General Opinion on Final Fantasy series?

[Inziladun]

So I'm curious what the general opinion on the Final Fantasy series is. The game had some, in my opinion, good additions and some interesting ideas starting out. I think the culmination of the ideas they had for the series was best represented in Final Fantasy 9. Character design out of the way, I think was the best game they had in the series.

Final Fantasy 6 is widely touted as the unsung hero of the franchise. This one I had missed originally as I have never even owned an SNES but after going back and playing it, the story is definitely one of the better ones. I like how the villain seemed very human and original in motive. He was often portrayed as weak and cowardly. The art was definitely pretty unique and at the time it was a very pretty game. The score was well done considering it was in shitty 8-bit format. Gameplay seemed pretty similar to 9, albeit a bit more shallow. Random encounters seemed more frequent, but maybe that was my imagination. Overall I enjoyed it very much, but think it's a tad overrated coming from the cult follower group.

A lot of people seemed to like Final Fantasy 7, which I play frequently as a young lad. I liked the game alright, but had a lot of trouble following some of the more complicated aspects of it (as an 8 year old) due to the fact that the bad translation really shined through in parts. The best example of this I can find is that Cloud is frequently referred to as a "Clone" of Sephiroth when that is not what the game means at all. The overall story of 7 was still interesting in parts, but fell pretty flat as the game went on. The gameplay was fun, but repetitive and I was not a huge fan of the materia system. The side games were also pretty terrible and clunky, although I did play them quite a bit.

Final Fantasy 8 started off very promising, but quickly got shitty in a hurry in terms of story. Combat mechanics were fine, but the level scaling completely destroyed the game. I remember in my first play through I "overleveled" my characters which I thought at the time was a good thing. Turns out I reached a point that was nigh impossible for me to pass due to my characters being maxed out and I never completed the game. Although having watched the ending on youtube, I can't say I'm too pissed about. On the flip side, if you literally run away from every random encounter, and only fight mandatory fights, you'll fly through the game with absolutely no problem. Even the final fight is apparently pretty easy if you never level your characters. So 8 was definitely pretty terribad overall.

Final Fantasy 9 was definitely my favorite. I definitely enjoyed the setting and the art design (aside from character design as previously mentioned). The story is engaging and interesting and the gameplay brought back the 4 man parties and equipment management, while managing to make multiple pieces of equipment useful throughout the game with their "skill" mechanic, which required you to wear pieces of equipment which over time taught you various abilities attributed to them. The side games were fun, although the Chocobo treasure hunting relied a lot on random chance which was frustrating, but the rewards overall seemed worth it and useful. One of the few Final Fantasies that I've played to completion without struggle, and one I've revisited at least 3 times in my life. If I had to pick one to recommend I'd definitely pick this one.

Final Fantasy 10, initially I liked this game very much. Honestly it was the best combat system they've implemented in the series in my opinion. It made a point to make sure all members of the party were useful throughout the game and encouraged proper strategy for a multitude of boss fights. The story's initial concept was interesting, taking a character that was supposedly "from the future" or "from the past" or whatever, and making him a "fish out of water" character. Which would've been a pretty classic way to explore this foreign world. But the game quickly starts tripping on itself and gets waaaay to convoluted. In fact it wasn't until recently that I've even learned the full extent of the story because apparently a lot of explanations were left out of the game entirely and put in some Japanese translation of a Game Guide. So apparently death isn't a real thing in this game, and people can "un-die" if they really want to, granted they aren't "sent" by a sorceress. Which makes for some very glaring plot holes in the game and a lack of stake when it comes to a giant monster that kills thousands of people. And I guess the main character isn't sent through time but instead just transported to the mainland? The game refers to Tidus as a "dream" from "dream Zanarkand" which implies he's not real, but apparently "dream" just means that it's a manifestation of some dead people or something and that it's a very real place with real people, only isolated. None of this is fully explained in the game itself, which makes for a very confusing story which is pretty stupid even when explained.

Final Fantasy 11. It was an MMO, dunno why it was titled Final Fantasy. Typical grind-fest MMO, but I had some fond memories of it at the time. Game was destroyed by the lack of solo options for progression, there were often times where I had to wait 3 hours to even find a group, which would break up an hour later before I could even gain half a level. Ain't nobody got time for that. Had a very in depth trade skill system, but paled in comparison to SWG which I was playing at the time.

Final Fantasy 12. Started out promising, I liked a lot of what I was seeing pre-release, and I liked the setup for the game. Dunno why they abandoned everything they were going for 10 hours into the game... and traded it for a typical Maniac trying to blow up the world plot. Gameplay was pretty fun, I like the new approach to the battle system. It seemed a lot less clunky and still offered plenty in the way of strategic gameplay. Not sure I liked the way they handled the class system however, as characters eventually merged together into one mega class that can do everything. There was some memorable battles and nice challenges, but I lost interest about 70% the way through after struggling on one particular boss. Story couldn't pull me through for how terribad it was.

And... that was the last Final Fantasy worth mentioning. I played 13 for like 6 hours and quit, that game was just stupid. But those are a couple of my thoughts on the series. Anyone else have anything worth mentioning?

 

[janior]

FF is like that soap opera "The Bold and Beautiful" it's bad and will never end.

 

[Lemming42]

I think we did this before in another thread once, but:

Final Fantasy 1 is one of those things that you have to respect even though it's pretty tedious from today's perspective.

Final Fantasy 2 is really good, despite the bizarre battle system where plunging a sword through your own face improves your swordsmanship and HP. The music, setting and plot are all totally boss, and it really starts to create a dark atmosphere as each city across the world map gets completely obliterated.

Final Fantasy 3 is like a much better and deeper Final Fantasy 1. It's sort of the epitome of the blueprint that the series follows: you get led around a bunch of interesting locations and situations so fast that you barely really have time to realize how thin the plot is, with the constant battles gradually becoming more ridiculous (stabbing goblins with knives at the start, calling down meteor showers with 30 second long animations at the end).

Final Fantasy 4 is really good, blows all the NES titles out of the water completely. The story and characters are actually quite good, for a videogame, the soundtrack is excellent and the world map is varied and interesting. The only real criticism that can be levelled at FF4 is that all the characters have completely linear progression, their spellbooks and abilities are all pre-determined and the player has absolutely no input in the characters other than their equipment. Personally I actually think that was great since each character was distinct with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Final Fantasy 5 I never really got. I get that the job system, when you figure out how to abuse it (which seems to be exactly what you're supposed to do) can let you build demigods who can attack 8 times a turn for 9999 damage each strike and then multi-cast about 500 Ultima spells, but the story and characters aren't ridiculously campy and fun as FF4 and the world map sucks cock, all the locations are shite.

Final Fantasy 6 could probably take the title of best in series, no point talking about it at great length since everyone's already played it and made up their minds. Personally, even though I love the game overall, I actually think the last third of the game is complete dogshit because it tends to consist of taking the shitty characters you never used on endless grind-fests just so they don't get completely fucked to death when you're forced to use them in Kefka's final dungeon. But yeah, the rest of the game is fantastic.

Final Fantasy 7 is great when you're a kid. If you play it over the age of, say, 16, it's suddenly revealed to be a completely stupid waste of time, with a plot that's not "so-bad-its-good" but simply "so-bad-its-bad", keeps dragging you back through the same 4 crap towns over and over again, makes you sit and read badly translated and irrelevant dialogue for endless stretches of time, etc. The battle system can actually be really fun though, and the soundtrack is superb as usual.

Final Fantasy 8 can go fuck itself, I've tried endlessly to like it and played it to completion a couple times but it really is just a nonsensical drag. The Squall is dead theory is pretty cool but doesn't stop the plot from being hyper-boring.

Final Fantasy 9 is far and away the best of the PS1 FF games, absolutely everything is on point. Melodies of Life is also an absolute cock-kicker of a song, never gets old.

I didn't like 10. I can't really remember why anymore. Haven't played any post-10 ones enough to form a proper opinion.

 

[Inziladun]

Thanks for your thoughts lemming. Curious though, I've never played 1-5. You say 4 is the best NES one but does that even qualify as a "must play". Could use a quick time kill in between work seshes

 

[Lemming42]

4 is SNES originally with a DS remake. There's a few different translations and versions of it, with the original US release being called Final Fantasy II, being made easier than the Japanese version and having a really wonky translation.

If you can get the original Japanese version with a translation patch (the J2E one here is really good despite a few jarring pop culture jokes) then that's the best way to play it. Wasn't a fan of the DS remake.

 

[Makabb]

FF 1-10 is your normal FF meaning in each of those games the combat is turn based.

FF XII is different, if you like the combat and mmo grinding you will like the game.

FF XIII and XIII-2 is traversty, kill it with fire.

FF XV might be decent with muh Kingdomu Heartsu combat.

 

[Ninjerk]

I like FF6 when I played it, but in hindsight I think they split character development across too many characters.

Overall, I'm not really sure what to say about the franchise. It was such a critical part of my youth that I think it would be difficult for me to recommend any of it to anyone without some kind of bias. I can say pretty confidently, however, that finding the Codex has pretty much assured that I won't feel the need to revisit the series any time soon as I have far too many older games in my backlog.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

So I'm curious what the general opinion on the Final Fantasy series is. The game had some, in my opinion, good additions and some interesting ideas starting out. I think the culmination of the ideas they had for the series was best represented in Final Fantasy 9. Character design out of the way, I think was the best game they had in the series.

There are four JRPG-style games worth playing, and three of them are Final Fantasies: VI, IV, and IX, from best to worst. The other one is, of course, Planescape: Torment.

FF IX intentionally harked back to the pre-Playstation FFs, especially IV. If you think IX is the best but have never played IV then you're missing out, and likely ascribing more originality to IX than it deserves.

4 is SNES originally with a DS remake. There's a few different translations and versions of it, with the original US release being called Final Fantasy II, being made easier than the Japanese version and having a really wonky translation.

There were two Japanese versions of FF IV, with one intentionally made easier by having various things taken out. The original foreign release was in-between the two Japanese versions in difficulty. Although the original translation was poor, the later translations were arguably even worse (at least until the DS translation, but that version has horrid graphics)

FF 1-10 is your normal FF meaning in each of those games the combat is turn based.

A real-time combat system was introduced in FF IV and maintained for the next five games in the series, until X reverted to turn-based (but on an individual level, unlike the original FF).

 

[Higher Animal]

FF7 is disliked largely because of its difficulty. The Materia system is pretty rad, and the art design is better than VIII and IX. I remember liking IX more when I was younger because it seemed like each encounter was designed specifically for the story, while FF7's encounters were all over the place. But what makes the FF games interesting from a gameplay perspective are the secret items, minigames, encounters, and bosses that are unusually difficult. When FF7 is approached from a sandbox perspective the game becomes immeasurably more interesting.

Consider the first major obstacle in the game that is largely impassable for most players, defeating the Midgar Zolom guarding the first world map dungeon. Most younger players will attempt crossing the snow, losing badly, and then finding the chocobo and reattempting the crossing. Some players will figure out a way to either game the system or get across using the safe patches in the snow. However, it's entirely possible to beat the Midgar Zolom after a few attempts using very specific strategies with a low level team. There are similar examples of this type of spike in difficulty across the game.

 

[Jacob]

I'm actually one of the unlucky few who only played FF games recently. Before that I only played few JRPGs, mostly indie Japanese PC games, and Pokemons.
My first game was VI, which I played in anticipation of the VII steam release. I played it on the GBA emulator. I liked the art style, I liked that famous ghost train boss battle, I liked most of the thing people say it's good about this game. But I also hated that super linear JRPG gameplay up until you get the espers, and even after that, it's only somewhat decent.

After that, I began playing the other games. VII's story is confusing and the dialogue are sometimes nonsense. But there are some good parts, such Cloud's backstory and Cid's storyline. As for the gameplay, I don't like the materia system, it felt more limited than the epsers, and there's also another game with similar system which does it better, although yes FF VII came out first. VIII was stupid beyond belief. VII was confusing sci-fi/fantasy mix with badly translated dialogue sure, but at least it wasn't as melodramatic and retarded as VIII. I laughed at the game more often than VII, the hardest I think when Quistis suddenly feel wants to apologize to Rinoa in the middle of a mission on Disc 1, even though the dialogue are actually better translated. This is to me the definitive JRPG Bullshit: The Game. (Although I admit Laguna's story is kinda nice in a soap opera way)

When I got around to playing IX, I already had the FF fatigue and didn't get very far. Fortunately though, this masterpiece is put very early in the game.

The other games I've played a bit thanks to emulators, but not enough to have anything worth posting here, except that I like X's battle system and it someone should make a more open-ended game with that battle system.

As for XIII, it's just so bad it's not even worth laughing at, with characters throwing around stupid fantasy terms like "fal'cie" and "focus" without it being explained properly, but at least in the combat department, it is actually the hardest FF I've played. And although I didn't bother finishing it, I bothered playing LR, a game which although I think isn't that much better than XIII as whole, but has an interesting battle system and character customization, has a somewhat open world, and also Lightning suddenly becomes less annoying.

Tactics, by the way, is a different beast. I'm currently playing it and enjoying the game so far, both the story and the gameplay.

But what makes the FF games interesting from a gameplay perspective are the secret items, minigames, encounters, and bosses that are unusually difficult

I just don't get the fun in the minigames, I really don't care for any of those minigames in 7, but everything else I mostly agree.

 

[newtmonkey]

I played through a bunch of these games (some for the first time) a few years back when I was between jobs (as they say). I was surprised by what I found:

Final Fantasy I: I played the PSX remake on the "classic" difficulty. I really enjoyed this game, as the freedom to make your own party gives it some replay ability. There is even a bit of a nonlinear section in the early-mid part of the game where you can choose between one of two locations (though you need to do both eventually). The game requires no grinding whatsoever if you learn which monsters you should run from, when to cut your losses and return to town, make use of the special abilities some equipment has, etc. I spent a good couple weeks getting through this, and even mapped all the dungeons.

Final Fantasy II: I played the PSX remake on the "classic" difficulty. The internet hates this game and nearly every walkthrough tells you to abuse the "attack yourself and gain stats" thing. I think that would leave you at the end of the game with tons of HPs and low stats, and unable to keep up with healing... plus, by the end of the game enemies are more dangerous for what happens when they hit you (status effects), rather than how much damage they do.
I played it "straight" and did no grinding at all and enjoyed it until the end. Not as replayable as FFI, but being able to specialize your characters in different ways makes it somewhat fun to go through at least twice.

Final Fantasy III: I played this one on an NES/Famicom emulator. This was really fun! The class system is enjoyable but offers very little freedom, as most dungeons/bosses require certain classes. Another game that requires no grinding whatsoever if you pay attention and learn how it plays.

Final Fantasy IV: I had finished this on the SNES back when it was called Final Fantasy II in the US. I played it this time on the PSX with all the missing stuff/difficulty restored. Actually a little disappointing. While the graphics are still attractive and the music is some of the best to ever come from the SNES sound chip, the game is totally on rails. Characters come and go as the story goes on, so any two players at any time in the game will have the same exact party. While this means that the designers could balance the game knowing what players were capable of at any time, it also means you have zero freedom to play this game. Instead of taking advantage of the battle system to defeat bosses (as in I-III), they are actually just puzzles pretty much. The game switched to a pseudo realtime combat system, but I feel that it really gains nothing for losing the measured pace and careful resource management the turn based systems in I-III offered. The game has a story, but it has not aged well at all and is quite childish.

Final Fantasy VI: For the first 10 hours or so, same as FFIV but with much nicer graphics. At some point the game opens up a bit and you can freely form your party from a bunch of characters, customize them with relics and summon monsters, and the game picks up a lot. While the first half is totally on rails, the second half is totally nonlinear with tons of exploration—and you even have a bunch of side quests you can do. The second half definitely saved this one for me. The story is a lot better than in IV, and the villain is memorable.

Final Fantasy VII: I finished this back when it came out and didn't care for it, and then played it through once more a short while ago. Although some parts dragged, I enjoyed it more the second time. It's a lot like FFVI in ways—the first part is extremely linear, but the second part opens up and gives you some extra stuff to find and do, and allows you some nice leeway in customizing your party. The graphics still look great on a nice CRTV (do not play this on an HDTV), and the music has a nice lo-fi feel to it. The story is not awful, but like all Japanese media is extremely melodramatic.

Yet to play through: FFV, FFXII
Have zero interest in playing through: FFVIII, FFIX, FFX, FFXIII

 

[Brayko]

Complete shit series honest opinion. Don't feel connected to any of it.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Complete shit series honest opinion. Don't feel connected to any of it.

Legit. Never got the obsession with it. Shin Megami Tensei had a better system but still suffered from terminal weabooism.

 

[Inziladun]

But what makes the FF games interesting from a gameplay perspective are the secret items, minigames, encounters, and bosses that are unusually difficult

I just don't get the fun in the minigames, I really don't care for any of those minigames in 7, but everything else I mostly agree.

7 is a bit of a bad example as the minigames in the game were very clunky and unintuitive, even at the time. If I were older than I was, I probably would not have bothered, but controls killed a lot of the enjoyment for me, especially in later play throughs.

Legit. Never got the obsession with it. Shin Megami Tensei had a better system but still suffered from terminal weabooism.

I can respect this, I truly can. What personally drives me towards the series is the artistic direction, which is now all but lost. I personally have a bit of an obsession with Skyships, magically implemented technology, and almost get steampunk vibes from some of the games in this series. Combine that with a couple of interesting concepts in the story design scattered amongst the series and I believe that is the main appeal to me. The gameplay has always just been tolerable to me, with FF10 being my favorite combat system in the series, but not anywhere near my favorite in the series. I would very much like to see an open-world Final Fantasy Tactics game, that would be very fun and the combat AND story could stand to pull me in immensely. But they killed that spin-off with fire ever since FFTacticsAdvance.

But in terms of actual connection to the series, I can honestly say the only thing I'm emotionally connected to in the series in the music. Which I'm pretty sure anyone can agree is very, very good. A lot of it has "tear-jerking" execution.

 

[Suicidal]

The only game from the series that I have tried was FF 7 and I'm not exaggerating or trying to be edgy in any way when I say this is probably the worst RPG I have ever played. This is honestly my honest opinion. Even Oblivion is better because Oblivion is a stinking turd that you can at least shit out quickly if you ignore all the kill 5 mudcrabs quests and just go straight for the main storyline. Final Fantasy 7 is a stinking turd that takes ages to shit out and gives you hemorrhoids in the process. I've never played it as a kid so I had zero nostalgia for it or the series, so when I tried it I just didn't enjoy it at all and it tainted my opinion of JRPGs for years to come and it took several much better games to elevate my opinion back. From the horrible cringe-worthy dialogue, complete lack of player agency (what's the point of playing a storyfag RPG if you have literally zero control over conversations, events and etc.) to the very simplistic and uninteresting combat system there was nothing in that game that caught my attention and made me go "woah" or even "hmmm".

 

[SerratedBiz]

You play FF7 because there was a time in your life where you could believe you were Cloud, that Tifa was your waifu and that the game's music could be the soundtrack of your life. It's also why FF8 is so popular, the kids who grew up with Cloud had now aged sufficiently into the emo "maturity" that is Squall.

FF9 lost the trend, only people who like that are furries.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

You play FF7 because there was a time in your life where you could believe you were Cloud, that Tifa was your waifu and that the game's music could be the soundtrack of your life. It's also why FF8 is so popular, the kids who grew up with Cloud had now aged sufficiently into the emo "maturity" that is Squall.

Probably legit though I never managed to finish either. 8 was so damn boring.

 

[Ninjerk]

You play FF7 because there was a time in your life where you could believe you were Cloud, that Tifa was your waifu and that the game's music could be the soundtrack of your life. It's also why FF8 is so popular, the kids who grew up with Cloud had now aged sufficiently into the emo "maturity" that is Squall.

FF9 lost the trend, only people who like that are furries.

My friends that liked ff8 hated ff7

 

[Sranchammer]

If there is one game franchise meant for sissies, this is the one.

 

[Tigranes]

6 = The best, it has everything that makes FF fun, from melodramatic fantasy opera scenes to campy-humour ones, little theatrical sequences with gameplay (the play, etc), a huge world filled with a bunch of stuff, fantastic music before Nobuo Uetmatsu burnt himself out.

5, 7 and 9 all have some of those elements with their own unique spin, which make them good as well. 5 is really only good for the gameplay but has the Job system. 7 is too emo but the story pacing is really good, and the sheer style they infused Midgar with is fantastic. 9 is basically a complete package like 6, though rather easy.

8 is OK, i liked the world they had made and the secondary plots with Laguna etc. but the time-travel crap was just bad. 10 was also OK, but it's just as emo as 7 and has some terrible beach holiday style.

Everything after 10 is retarded.

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

I like the fact that Kefka effectively destroyed the whole world and ruled it for a couple of years. Most villain in vidya can barely kill a loved one of the protagonist.

 

[Average Manatee]

6 (nigh-perfect classic jRPG) > 12 (ZJS edition, really enjoyed the combat system, hunt system, and plot is alright if you can ignore vaan) > 4 (Just great all around, if 6 didn't exist I'd give this the top of the classics award) > 10 (really liked the turn based combat and the international edition gave a lot of flexibility in character development) > most other FF games > 7 (I really can't see why people like this game) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 8 (people who like this game should be certifiably insane)

Opinion is of someone who has played all but MMOs, post-12 FFs and spinoffs. Only one I actually played on release was 8. Thanks, stupid teenaged brain easily susceptible to brand marketing.

 

[TigerKnee]

It's a really casual, entry-level, "style over substance" series overall except for perhaps the original Final Fantasy Tactics.

In the same company, the SaGa series has way more interesting and complex mechanics + non-linearity but Final Fantasy keeps sucking up all the budget so they have to release most of their games in an unfinished form, which is really sad.

 

[Jick Magger]

Final Fantasy IV was a great RPG. Story was good for the time, combat was smooth and well-done, and it has a lot of memorable characters.

I played Final Fantasy VII around 2005, long after its nostalgia period ended, and it definitely did not live up to its reputation. Game has a great opening, and does a good job at hooking you in to the story and investing in the characters, then you leave Midgar and everything just kinda slides off a cliff into mediocrity.

Final Fantasy VIII was pretty terrible. Gameplay is a boring slog that actively encourages you to avoid combat due to the level scaling, story an overly-complicated mess (which is honestly to be expected when you're doing a time-travel story, and especially when it's a badly-done time travel story) which only progresses if you assume that all of the people involved are brain-dead stupid, characters are pretty two-dimensional and unlikeable because of the aforementioned stupidity, and it's just really fucking boring.

On a side-note, I replayed Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 recently, and holy shit have they both aged badly for different reasons. First one was a fairly straightforward game with a silly premise but nevertheless basic and fairly well-done story that's let down by awkward combat and awful camera controls. Kingdom Hearts II has much better combat (to the point where people complain the game is too easy because it fixes most of the awkwardness of the first game's combat), but the story is this utter fucking convoluted mess of retcons (It turns out the first game's villain was actually not the guy he said he was, he was some other guy's evil side, and now that same guy's other evil side is this game's villain and the guy he was pretending to be is also running around doing his own thing) side-stories (most of which will pretty much be lost on you if you didn't play the fucking spinoff game on the gameboy), try-hard edginess (It was Cloud at the height of his Advent Children era angst), and really awful pacing (the game has a five hour prologue that essentially stops being relevant the moment it ends and only winds up even coming up again at the very end). From what I hear, the following spinoff games on the 3DS and PSP somehow take this huge fucking mess and wind up making it even worse. Really reminds me of the complication compliation of Final Fantasy VII and how they managed to retroactively ruin that game as well.

 

[Parsifarka]

Boring and shamefully written bullshit; a decent developer should save Lightning, the only interesting thing which has come out of that series, from the hands of those oriental monsters -but after the Vuitton delirium I guess it's already too late.