RockpaperShotgun FF order is retarded.

[Dedicated_Dark]

Thanks. Yes, it seems this will be Xenogears. I was searching around Secret of Mana / Suidoken / Xenogears / Xenoblade Chronicles and similar, so it matches one of those. So I'm guessing it's worth playing then.

Yea. Definitively play it. It's the best jrpg narrative I've seen ever, dabbling in philosophy, religion and other stuff.

 

[Max Stats]

So I'm guessing it's worth playing then.

Well, disc 1 anyway!

 

[Falksi]

How the fuck did 15 get on that list & 5 not? 5's job system is prob the best combat system of the lot.

I've no issue with the people writing such articles, I just think the human race would be better off as a whole if they were all drowned at birth.

 

[ilitarist]

Tough choice imo.

FF6 has the best story
FF9 imo is the most complete and fun (any my personal favorite)
but FF8 has the best world to explore (like most of GFs are totally optional, odin castle etc)

It's hard to chose FF9 as it's so dependent on nostalgia, reiteration and safe mechanics. They often say about games something like "it's a good game but it's a bad Fallout game", for example - and FF9 is great FF game but not that good on its own. I'm not sure I'd recommend this game to anyone as their first FF game, I would definitely recommend it to anybody who played any other FF game.

Besides it's relatively... primitive on gameplay side. They probably wanted to reduce level of madness after FF8 which didn't seem to care about conventions and invented autoleveling self-harm bullshit 8 years before Oblivion perfected it. I really like how FF8 subverts the meaning of Magic and Levels and abilities and combat, just as the story subverts teen school drama and magical knight epic. So in FF9 you can't screw yourself, every difficulty may be solved by grinding, I think there's no important missable content, character progression is straightforward. Even FF6 has a more interesting progression system: stats raise depends on chractars plus magicite they use, plus relics gave some interesting abilities. 10 and 12 too have much more interesting progression I feel, though most of it happened in postgame (though in previous games you could complete critical path with very little involvement anyway). Don't know about 13 much but even 15 looks more complex with characters having some out-of combat skills and there's magic crafting and Skyrim perks for some reason.

 

[Perkel]

Tough choice imo.

FF6 has the best story
FF9 imo is the most complete and fun (any my personal favorite)
but FF8 has the best world to explore (like most of GFs are totally optional, odin castle etc)

It's hard to chose FF9 as it's so dependent on nostalgia, reiteration and safe mechanics.

FF9 is favorite of mine because:
- it is the most FUN FF. Meaning you will be smiling from ear to ear a lot in it. And humor is on point unlike almost all other games where it barely works.
- it has the best journey. There is almost no grinding time in it, there are ups and downs, pacing is incredible.
- there are shitload of legit cool set pieces (like bahamut and lifa tree standup, Libidium being eaten by Atomos etc)
- there are no boring sides of your journey, meaning there is always something interesting to follow and do.
- best dungeons design, you will never see same dungeon type twice and each of them are interesting to explore.
- best cast of characters. Only one that is kind of shit is Eiko. Honestly this cast of characters rivals that of Chrono Trigger. It is just plain fun to follow their adventures. Almost none of that japanese emo crap. It is much more classical type of story than japanese masturbation about feelings.
- getting skills from items system is great.
- Umeatsu at his best. FF9 rivals FF8 ost.

That being said it is not perfect:
- combat has aged, limit breaks are still fun but it is way to simple for me now.
- ending is contrived and meh. Kuja is barely even a thing in game


FF9 encapsulates what is and should be Final Fantasy. A great journey. This is also the reason why i like FF8 after it. IT has way more problems but like FF9 it delivers amazing journey.




I think Chrono Cross also shows how important pacing is and fun is.
On surface CC has about the same amount of stuff like in FF9 or FF8 but pacing is all over the place and treats itself too seriously. Which is one of the reasons why it didn't live up to Chrono Trigger which has both pacing and fun.

 

[ilitarist]

- it has the best journey. There is almost no grinding time in it, there are ups and downs, pacing is incredible.

Weeeell. There's problem with learning stuff. When you play for the first time and not sure whether you'll encounter any of the skills you learn from equipment later you tend to grind it. Feels uncomfortable having too much items you can learn skills from. Plus there's steal command from the very beginning which makes many people obsessed with stealing for all the monsters. Of course it doesn't compare to complexity you'd have in FF8/10 but that's the point: there it felt like an optional power player thing, here there's so little to powerplay it feels like necessary.

Other than that everything else more or less applies to almost every FF game, maybe except 7 and 10. I know Squall looks like an emo but you actually don't have much time given to his feels. He has no Tidus daddy issues or Clouds homoerotic obsession with Sephiroth penetrating him with his big sword.

 

[ilitarist]

I didn't play Chrono Cross but true, I remember Chrono Trigger having that pacing you talk about.

Just like Final Fantasy 6 it has limited times when it opens up in a comfortable way. You have very few sidequests but when you get them they feel right, they give you benefits and open up the world. This freedom felt earned and more important than the usual boring freedom to do fedex quests you get from Western RPGs in spades. This pacing makes you appreciate both moments of freedom and long linear corridors. FF9 feels too linear to me, it didn't have that opening free time as I remember it, just opportunities to get something better from a dungeon or to find it in a city. In FF6 you get into optional dungeons to get unique artifacts or new playable characters, same in FF7/8 for unique spells and summons and weapons. Same in Chrono Trigger. I've recently started replay of FF9 and I've stopped for a while somewhere on a disc 2 after getting to a second continent and I was surprised to see there were almost no moments where I could roam and find anything interesting. Maybe only Quina counts, but that's like on your way to the objective. There are Chocobo game (hate it) and card game (can't bother to deduce its random stuff) and that's all there seem to be apart from following a critical path. So I'm not so sold on the idea of FF9 having a great pacing.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

It's hard to chose FF9 as it's so dependent on nostalgia,

Bullshit.

 

[Doktor Best]

So there truly is no FF game everyone likes or dislikes.

Dont know if it speaks for the series or against it.

I for one see lack in challenge as the biggest problem if most FF titles, therefor i am quite bummed out by the comments on FF9 being one of the easiest in the series.

Probably gonna try it out with some difficulty mod some day.

 

[ilitarist]

FF4/5/6/10 updated versions have a lot of optional content that is challenging. It's there in 7 & 8 too but there's little of it and in 7 it's bullshit (most of it is tied to some sort of mini-game).

Probably same for 12, 13, 15 but I haven't played those.

Also Tactics is challenging. Same for Final Fantasy Tactics A2. (Advance was relatively easy) But they're not available on PC even though they're easy to emulate.

I still find this approach to challenge a very good idea: critical path is easy to do, sidequests are hard, there's postgame (or right-before-final-boss-game) in case you want a challenge. Much better than most of Western RPG were challenge is concentrated on critical path and experiencing more of game content makes the main challenge trivial.

Edit: Everybody likes FF6, by the way, even if they think that some other FF is better.

 

[Okagron]

It's hard to chose FF9 as it's so dependent on nostalgia.

Gonna heavily disagree with this. I thought the same after not playing the game since it came out, but then i replayed it a couple of years ago. I had a blast through pretty much all of it. My two major gripes with the game is overall slowness of the battles and the battle intros everytime a battle starts. But i heard the Steam port added a speed up function and it has a toggle to remove battle intros.

The only challenge in FF9 is Ozma. And even then, with the right setup he can become a joke. Still didn't stop me from raging until i tried the Return Magic/Doomsday combo with Amarant and Vivi.

 

[Ash]

FF4/5/6/10 updated versions have a lot of optional content that is challenging. It's there in 7 & 8 too but there's little of it and in 7 it's bullshit (most of it is tied to some sort of mini-game).

Stop with your nonsense!

FF4 has minimal optional content. Hell, for gameplayfags the game is garbage, period. FF7 and to a slightly lesser extent FF8 have optional content in every locale. Stuff tied to combat, exploration, puzzles and mini-games. There's hoards.

 

[ilitarist]

Ash, I'm talking about updated versions, GBA and later

 

[buru5]

Its combat system is also genius. Mad, but genius. I’m still not sure how I ever understood it as a wide-eyed 11-year-old, but the ability to ‘junction’ or assign both your summons and magic spells to individual characters in order to fine tune up their stats makes this one of the most personal Final Fantasy games in existence. Instead of buying your way to success with throwaway trinkets, here you’re actively seeking out new monsters and growing together with them as a team, learning shiny new attacks from them and then passing those skills onto your friends. Oh what now? What is it?

Yes, the combat system that punishes you for using magic is so genius. What a solid argument.

Lest we not forgot about the LMFAO WE ALL KNEW EACH OTHER IN THE ORPHANAGE and other garbage plot elements that litter this piece of shit game.



Personally I have the most fun with FFV. Plot doesn't take itself too seriously, lots of customization with the job system, and good bosses.

 

[Ash]

Yes, the combat system that punishes you for using magic is so genius. What a solid argument.

Actually not a bad thing conceptually. It's basically mana, and with refine abilities you can boost your magics (and stats) back to 100 post battle if prepared. The issue was Attack command, GF or renzokuken spam was just better than magic in the vast majority of cases, making magic useless AND coming with a price. A notable thing the Requiem mod does is make attack notably inferior to magic in many cases, which actually makes sense because there's no price to use it. So now if you want the superior power of magic you can (and often must, because the mod is hard), but there is a cost. Actually pretty solid decent now. Yet it still does result in the player being shoehorned into using magic less than they would otherwise though. And for raw attack power GF spam still often beats out magic usage (though GFs can of course be killed mid-battle, and often are).

There's no defending that orphanage garbage though (and other things...). Yet the plot and game as a whole isn't without charm and interest altogether. Definitely the worst game of the PS1-era FF's though.

 

[Raghar]

Considering I played all FF from IV to last in the row on PC, lets show what I remember...

FF IV, I remember normal average RPG.

FF V. It had Gilgamesh fight. (And also rescuing Gilgamesh.) It was one of few games where you rescued boss after defeating him. Also world merging.

FF VI. A lot nice characters, and decent story. Also world shattering. And Kefka acted as a smart person not as a iconic villain of the week. (Too bad in last fight it was one hit... then one hit... then one hit...) I heard last boss is dangerous. Never experienced.

FF VII. Actually if you played FF VI recently THEN immediately went to play FF VII the shock from intro scene from moving from "sword stuff" into futuristic world. And see a main character ecoterrorist... Another nice stuff was that scene where few scientists tried to interbreed a women with a panther. Later execution was just average. And main character was SHITTY WHEENY BITCH.

FF VIII. A somehow decent story with a lot of sense for detail and ride of death when a rescuer though it's smart to remove overtightened handcuffs from a girls wrists, then found that ride of death driving with a high powered sniper rifle pointed at his back, held in shaky woman hand shaky from being in handcuffs, remove any cowardice. That space scene was feeling like they wanted to have space scene. It felt weird. And when they introduced Ultimecia it went downhill. (BTW if you can send Odin against school mate, DO it. Even on ironman. The story continues.) But it had nice and well deserved ending.

FF IX. It was too stylized. The story was so so. The highlights was Oglok, and these two clowns were funny. I wonder how would FF IX look like if you played as Cid's wife. I had scratch on borrowed CD, thus no outro for me. I learned, now I download it from illegal sources and store on HDD.

FF X. MASSIVE improvement in graphics. And it was one of FF that forced me to use healing potions. Story is decent, it's basically Yuna's pilgrimage, where nobody has heart to tell main character facts, thus he founds them by accident. Combat system is unique and very decent. I liked how most enemies basically go down after two hits, and the same applies at main characters as well. It had also one best musics. Though last boss fight looked like main character double casted ultima, Yuna casted holly, and Riku who was supposed to cast Flare said hey he's going down... Of course certain stuff from last fight was bonkers. And Japanese have strange tendencies to screw up ending. Still story was decent. (Aside of few absurd fights and hiccups. I liked what lord Miku did to them.) However I disliked the yipping of main character.

BTW guess who needed to return to open two chests in temples of trial after certain part of the story? And who played blind? Well the next part was immense pain.

FF X-2. First, leader of the group wasn't Yuna. That's first difference. Second there is no yipping male character, instead there is Yuna that's yipping because she doesn't have male main character. They added rule of cool, because when Yuna would use two silver pistols she would look cool. (Using high fashion clothes was repeated in FF XV.) Actually she would look awesome when she'd use Dark Knight sword for killing in some cutscenes. Yuna as extremely powerful dark knight would be fitting. Well, it's quite hard to make sequel to a finished well done story as was FF X. But while they returned to combat system of FF IX, they still managed to make some funny and interesting decisions. Like women deprived of clothes and returning home in underwear or naked. Or that scene when you would like to kill Shinra. BTW when Shinra says "I know everything." He's probably right.
Nonetheless Japanese version of Real Emotion, and English version of 1000 words are awesome. (And as I said, if you don't want to be fucked, in first part of FF X-2 repeat Yuna's pilgrimage. But in the second part go in opposite order or you'd fuck yourself greatly.) Well, the main point of FF X-2 was to provide closure and show what happened to lives of other main characters. Which it did fairly well.

I'm kinda pissed there is no ending when Yuna forces that person from Zaanakan to become awesome world leader, and after that scene leaves with her love. 15 seconds that completely obliterates all complains against Yuna character in FF X-2, and hints she's most awesome when she's with her love.


FF XII. Looks like Square-Enix management seriously messed with FF XII story. Thus someone was pissed, and when they demanded to have a young character in FF XII, they used a character with name that translates as "dog bark", and his brother is named like dog. In later part young character screen time seriously declines, and the story could go... Well all this messing probably caused lacks of story.

But, FF XII was first open world recent FF, and when played at emulator, it has best graphics from PS2 RPGs. (Of course PC players had Morrowind, Skyrim, Risen...)

Story is: Ivalice is mess yet again, flying warships are flying around, cities are burning, mages are falling down from exhaustion, and commandos are trying to kill them from behind. Republic and Empire started to solve theirs grievances and kingdom is in the middle. All that told by awesome narrator in the intro. Now of course, the whole narration would need a lot more, like books in shelves in some houses of FF XII, proper logs, more filled world with characters that are living in the middle of this conflict, and are not only figurines that are placed around the city. And most importantly to allow main designer to write gritty story that would be awesome.

Fights are actually quite harsh and punishing, when you underestimate them and not level enough. Bosses have somewhat funny tendencies to

Spoiler

Try harder when they are at half HP.

Which causes very funny experience when you don't know about it and trying ironman.

Well, less fighting more story would be better for FF XII.

FF XIII. Now that's mixed back. Lets say something straight. If you want to play for story, play on easy. If you want to play for fights, well they know fairly well capabilities of the party just before each boss, thus they could tailor difficulty very well. Not sure if you can ironman it on normal without prior knowledge. (Sash eidelon is a bitch. And developers knew some people might have problem with it, thus enemies near him gives you fairly high XP. If you are not heavily underleveled don't abuse the developer's kindness and fight like a man for first 10 attempts.)



As for disadvantages. Let's say it straight it has SHITTY WHINNY CHARACTER. FF X had whinny character. Last Remnant had whinny character. FF XII had whinny character. And now we see whinny character in FF XIII. I don't understand why Square-Enix continue to pursue these unlikeable characters. Can you take some character as an exemplar? Can you take it as a weirdo? Actually Cid in FF XII was likeable, and without meddling of executives, FF XII would be decent. Kefka was a bitch, but he was bitch that did his job right.

Combined with type of story telling. Well, it's not something that would be easy to stomach. In fact most enjoyable character are Vanile and Fang, and that's because authors didn't make them whinny aggressive bitches. If they added some "classified" files about how exactly looked like that primitive society from where these two girls came, and how they are different in traditions than cocoon one, it would be even better.

Spoiler

For everyone what happened was total disaster that changed cocoon forever, and caused hundreds of dead people. For these two girl it was wonderful weekend. And in fact it could foreshadow the ending, and why they are doing right thing.

I guess FF XIII had too much movie like influence, and much less gaming. Combined with love of main designer for main character. Pushing explanation into text database. And bit slow explanation be reminiscing what happened before... It definitely didn't help that story was cuckoo.

(Actually telling the story somehow out of order by reminiscing was cute, but the rest of it felt more like cash grab, than attempt to make detailed story.)

Considering the easiest way how a low end writer can substitute writing quality is going for emotions, viewers would see a heart breaking moment and forget the story is bland, a lot of scenes is suspicious.

I didn't play FF XIII-2, and LR yet, but I heard FF XIII-2 suffered by being too short and lack of detail. And LR by not using proper action combat like Dark Souls, and don't bothering to make detailed textures and other stuff.

Basically if Japanese thought: First we would make one proper games. Then we would make two sequels for half of investment.... Well that was the worst idea they could have. Game development isn't US TV show making, and making pilot, then several cheap episodes would only hurt both company name, and players with aesthetic sense.

 

[Lahey]

Final Fantasy Tactics

Speaking of BNW and ID by extension, any codexers or lurkers who like FFT but haven't played the 1.3 mod should do so.

1.3 is hot garbage. It bloats enemy HP to ridiculous degrees, and makes battles take longer than with PSP slowdown. It has genuine improvements, especially for someone who's looking for more content in FFT (which is why I suggest the content pack rather than the rebalance patch), but it's essentially a mod that requires the user to grind and lab the game as much as the modders did when making it. If I had to put it one way, if anyone has ever seen the boring work that goes into being "competitive" in Pokemon, this is along that same angle. It also features heavy level scaling, which is always fun.

The only difference between versions is fixed enemy levels for storyline battles in content, allowing players to simply grind their own levels to proceed through the story. The regular version punishes grinding through enemy scaling, but there's no arbitrary HP bloat except from small bonues to 'boss' fights iirc, which frankly is a good thing because of how easy assassinations were in vanilla. It's inelegant, but working as intended. Battles certainly take longer on the planning side but frameskip counteracts that. I agree with everything else you wrote though; it's a mod designed by and for autists who'll happily reload a battle x amount of times attempting different things, and restart the playthrough if necessary – perhaps multiple times – to re-evaluate tools they may've overlooked. Abilities and encounters can be so radically different that long-term strategies which work in vanilla aren't transferrable, and crutches like cherche, blade grasp, Cid, math et al. have been either nerfed, replaced, or removed entirely. I'd expect nothing less from a site called 'Insane Difficulty'. It's not for everyone, but I still recommend it to anyone who likes FFT.

 

[Jacob]

I have been playing the New Threat mod for FF VII today.

It changes a lot from the base game, giving some new features, reworking the elemental system, and making each character more specialized. Aerith's starter weapon now heals instead, which makes her a much better healer than everyone else, even without limit break. It added more variety and challenge, although it cannot be considered a hard mode mod, being still in the medium range difficulty overall.

There are some changes in the story, in which Aerith lives, according to the readme, though I haven't gotten there yet. But the readme also claims that the story remains faithful overall. From gameplay perspective, it is a good thing though, especially now that Aerith had a more specific role.

So far I am enjoying it, playing it also gives me the chance to appreciate FF VII's story more. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it is still somewhat good, at the very least it is engaging and not cringy, and it defy expectations of typical emo JRPGs that were inspired by it success. While Cloud and Tifa are the usual JRPG hero stereotype characters (Edgy hero and his childhood friend), although they are older than the usual fare and acts accordingly, Barrett is definitely not, and Aerith almost feels like a shoujo manga character, a la Sailor Moon, in that she is shown to be traditionally cute but still takes an active role in the story.

And, come on, Tifa is seriously hot, where else you can find a fistfighting bartender with huge titties that isn't a thot, but instead a soft and caring girl.

Spoiler

Real life, maybe.

 

[Delterius]

There are some changes in the story, in which Aerith lives, according to the readme, though I haven't gotten there yet. But the readme also claims that the story remains faithful overall.

wat

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Dude, just use a Phoenix Down on her.

(I wonder if it would be less or more contrived to add a replacement character that uses her gear/spells and takes no part in the story, like a hireling)

On a related not: Cloud isn't edgy! At least not in the original game, Square decided to run with that meme in his other appearances (and lightened the "psychopatic manchild who runs off with momma's decapitated head" aspects of Sephiroth to appease the fangirls).

why

 

[Hobo Elf]

Darkness...

(I wonder if it would be less or more contrived to add a replacement character that uses her gear/spells and takes no part in the story, like a hireling)

It cheapens the emotional impact that the character death was attempting to have. A player has to feel like the death matters in terms of gameplay if you want them to give a shit.

As for Aeris being alive in the remake, I've heard rumors ever since the game was released back in 1997 that the game was supposed to have a side quest where you resurrect her, but it got cut out due to time and budget limitations, so if the rumors are true, then adding her as a permanent party member would be more true to the original vision. Now whether or not that's a good thing is an entirely different can of worms.

 

[Delterius]

i couldn't read english when i played ff7 and i didn't even know what was going on

so i was mostly miffed because aeris was best healer

 

[Okagron]

Final Fantasy 5 wasn't even on that list which is sad as fuck, because it's actually one of my favorite in the series. The story is mostly basic but decent, i enjoy the characters for the most part and the music is great. But the job system is fucking awesome and allows for so many different party setups that is ridiculous.

 

[aweigh]

Raghar

Good write-up though you might have missed out on some of the impact of FF IV by not having played its predecessors: FF IV was the first turn in the series into operatic melodrama (for better or worse) so at the time of its release it blew a lot of childrens minds!

It had a great sweeping story with lots of drama and action and all of that jazz that later became emblematic of JRPGs as whole... truly a trail-blazing title in the commercial japanese game space.


Aside from that I recommend playing:

- Play FF 1 (original version on a NES emulator because the 2D remakes on PS1 and GBA destroy the difficulty and balance)

I find FF 1 to be a very enjoyable game and it is probably the most Western of all FF entries with vancian spell casting and game rules closer to D&D. I consider it a must-play.

- Play FF 3 (for this one I actually would recommend the 3D remake for PSP or Nintendo DS)

FF 3 is basically the introduction of the Job system (class changing) and if you enjoyed FF 5 and FF 12 mechanics then it all started in FF 3; and FF 3 features harder dungeons and less melo-drama and better pure game play.

Surprisingly enough the 3D polygonal remake for hand-held consoles did not butcher anything (difficulty or balance) and is in fact a great example of how to do a good remake of a game!

I also recommend that you play the Dragon Quest series as well as FF and DQ are sister series that developed side-by-side each feeding from the other. There would be no FF without DQ!

My recommended Dragon Quest must-play order is:

- DQ 1 (not as mandatory as FF1 as I find this one to not be as enjoyable to play but for historical sake I recommend at least playing a few hours)

- DQ 3 (play the SNES version! One of the best JRPGs ever made! This is a marvel of JRPG class-changing game play and it served as the inspiration for the Job system in FF games)

- DQ 4 (and guess what DQ 4 was the first DQ game to feature emphasis on storytelling over pure game play and it served as the inspiration for the same thing in FF 4... except DQ 4 did it better and features a great chapter-based system of story-telling with changing character viewpoints that inspired aspects of FF 6)

- DQ 5 (another amazing JRPG this time the DQ team introduced the concept of the story contiuning with your children so during the game you marry and have offspring and the game continues with them: depending on your bride their attributes change gadzooks!)

- DQ 7 (simply put: THE BEST JRPG EVER MADE. It will never be surpassed.)

- DQ 9 (a modern update on the Class-changing mechanics from DQ 3 and DQ 5 and DQ 7)

***DQ 1-3 have SNES versions (these are my recommendation)
***DQ 4-6 have NINTENDO DS versions (they made the remakes too easy with reduced encounter rates and enemies have less HP... I actually recommend playing original NES version of 4)
***DQ 5 play the Playstation 2 remake not any other.
***DQ 7

Ok this is where it gets tough. DQ 7 ps1 original is my recommendation because the recent 3DS remake destroyed the difficulty...

...however the 3DS remake similarly to the FF3 and FF4 polygonal remakes is an amazing piece of work in terms of graphical reconstruction and to top it off they even made a new cleaner game script translation.

I still recommend playing DQ 7 (the absolute best DQ ever and probably the best JRPG Ive ever played aside from Earthbound) on PS1 emulator because without the original difficulty the games heavy focus on class changing and char-building becomes useless!

But if you dont care much about the difficulty and just want to enjoy the story and characters then the 3DS remake is a fucking joy.

 

[Alkarl]

Emperor of Palamecia was the best villain in any FF game. That fucker was the ruler of the Earth, the ruler of the Hell and was about to become the ruler of the Heaven before you defeat him. He is from FF2 and that game is the FUCKING BEST, so people ought to know.

FTFY