Squeenix Best Final Fantasy

[Ash]

FF4 had a fair bit of optional content, like half the summons were optional boss fights, certainly all the best ones. Bahamut on the moon (which also includes 4 or 5 optional bosses, some of which are quite powerful, guarding some of the best items in the game) leviathan and asura in the underground, Odin in the basement of the castle- There were also some crappy ones acquired simply by random enemy encounters. There's the sidequest to get the sylph summon by find Yang in the Sylph caverns (a maze with damage tiles and hidden passages, teleporters and a bizarre layout with nasty monsters and trapped chests)

Sounds familiar. And that Sylph dungeon does sound worthy. But you know this stuff is the exception and not the rule.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

what have you got?

To risk the response of "nuh uh" or "that's subjective," I'll give my honest feelings on the game as best I can recall having played it over a decade ago.

-Too much dialogue (aka the ATE system) Every town feels like a massive chore because the characters won't just STFU. Every line is punctuated by some canned animation. Every. *hands on hips* Single. *waves arms* One. *jumps up and down*. Ugh.

-I hated most of the cast. They are either annoying, or boring.
--Zidane: he likes women. What else is his personality exactly? Cardboard.
--Garnet: Moron. Makes the dumbest decisions constantly. Looks 13, but has cleavage and yoga pants. Wouldn't want the FBI to see me with screenshots of her.
--Vivi: His character was especially aggravating to me. FF9 was pitched as a 'return to classics.' At no point in previous games were black mages homunculi created as living weapons. His character feels like a bait and switch, which is emblematic of the entire game.
--Steiner: Is he wearing shorts? I can't take a knight seriously if I can see his socks. CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANK. He wins points for being the best character in combat.
--Amarant: Eh? Is he jamaican or something? Forgettable
--Quina: is Quina. Moving on.
--Freya: Is she a rat or something? I remember she has some kind of memory loss, but I don't remember why. Fitting.
--Eiko: She's a loli and no better or worse than other lolis, so I guess she gets a pass.

This is subjective to some degree. However I think it bears mentioning that the way FF9 communicates it's characters' personality and themes is through dialogue. So, so, so much dialogue. Compare it to FF6, which communicates its character's personalities through battle. We can tell from the Blitz commands that Sabin is a man of training and focus. We can tell from Rage that Gau is wild and unpredictable. We see that Strago is an old dog struggling to learn new tricks with Lore. We see that Celes is not a destroyer like her brethren, but a protector with Runic. We can tell that Cyan is a man who waits for the perfect moment from his Sword Arts.

Even though FF9's character concepts are cut from similar cloth, the execution is completely off. None of the characters fight like they act (except maybe Quina). Steiner is a bumbling doofus in every scene, but in combat he's an unstoppable juggernaut. It's incongruent and weird. I prefer Show vs Tell.

-Too Linear. Not an uncommon problem in FF games, but FF9 is probably the second-most linear game after 13. Even 10 lets you backtrack to Besaid from most points. FF9 not only shunts you from one dungeon or town to the next, but closes off most previous areas for most of the game. Call it an issue with the PSX's limited disc size, it still sucks.

-Grindy in a specific, annoying way. Compared to other games where I can push through most areas and grind efficiently where I want to, in FF9 I feel like I have to stop and grind after every town to get the latest batch of abilities memorized. Spamming steal on every boss is tiresome, but you might miss those rare items! This may be on me for OCD/completionism though.

-Unbalanced. Use Steiner and Shock, win the game. Basic attacks seem to do more damage than spells most of the time, and summons are lame. I use gems to heal instead of spells, making two entire character useless.

-No party control. Only FF4 gives you less control over your team. I don't think you get to pick your party members freely until the very end.

-Kuja. Is there a more lame villain in the series?

-Love story: I don't buy it. Zidane and Garnett have no particular reason to like each other.

-Bad pacing. A big problem with the plotting in the game is the characters rarely establish any kind of coherent goal. They're constantly talking about what their next move should be and never come to a clear decision. This is a basic storytelling thing for me, but when characters say "We need to do X" the subsequent scenes should involve the characters working towards X, until X is achieved. FF9 follows this at the beginning (Kidnapping Garnet) and then falls off the rails. The characters make a whole bunch of random decisions or are purely reactive.

This isn't just a story or drama problem; videogames need goals. Win states. Even a simple game like Dragon Quest has a goal (Defeat the Dragon Lord) and feels like it has more plot momentum than this game. FF9 is directionless and meandering. Oh, I guess the queen is attacking a town. Now some random chick in a tube top is hunting us. I guess we're heading to this tree now. Wait, we're rivals with a Rastafarian wrestler. Now we gotta go save the petrified guy OMFG. Remember him? Too bad, do it. Cid is a frog, lol (worst minigame ever). Oh, I guess it's about aliens or replicants or something. MENTAL BREAKDOWN! You're not alone (gud song). All better. Oh, here's Necron, because shut up. The End.

-The biggest one for me was the battle system: it's straight up broken. While I was initially enthused by having four party members again, I was let down by how the action queueing works. Combine with the animations, you can easily stack up all your character's ATB bars before a single attack has finished. But the later enemies don't play by these rules, and constantly interrupt your attacks, meaning if you input four commands, you're going to get hit a bunch of times before you can react, because the enemies (and only the enemies) can interrupt turns. Going quickly and inputting many commands is *intensely* punished. The best strategy is to hold all your actions in reserve, attack cautiously with one party member (Steiner, if you have him), and get ready to heal from the counter attacks. It's uninteresting and dull. It's like that boost system from Xenosaga 2 or S-Crafts in Kiseki, but only the enemies get to use it. Frustrating.

Overall, I just didn't care for it. None of the systems gelled together for me in a fun way, it doesn't have any compelling features to revisit, no epic fights, no alternate builds or routes to try, and as you have admitted yourself, it's quite slow to play. I'm sure there's speed hacks now that fix some of those problems, but nothing is going to fix the writing, the ATE system, the interrupts, the villains, the plot, or Steiner's damn shorts.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The beauty of later FF is your teams are mostly what you make them, like a true RPG, and all the strategy and choice that entails

But that's really only the case in X, where your path through the sphere grid (and realistically that's not really up to you unless you're doing international version or in the late game) locks you into an archetype. In FF8, I can turn Quistis into my melee brawler in a single moment by swapping GFs. It'd be retarded because Zell is like 500 times better at that though purely for his limit break. Which is the other problem; there's no real strategy in deciding whether Selphie should be your mage or a fighter because of her limit break. Same for Squall, Zell and Irvine, not that you'd ever want to use him. There's no strategy in giving one character or another more HP because you can just give EVERYONE all the same shit, aside from like, speed being a rare stat to have a junction for. But hey, your speed doesn't actually matter since everyone's gauge is going to be full after every action in the game because they all take 47 years to finish.

Also, I don't think I'd mentioned it before in this thread, but 3 party members was absolute decline. FF4 lets you control a party of 5.

 

[Ash]

-Too much dialogue (aka the ATE system) Every town feels like a massive chore because the characters won't just STFU. Every line is punctuated by some canned animation. Every. *hands on hips* Single. *waves arms* One. *jumps up and down*. Ugh.

The absolute beauty of the ATE system is that 90% of them are optional! Though I've still watched and enjoyed them all.
You're also significantly overstating the animation "problem".

-Zidane: he likes women. What else is his personality exactly? Cardboard.

Did you just fucking diss the biggest chad in all of JRPG? Thievery. Women. Tomfoolery. Heroism, self-confidence & bravery. Moral code. Brotherhood. Mentorship. Cunning. Always positive. Later, the writers go down the rabbit hole with him too, he finally breaks from his unwavering chaddism and temporarily becomes an emotional, unstable beta in a life and worldview-shattering event. I am now sure something was up when you played this game all those years ago.

This is subjective to some degree. However I think it bears mentioning that the way FF9 communicates it's characters' personality and themes is through dialogue. So, so, so much dialogue. Compare it to FF6, which communicates its character's personalities through battle. We can tell from the Blitz commands that Sabin is a man of training and focus. We can tell from Rage that Gau is wild and unpredictable. We see that Strago is an old dog struggling to learn new tricks with Lore. We see that Celes is not a destroyer like her brethren, but a protector with Runic. We can tell that Cyan is a man who waits for the perfect moment from his Sword Arts.

Even though FF9's character concepts are cut from similar cloth, the execution is completely off. None of the characters fight like they act (except maybe Quina). Steiner is a bumbling doofus in every scene, but in combat he's an unstoppable juggernaut. It's incongruent and weird. I prefer Show vs Tell.

Interesting insight. There's still a fuckton of dialogue in 6 too though. And while you may be on to something here, how much does it actually matter? It's just minor storyfag nuance. Storyfag.

-Too Linear. Not an uncommon problem in FF games, but FF9 is probably the second-most linear game after 13. Even 10 lets you backtrack to Besaid from most points. FF9 not only shunts you from one dungeon or town to the next, but closes off most previous areas for most of the game. Call it an issue with the PSX's limited disc size, it still sucks.

Wtf. You return to Alexandria like 3 times mandatory in the story, and can optionally return anytime you get the boat or airship. Furthermore, dungeon design far exceeds many games in the series.
It has an overworld that opens up to you over time, unlike 10. Also there's always optional side treks to be found each overworld segment. Its absolutely adequately non-linear. It is 10 that has the problem. Another imperceptive analysis. time for a replay!

-Grindy in a specific, annoying way. Compared to other games where I can push through most areas and grind efficiently where I want to, in FF9 I feel like I have to stop and grind after every town to get the latest batch of abilities memorized. Spamming steal on every boss is tiresome, but you might miss those rare items! This may be on me for OCD/completionism though.

I don't get it. Vanilla grinding isn't really necessary. Stealing from bosses is a mainstay since FF5. though it does have declined success rate if I recall. I believe the unleashed mod makes it more reasonable.

-Unbalanced. Use Steiner and Shock, win the game. Basic attacks seem to do more damage than spells most of the time, and summons are lame. I use gems to heal instead of spells, making two entire character useless.

Balance issues? Standard vanilla FF. Standard RPG in general.

-No party control. Only FF4 gives you less control over your team. I don't think you get to pick your party members freely until the very end.

Fake news. Party management starts to properly open up after getting the boat on disc 2, with the occasional restriction for story purposes (and forcing you to use a particular character at times has its gameplay value anyway). Prior to that, there are a few segments where you can choose the party makeup. Only Zidane is truly rigid, until the very end where you can switch him out. But that is pretty standard in all the games.

Still, I will acknowledge that it is less freedom overall than the likes of 6 & 7.

-Kuja. Is there a more lame villain in the series?

True. Well, FFX Seymour may have him beat eh.

-Love story: I don't buy it. Zidane and Garnett have no particular reason to like each other.

Simple exposure alone can be the catalyst, especially since they're young. Also, again, Zidane is chad extraordinaire (though he looks like a furry freak). She did well to resist the beast for so long.

-Bad pacing. A big problem with the plotting in the game is the characters rarely establish any kind of coherent goal. They're constantly talking about what their next move should be and never come to a clear decision. This is a basic storytelling thing for me, but when characters say "We need to do X" the subsequent scenes should involve the characters working towards X, until X is achieved. FF9 follows this at the beginning (Kidnapping Garnet) and then falls off the rails. The characters make a whole bunch of random decisions or are purely reactive.

Any examples?

-The biggest one for me was the battle system: it's straight up broken. While I was initially enthused by having four party members again, I was let down by how the action queueing works. Combine with the animations, you can easily stack up all your character's ATB bars before a single attack has finished. But the later enemies don't play by these rules, and constantly interrupt your attacks, meaning if you input four commands, you're going to get hit a bunch of times before you can react, because the enemies (and only the enemies) can interrupt turns. Going quickly and inputting many commands is *intensely* punished. The best strategy is to hold all your actions in reserve, attack cautiously with one party member (Steiner, if you have him), and get ready to heal from the counter attacks. It's uninteresting and dull. It's like that boost system from Xenosaga 2 or S-Crafts in Kiseki, but only the enemies get to use it. Frustrating.

I can't defend the combat too well, except insist on you modding it with the suggested hack, same as any other FF.

 

[Ash]

The beauty of later FF is your teams are mostly what you make them, like a true RPG, and all the strategy and choice that entails

But that's really only the case in X, where your path through the sphere grid (and realistically that's not really up to you unless you're doing international version or in the late game) locks you into an archetype. In FF8, I can turn Quistis into my melee brawler in a single moment by swapping GFs. It'd be retarded because Zell is like 500 times better at that though purely for his limit break. Which is the other problem; there's no real strategy in deciding whether Selphie should be your mage or a fighter because of her limit break. Same for Squall, Zell and Irvine, not that you'd ever want to use him. There's no strategy in giving one character or another more HP because you can just give EVERYONE all the same shit, aside from like, speed being a rare stat to have a junction for. But hey, your speed doesn't actually matter since everyone's gauge is going to be full after every action in the game because they all take 47 years to finish.

Also, I don't think I'd mentioned it before in this thread, but 3 party members was absolute decline. FF4 lets you control a party of 5.

Nope, your party is literally what you make them. In FF 7 & 8 they are 3 interchangeable builds you switch out between members for the most part, yes, but those builds are exactly as you define, down to individual commands and spells. And that's the beauty in it. 6 it's different, each character is his own person, but the player involvement in building them is still there in simpler form; the player's choice to decide/define via esper stat boosts.

X sphere grid is utter shit in the first 2/3 of the game. Completely linear, no actual choices. a waste of time, even. Only later when you can crossover with other paths, lay down your own nodes, choose which sphere gates to unlock does it become interesting. It should have been like that in steadily increasing complexity from the start, but instead you're just going down linear paths unlocking everything.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The music of FFX is fantastic. It had excellent visuals for its time also. Tidus + corridor gameplay kill any interest I might have in replaying it though. They should've made Wakka or Auron the main character. Subvert expectations by making Tidus the last recruitable companion and then make him constantly the butt of jokes and have everyone call him a moron to his face for trying to be an isekai savior.

In fairness to Final Fantasy X, there is a late-game reveal that the main character

Spoiler

is really Auron, who engineered the events of the game following his disillusionment over the fate of his party members Jecht and Braska, not to mention Auron's own subsequent death. Tidus himself was, of course, already revealed as part of a dream of the "Fayth", and his emergence into the real world is only a part of Auron's plot to finally destroy the necromancer who keeps recreating Sin and periodically devastes the world. Once Auron has achieved his objective, not only is he content to finally rest, as someone who has really been dead for ten years, but Tidus is also less-voluntarily dissolved, ruining the burgeoning romance between Tidus and Yuna.

An oft-overlooked subversion of the expected story.

 

[Ash]

Another point in X's favor is that Yuna is basically the perfect women. Cute, modest, graceful, ready to sacrifice her own life for the good of humanity, caring, quiet and timid most often but can hold her own when really needs to.

I am probably starting to sound like I have a stockpile of waifu pillows now, but it was just an observation, no more no less.

The point of fantasy is it has true virtuous heroes, perfect women and plenty other good cool shit that doesn't at all exist in the real world.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Granted, some of the other games in the series could also claim credit for having excellent female characters:

 

[mediocrepoet]

Granted, some of the other games in the series could also claim credit for having excellent female characters:

Rydia is a CHILD!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Rydia is a CHILD!

I remember being vaguely confused and annoyed at her showing up as an adult at dwarf castle. I wonder if they properly explained her growing up in the fae realm in the original text and it was just left out as part of the shoddy translation?

Anyways best female in the series is in fact a child, but it's definitely Porom. Good girl makes sure that her brat of a brother behaves himself and they sacrifice themselves to save the party in their darkest hour.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Rydia is a CHILD!

I remember being vaguely confused and annoyed at her showing up as an adult at dwarf castle. I wonder if they properly explained her growing up in the fae realm in the original text and it was just left out as part of the shoddy translation?

Anyways best female in the series is in fact a child, but it's definitely Porom. Good girl makes sure that her brat of a brother behaves himself and they sacrifice themselves to save the party in their darkest hour.

I'm pretty sure it's mentioned that time flows differently whatever whatever in the Mist Realm in the English translation (been years since I've played it), but... Rydia is a child. Don't care.

Like, if you're hanging out with someone's orphaned kid and helping take care of her and then she disappears for a month and comes back as a young "adult" due to fantasy bullshit, you don't suddenly go: oh, ok, we should bang. --> She's a kid.

 

[Lucumo]

Example of why IX >> X

Who is this prestigious gentleman? Absolutely excellent analysis of 10, standing ovation for him.

Eh, his 7 analysis is lesser though, claiming less gameplay focus than 6 when, as I already explained in detail, 7 absolutely destroys 6 in the first third in this regard.

Some guy who posts decent videos with his thoughts about various games/genres. IIRC, "The History of MMOs (and where it all went wrong)" was the first video I watched of him. While I do not necessarily always agree with him, his thoughts tend to be well formulated. He generally isn't an expert though, so whatever knowledge he talks about tends to be researched between the last and the current video. It's why his "The Entire History of Video Games" misses some parts for instance. Ah, and he also has a pleasant voice to listen to.

Anyways best female in the series is in fact a child, but it's definitely Porom. Good girl makes sure that her brat of a brother behaves himself and they sacrifice themselves to save the party in their darkest hour.

Yeah, something that is made entirely meaningless...

 

[mediocrepoet]

Example of why IX >> X

Who is this prestigious gentleman? Absolutely excellent analysis of 10, standing ovation for him.

Eh, his 7 analysis is lesser though, claiming less gameplay focus than 6 when, as I already explained in detail, 7 absolutely destroys 6 in the first third in this regard.

Some guy who posts decent videos with his thoughts about various games/genres. IIRC, "The History of MMOs (and where it all went wrong)" was the first video I watched of him. While I do not necessarily always agree with him, his thoughts tend to be well formulated. He generally isn't an expert though, so whatever knowledge he talks about tends to be researched between the last and the current video. It's why his "The Entire History of Video Games" misses some parts for instance. Ah, and he also has a pleasant voice to listen to.

Oh yeah, I just looked at what channel that was on. I like him too. I'll have to listen to it later.

 

[Johnny Rico]

This is my first post on the forum, I played FF games since mid-90s, starting with IV with a NTSC-US imported cartridge in my french Super NINTENDO

There is no PERFECT Final Fantasy, every games I played (I, II, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) had flaws, so for my uber subjective POV this is just :

-musics : VIII
-visual : X
-characters : VI
-towns : VII

-battle design : VII
-narrative : IV/VII

-overall : VI/VII/VIII

Depends on the mood, the era I played it first, the technical limits of the support...I'm mainly a late Super NES/PS1 jrpg guy, so my top III reflects this

-edit- I remember back in the day, I fucking HATED FF X, because of characters, voice acting, linear progression, no world map, did it again about ten years later and it was better, but this is actually my last classic episode played, while XII seems nice (and I love FFT and Ivalice).

 

[Ash]

"no PERFECT Final Fantasy"

5-9 are all perfect in their own way with romhacks.

Why you decline enablers gotta be doing 9 dirty like this?

I also don't get how 10 is the best visually. The character models and battle graphics are incline (on a technical level. I don't like most of the style choices so much though. A lot of faggotry), everything else is decline, standard rules of 2D -> 3D transition in any series. It does still use the occasional pre-rendered background which as usual look fantastic, but they're a minority. The game is way less pretty to look at on the whole than the three games before it, thanks to dropping pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs almost entirely.

Chad 2D renders vs Virgin 3D modelling:

 

[Johnny Rico]

"no PERFECT Final Fantasy"

5-9 are all perfect in their own way with romhacks.

Why you decline enablers gotta be doing 9 dirty like this?

I also don't get how 10 is the best visually. The character models and battle graphics are incline (on a technical level. I don't like most of the style choices so much though), everything else is decline, standard rules of 2D -> 3D transition in any series. It does still use the occasional pre-rendered background which as usual look fantastic, but they're a minority. The game is way less pretty to look at on the whole than the three games before it, thanks to dropping pre-rendered backgrounds and FMVs almost entirely.

this is why I talked about subjectivity

But the funny thing is, maybe next day, my ranking would be (very) different...depends on my mood, my overall health, what I just eated etc...

(and I already regret what I said about X...but still, younger people would think 2d graphics pre-PS1 totally ugly, while X (or XIII, XV, VI, nevermind) are gorgeous and who cares, finally ?)

 

[Butter]

I'm sure there's nostalgia influencing me here, but I think the SNES era graphics of 4-6 have aged much more gracefully than the PS1 era graphics of 7-9. The pre-rendered backgrounds of the PS1 era always look great, but the character models are those blocky early 3D models that don't look as nice as the sprites.

"no PERFECT Final Fantasy"

5-9 are all perfect in their own way with romhacks.

I'm all for using romhacks/mods, especially when it's an old game that falls short in one or two areas but is otherwise excellent. But it's only a short jump from this sentiment to "Skyrim is perfect once you overhaul all of its systems with Requiem". It's important to remember games as they exist out of the box, independent of any third party modifications.

 

[Johnny Rico]

I'm sure there's nostalgia influencing me here, but I think the SNES era graphics of 4-6 have aged much more gracefully than the PS1 era graphics of 7-9. The pre-rendered backgrounds of the PS1 era always look great, but the character models are those blocky early 3D models that don't look as nice as the sprites.

"no PERFECT Final Fantasy"

5-9 are all perfect in their own way with romhacks.

I'm all for using romhacks/mods, especially when it's an old game that falls short in one or two areas but is otherwise excellent. But it's only a short jump from this sentiment to "Skyrim is perfect once you overhaul all of its systems with Requiem". It's important to remember games as they exist out of the box, independent of any third party modifications.

Yeah, I agree mostly, I think most of us played those classic (I to X, probably) in vanilla purest form, with all the bugs, glitch, crappy translation...

This is really difficult to rank all those games almost 30 years later, without considering every technical, hardware or production factor (and our own lives, age first time played, first RPG etc)

I'm playing FFVII right now on my Android TV (without any added hardware, just through TV Android system, Retroarch and PS1 emulation, works great without adding shaders/filters by the way ) and those 3d sprites...OMG this is really terrible, particularly when compared with those beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds.

 

[Falksi]

This is my first post on the forum, I played FF games since mid-90s, starting with IV with a NTSC-US imported cartridge in my french Super NINTENDO

There is no PERFECT Final Fantasy, every games I played (I, II, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) had flaws, so for my uber subjective POV this is just :

-musics : VIII
-visual : X
-characters : VI
-towns : VII

-battle design : VII
-narrative : IV/VII

-overall : VI/VII/VIII

Depends on the mood, the era I played it first, the technical limits of the support...I'm mainly a late Super NES/PS1 jrpg guy, so my top III reflects this

-edit- I remember back in the day, I fucking HATED FF X, because of characters, voice acting, linear progression, no world map, did it again about ten years later and it was better, but this is actually my last classic episode played, while XII seems nice (and I love FFT and Ivalice).

Welcome to the forum, hope you're not a faggot.

I've got to ask though, how on earth do you class FF7's battle design as better than FF5's? The job system is way more interesting, varied, challenging and easily the best of the series IMO.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

SNES era graphics of 4-6 have aged much more gracefully than the PS1 era graphics of 7-9

Very true. Something I've said many times, 16bit graphics have aged better than early 3d.

In fairness to Final Fantasy X, there is a late-game reveal that the main character

Auron's face when Yuna

Spoiler

decides to kill Yunalesca:

 

[Ash]

I'm all for using romhacks/mods, especially when it's an old game that falls short in one or two areas but is otherwise excellent. But it's only a short jump from this sentiment to "Skyrim is perfect once you overhaul all of its systems with Requiem". It's important to remember games as they exist out of the box, independent of any third party modifications.

Skyrim is utter garbage and no amount of modding can save it. I've tried, with 100+ carefully selected gameplay mods installed. Final Fantasy needs a few character/enemy statistics shifted around and that's it for the most part. It's really sad that we went from Final Fantasy being the most popular RPGs in the 90s, to Skyrim/Oblivion/Witcher/Mass Effect/Bioshock in the years after. Such steep decline into dumbed down retard-tier cRPG territory. I wish the PC sellouts seized the market using quality and substance (like their earlier games had in droves, but no marketing nor visual flair), not brute force (marketing their intentionally dumbed down utter garbage heavily). Final Fantasy had dominating marketing which they were no doubt envious of, but they were actually fucking good games too. what a terrible shame. The PC sellouts took notes with the marketing, but cleverly decided a good game doesn't actually need to accompany and the retards will eat any shit you throw at them.

Nah, it's important to promote the best, most complete version of the game and forget the original state. If the devs released a good update nobody would talk about v1.0 content anymore, they would talk about v1.1 exclusively. But sadly gamers on the whole are allergic to monocled content if it requires an extra step from third party.

 

[Johnny Rico]

This is my first post on the forum, I played FF games since mid-90s, starting with IV with a NTSC-US imported cartridge in my french Super NINTENDO

There is no PERFECT Final Fantasy, every games I played (I, II, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X) had flaws, so for my uber subjective POV this is just :

-musics : VIII
-visual : X
-characters : VI
-towns : VII

-battle design : VII
-narrative : IV/VII

-overall : VI/VII/VIII

Depends on the mood, the era I played it first, the technical limits of the support...I'm mainly a late Super NES/PS1 jrpg guy, so my top III reflects this

-edit- I remember back in the day, I fucking HATED FF X, because of characters, voice acting, linear progression, no world map, did it again about ten years later and it was better, but this is actually my last classic episode played, while XII seems nice (and I love FFT and Ivalice).

Welcome to the forum, hope you're not a faggot.

I've got to ask though, how on earth do you class FF7's battle design as better than FF5's? The job system is way more interesting, varied, challenging and easily the best of the series IMO.

"Welcome to the forum, hope you're not a faggot." >

You're probably right, V is not an episode I know super well, I think materia settings and combo system in VII was pure jewel...

I'm going to do a new playthrough of V asap (this gif for the faggot thing)

 

[Ash]

I've got to ask though, how on earth do you class FF7's battle design as better than FF5's? The job system is way more interesting, varied, challenging and easily the best of the series IMO.

Eh, materia system is fucking awesome. The freedom far exceeds V. You define everything right down to individual commands and spells, whether or not they target singular or AoE etc., and the growth of all these individual things too. I love the job system but it is restrictive in ways, only allowing you to crossover ONE ability from other classes. It should have been one passive ability and one command ability. Freelancer aspect is cool too and grants more freedom but by the time that becomes relevant the game is over, is hardly a point to doing it. If I recall it's only relevant for one super boss.

Vanilla I'd say V battle maybe/probably beats 7 overall, because 5 actually has adequate challenge for all the nuances to apply. Hardtype romhack though, 7's materia system becomes something else.

So yeah, I'm not gonna shut up about the monocled versions of these games until you guys play them.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The absolute beauty of the ATE system is that 90% of them are optional!

I remember the opposite, but if true then I can withdraw this criticism. However if ATE sequences lead to sidequests/items, then I would say they are not optional from a completionist perspective.

Did you just fucking diss the biggest chad in all of JRPG?

This is an example of show vs. tell. From what we see in the game, Zidane is a horny virgin. Are you a chad because you like girls, or because girls like you? In FF6, Edgar is a literal king and bangs at least one waitress, and never has a mental breakdown. Cloud has a harem of girls fighting over him. Squall has a TEACHER lure him to the makeout spot and beg him to make a move.

Of course, these characters are all altar boys compared to people like Rance.

There's still a fuckton of dialogue in 6 too though. And while you may be on to something here, how much does it actually matter? It's just minor storyfag nuance. Storyfag.

I was anticipating this criticism, i.e. "How can you talk about story if you say you only like gameplay?" The answer is that story *is* gameplay in FF9. It is not optional, it is a core part of the experience, it is something the game devotes the most time and resources for. I give the story exactly as much attention as the game does itself. If it were text boxes on loading screens, I wouldn't care.

To me, saying I'm a combatfag doesn't mean I don't enjoy story, it just means I don't view it as the primary draw of a game. A good game should have both, but I will take good gameplay over bad story as long as it doesn't intrude on the gameplay too much (e.g. FF5). I think they're both bad in FF9, so whatever. If I were a storyfag, I wouldn't have hundreds of hours in 7 Days to Die and Kenshi, and I wouldn't view Disco Elysium as a non-game walking sim.

I don't get it. Vanilla grinding isn't really necessary.

If you want to use the skill system you have to grind quite a bit. This is like saying FF7 doesn't require grinding because you can just not use Materia. Who plays these games this way, besides speedrunners?

Balance issues? Standard vanilla FF. Standard RPG in general.

Most RPGs require more effort to get really broken stuff. Though I believe Ragnarok requires you to finish the treasure hunt minigame, which is rather involved.

In any case, you're talking about this game like it's god's gift to gaming, so it should be better, no?

FFX Seymour may have him beat eh.

Generally disagree. In terms on affect on the plot, Seymour is much more involved. Kuja is like that crazy guy who follows you around in Tales of Vesperia like a stalker. Annoying nuisance, not S-tier villain. Seymour also has MUCH better bossfights, is creepy and menacing, and has a coherent motivation we can understand.

dungeon design far exceeds many games in the series.

I recall most dungeons were walking through 2-4 rendered screens and fighting a boss (Black Waltz 1-37, lol). The final dungeon is a straight path with no deviations. There's nothing like the Galbadian Garden battle, Ultimecia's castle, the North cave, Shinra HQ, Kefka's tower, the moon depths, the Cleft of Dimension, or even the time shifted Temple of Fiends.

What are these oh so devious and complex dungeons that I am forgetting?

insist on you modding it

Is the hack for the Steam release where you can skip cutscenes, or just the PSX version?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Very true. Something I've said many times, 16bit graphics have aged better than early 3d.

Quite true, and honestly, FF isn't even the series with the best art on the system.

Behold the power of ANIMATION:

That's not even one of the cool bosses, just the first one I could find a decent gif for. It's a shame the gameplay is atrocious, it's got such charming characters and the town building thing was cool.

3 looks even better in combat and has actual gameplay but that's no longer 16 bit so I suppose it'd be cheating to compare.