels. After a few failed attempts to pick it up again I went back and forced myself the other day to finish it by running through to the tower and finally killed the Not-Dr Who guy. I really enjoyed the first 95% of the game.
VII was another one i played non-stop, got right to the end but even with a boosted char im at the final crater level and getting one shot by random dragon mobs and i cant be bothered with another grind to get some levels. With the re-make out I’ll hold off on that too.
How can anyone hate FFIX? That’s like hating chocolate or Christmas or an ice cold porter or chocolate stout.
The beginning of a lot of FF games are pretty horrible. You very often have to ‘where’s waldo’ around some sprawling city trying to figure out WTF you are supposed to do. FF9 is a game that gets better and better the longer you stick with it, but that first couple of hours is…really annoying.
FF Tactics is still my favorite by a mile, both in terms of story and game play. FF games in general seem to almost all have the problem of sticking some incredibly frustrating and tedious mechanics that you have to suffer through to continue. In 10 it was those horrible temples, in 9 it’s the ‘do a bunch of stuff in some weird order to solve’ puzzles. These games love to be obtuse, and it’s pretty annoying I find.
Picked up X/X-2 HD Remaster in Steam sale and its sucked me back in. Thanks to the built in money/item cheat I just get to enjoy the story and not worry about grinding although I’ve held back giving myself a full set of skills and complete sphere table. It looks pretty good too for something so old. The only downside is I can’t fast read/skip cutscenes.
You get X, a short cgi movie set after it, X-2 and a dlc so plenty of content for the tenner I spent.
Still couldn’t figure out blitzball though, got thrashed in the tournament and didn’t enjoy it.
On my first playthrough, I just ignored Blitzball (except that one match where they make you play). And I never figured it out. On my second run through the game, I paid attention to it, and the friend who was playing the game with me couldn’t be there every day, so on the days when he couldn’t make it, I’d sit at home and just play Blitzball so that I wouldn’t get ahead in the story. Except this meant that I got really, really good at Blitzball.
I can’t recall much about it now though, that was over 15 years ago. I think the more my characters played Blitzball, the more their blitzball stats went up. But I can’t remember that being true for sure.
The guide I had was “use manual control and Jechts special to score 2 goals using Tidus and just pass in first half and mark these players in the second” whereas I didn’t have Jechts special as I didn’t get it right in the test, and I couldn’t any score goals or even retain possession of the ball for more than a few seconds. At least now I can ignore it. I think I’m already past where I got to on the ps2 version.
FFXII might actually be one of the better FFs from a little bit of it I played. Only because it isn’t anything like other FFs before it and you can actually see the enemies. No random encounters.
The combat is like late-stage console EA BioWare. You control one guy while the others are AI controlled. You can set conditions.
Chocobo Tales. Not even close.
The CRPG Addict, who is not a fan of JRPGs generally, felt it was historically useful for him to have at least played Final Fantasy. He liked it.
So, I finished FF X. I’ve gone from none ever finished to 3 now.
I doubt I would have without the built in cheats though. All items/max gil take the grind out of it and I used max skills just before the end level. I also used some of the cheat items to give stuff on the sphere grid and customisation options that let me complete the game (auto-life, auto-med, ribbon etc are massively overpowered)
It’s a shame the story was spoiled by FF X-2 and the launcher as the art answers the big issue poised by the plot.
FF X-2 is a surprise. I just assumed a similar game engine and char development and its very different. Very puzzled on how Yuna and Rikku have been through thotification and Yunas now a pop star but I’m only at the opening scenes.
So during the Square Enix E3 show, they showed this:
And I’m just kind of confused. How is it a pixel remaster exactly? Don’t the games just look the same as they did before?
I mean, I JUST bought Final Fantasy VI on the PS Vita because I thought Sony was going to shut down the Vita store, so I thought it was my last chance, even though I don’t play games on my Vita.
But if they’re going to actually do some kind of meaningful remaster of the older games, maybe I’ll play that instead?