Final Fantasy hate?

[AutumnWynds]

I played XI and enjoyed it quite a bit. I don't know if I would like the single-player versions as much.

[Ghost]

I missed out on the PS1 era FF's by a year or two. So sad I missed out on VII, the first time I saw Cloud or Squall was when they were handing my ass back to me in Kingdom Hearts.

Actually, Tidus, Wakka, Selphie, and a million others were in KH. I loved X especially, it was the first I played.

But I think XIII-2 they did their best to bring back some of the old spirit. It gets too much hate because all people want is more VII. They already have an entire compilation, we must move on.

[animalcrackaz]

I can't say for sure why there's so much hate for the Final Fantasy franchise, but I'm guessing a big part of it has to do with it's mainstream saturation. Books, music, movies, and video games all suffer from an elitist mindset - how many times have you heard "I liked <blank> *BEFORE* it was popular" ? For fans of the NES/SNES Final Fantasy games, I think they felt like they lost something that was "exclusively theirs" once the PlayStation era of FF games came about, along with fanfare from casual gamers. I think casual gamers of today probably have more of a problem with it, too, because even though the story and gameplay are good, the graphics haven't really aged well - let's be honest: They were good when they first came out, and it was cool to see an RPG in 3d, but now when you look at the character models, they just look like a few triangles glued together.

For me personally, I have drifted away from the Final Fantasy games largely because of the advancement of open world RPGs(and games in general) where you are able to choose your path in a more sophisticated manner. Linear RPGs - including but not limited to the Final Fantasy games - seemed a lot less impressive after experiencing more nonlinear games like Baldur's Gate and the Elder Scrolls series. As I've gotten older, I've taken more joy out of the decision aspect in games, rather than the more cinematic ones that guide you through - as far as character interactions go, at least.

I still enjoy the Final Fantasy games I play. I liked 7, 8 and 10(never got around to 9, for some reason), and didn't mind 12 - the fighting system was good, but the story was pretty bland compared to other FFs in my opinion. My absolute favorite, though, is 6. I really think that's the one where everything came together perfectly.

And I agree, it's really worthwhile to play through the pre-PlayStation Final Fantasies(All of Square's SNES RPGs, really - Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana were just as good or better than FF), and then revisit 7. It's interesting to see the elements that were in place before 7 to see where they came from.

And that's the end of my rambling.

[Atalan]

I hope everyone reading this thread is noticing a trend. Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy (if they began in the series after 4) is the first one they played.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

I hope everyone reading this thread is noticing a trend. Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy (if they began in the series after 4) is the first one they played.

My favorite is Tactics, I played FF7 first.

[The Tin Man]

My favorite is Tactics, I played FF7 first.

Outlier!

[ellystar]

I hope everyone reading this thread is noticing a trend. Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy (if they began in the series after 4) is the first one they played.

You definitely see this a lot, especially with 7. I'm an exception though, my favorite is 6 but I played 1 and 4 before that. Way back when, I remember seeing a copy of Final Fantasy VI when it came out for the SNES, at the time called III, and being all excited to find out about what happened to Cecil and Rosa and everyone. I was surprised to see a whole different story. Even though I've had FFIV: After Years for a few months, I have yet to play that.

[WizardTrip]

I hope everyone reading this thread is noticing a trend. Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy (if they began in the series after 4) is the first one they played.

I played FF 1 first, but here's my ranking using the Japanese version numbers (excluding 2, 3, X-2, 12, and 13 since I've never played them; and 5 since I've never gotten through half of it):

6 = Chrono Trigger > 1 > 7 = Tactics > 4 = 9 > 11 > 8 > 10 > Mystic Quest

11 is odd to place in here, but then again, so is Tactics.

Had to add in Chrono Trigger....sorry, things just didn't look right

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Outlier!

I take pride in that.

[grz]

I suppose I'm just a geezer who likes good old fashioned turn based RPGs. Yeah yeah yeah they really don't exist anymore. So I probably sound like a "they don't make them like they used to" kind of guy. I played VIII first. Then IX and X. Then VI and VII. Then XII and XIII.

X is my fave. The story is not as good as VI, but I love the sphere grid - Rather than grinding out battles to level up, you get a little bit after just a couple battles. I really liked that aspect.

Also, I just really liked the idea of having 3 players "in" and the rest on reserve. Of course, the result is that by the end, you had 3 stacked players (I played with Tidus, Yuna, and Rikku) and the rest (Auron, Wakka, Lulu, Kimhari) were left to the wayside.

Anyway, for me, turn based random encounters are what rpgs are.

The departure from this cannot be understated. I think younger gamers who didn't come up on the old ones can form different opinions much the way I think the Atari 2600 is not and never was that good of a system. It was before my time so I just don't get it.

[Artinum]

I loved VIII. I struggled with it at first, because the junction system is very complicated and gets rather lumped on you from the start, but knowing how that works makes a big difference. Using your GFs is great fun - but experienced players tend to use them less often. They take too long, and you can land a lot of hits in the same amount of playing time with regular attacks.

I recall the sense of pride in defeating Diablos for the first time. He was tough, and rather irritatingly became as weak as a kitten as soon as he joined my party. That happens so often...

[Tsuki]

Well honestly the ONLY FF game i didnt like fully was FFXII other than that the rest is good. My Fav one was FFVIII

[azsf]

i agree grz, the slow turn based combat of ffx is one of the main reasons it's my favourite of the series (its also the first one i played, so there's that ). you could take your time and be strategic and never felt harried. sure sometimes it made battles a little slow but in general i liked it.

this is one of the reasons why i gave up on ffxiii. i really liked the combat in that game except for the time element, as it meant you were never certain when a large attack (or attack sequence) was coming. so against some bosses it was just trial and error until you figured out their sequence. the paradigms were super interesting and made the battles flow amazingly, but then you'd get one enemy who rushes your main and it's GG.

i have the same issue with ffiii, which im playing on my iPad at the moment. you select all your moves before the turn starts, and then everything plays out. because you can't see the order of moves, it means things like using a phoenix down becomes a luck/pray situation, as you don't know if that high potion you have lined up for the revived character will go off before the phoenix down, or if the enemy will attack you in between or what :/

so yeh, ffx was a little more simple, a little more linear, but that made the overall experience more enjoyable for me. more strategy, less rolling the dice.

also, tidus auron rikku for life!

[Novius]

I REALLY liked the card game in 8, played to my slight OCDish impulses.

I had the same feeling for the card game in 9. I actually rage quit after I lost all my character cards in the final dungeon to the ghosts with all the best stuff (and somehow jacked my save up)

I hope everyone reading this thread is noticing a trend. Everyone's favorite Final Fantasy (if they began in the series after 4) is the first one they played.

I think that I have played all of them up to 9 but i started at like the age of 5 so my memories of most of them are pretty foggy at best. I remember enjoying 2 because that was the first time I got very far in an RPG. Once I grew up though my favorite was 8, never really cared for 7.

[Red1263]

As it was mentioned before, the PS (along with VII) caused a gap between the Pre-VII Fans and the Post-VII Fans, however the series became less and less intriguing when the Main story writers - Kenji Terada(did I - IV), Yoshinori Kitase (did V - VII) Kazushige Nojima (VII - KH), Main Composer - Nubuo Uematsu and Yoshitaka Amano for the artwork for Square-Enix left the company to their own endeavors. Since then, we observe a decline in the quality of the games. When I - VI were made, the company was at it's highest peak of formitability, which is why those who've played these games favor them over the later games (Chrono Trigger included).

So those who were able to get into the series before X, was lucky enough to still get some of the ORIGINAL members of the Square company in the game to enjoy it. Personally, I agree love each Final Fantasy before VII (save for 2, 3 because I haven't played them) and cannot be forced to place one before the other, and Chrono Trigger is in there as well, along with Tactics. I cannot compare the game with the Love triangle between a Paladin, a White Mage and a Dragoon against the game where you're above an opera fighting a Monster Octopus against the game where "Dear Friends" originated against the one game that started it all.

So in terms of why there's hate? It's not hate, it's frustration that all of the good people left. Heck, even the Art guy left! Those were some AMAZING artwork, and what they have now simply doesn't compare...

*Rides off in Red chocobo*

One more thing, My brother loves Mystic Quest, and I'm half-way through FF Adventures!

[Killabyte]

Me when I first played FFX:

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[ellystar]

Well honestly the ONLY FF game i didnt like fully was FFXII other than that the rest is good. My Fav one was FFVIII

Even FFII? That game is so flawed. I don't think I know anyone who liked that game. It's like the black sheep of the family.

[WizardTrip]

Even FFII? That game is so flawed. I don't think I know anyone who liked that game. It's like the black sheep of the family.

The Japanese II or the US II? If the US II, then yeah it was flawed because it was dumbed down for a beginner audience and the Japanese IV version of the same game is harder. Also, there were back story elements and a few other things that were changed for the US release.

[msuroo]

The Japanese II or the US II? If the US II, then yeah it was flawed because it was dumbed down for a beginner audience and the Japanese IV version of the same game is harder. Also, there were back story elements and a few other things that were changed for the US release.

She must be talking about the Japanese II to say:

I don't think I know anyone who liked that game.

Because everyone I know at least liked IV, if not loved it.

[grz]

Me when I first played FFX:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4252[/ATTACH]

Oh my God when Yuna ran after Tidus - the spigot turned on. I still play the end of that game from time to time just to watch the ending.

[WizardTrip]

She must be talking about the Japanese II to say:

Because everyone I know at least liked IV, if not loved it.

Gotcha! Never played Japanese II.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to replay all of them, skipping Tactics and VII because I have replayed them so many times.

I just finished 1 during my lunch break. Overall, I'm pleased with it, and imagine it was awesome for its time from playing other games from that era. I only really have 2 problems with it.

First, the storyline was pretty straight forward and the twists that it did have weren't until near the very end. I understand the storytelling limitations of the technology available at the time and only so much could fit into a game. This was the first as I understand it to have a free roaming globe and airship, so that probably took most of the memory they had. I am personally used to VII and beyond, which had much more space due to the storage media to cram all kinds of twists and turns in. As such, this was only a minor issue.

The bigger issue I have is that the game was a cakewalk except for the final battle. The random battles of course are not expected to be hard, but the big boss fights were just straight forward. No tactics for beating them, no finding weaknesses. For each one of them I just gave my 2 melee guys haste and ?vigor?(the one that increases attack) with the black mage and let them wail on the boss until he died while the white mage healed. Nobody ever even got below 80% health. The only time this didn't happen was the final boss, whom I must say, was pretty difficult. I had characters dieing left and right and got to the point where I only had 2 alive both in critical condition and had already burned through every elixir, mega elixir, and x potion in my inventory. I was really happy with the final boss and the ending.

It really is a good game, and I can see how people were floored by it when it first came out.

[WizardTrip]

The bigger issue I have is that the game was a cakewalk except for the final battle. The random battles of course are not expected to be hard, but the big boss fights were just straight forward. No tactics for beating them, no finding weaknesses. For each one of them I just gave my 2 melee guys haste and ?vigor?(the one that increases attack) with the black mage and let them wail on the boss until he died while the white mage healed. Nobody ever even got below 80% health. The only time this didn't happen was the final boss, whom I must say, was pretty difficult. I had characters dieing left and right and got to the point where I only had 2 alive both in critical condition and had already burned through every elixir, mega elixir, and x potion in my inventory. I was really happy with the final boss and the ending.

It really is a good game, and I can see how people were floored by it when it first came out.

iPhone version of the game or emulated NES version? I'm not sure what kind of changes they have made over the years with the many different releases for the game, but I remember 1 being very challenging on the NES and a good bit of grinding just to buy the spells and level up accordingly. Things may have changed, but I really was floored back then, and also replaying the game with the Game Genie to make life a bit more easy.

Also, to up the challenge, it was always fun making odd group combos (all white mages, or 2 white and 2 black mages, etc).

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

iPhone version, so yeah, I could see them dumbing it down. I know they did increase the level cap from 50, because I hit 54-55, and I had plenty of cash to buy spells most of the time. Total gameplay time was around 18 hour I think. I'll have to look into changes they make for the iOS version of II before I get it. If they're drastic, I'll have to find a playstation version or something.

edit: Yeah, this guy confirms that they decreased the difficulty (on II as well) to make it more accesbile to first time palyers. Kinda ticks me off, the game suffered because like I said, every friggin battle except the final one was just hack and slash with no concern for what was going to happen. It sucks, because now I have to make the decision to play through II in a more original version on my PS2 or to play the easier version on my phone. It'll likely be the phone since I typically play on long car rides or during lunch.

[WizardTrip]

iPhone version, so yeah, I could see them dumbing it down. I know they did increase the level cap from 50, because I hit 54-55, and I had plenty of cash to buy spells most of the time. Total gameplay time was around 18 hour I think. I'll have to look into changes they make for the iOS version of II before I get it. If they're drastic, I'll have to find a playstation version or something.

Yeah, post here what you find out.

I remember one time a friend and I started and finished FFI in a single day using the Game Genie with just the infinite gold cheat. I don't remember how long it took, but we wanted to hit the lowest level Nintendo Power said it was possible to beat Chaos. That level was 27, IIRC, and it was the single closest battle I have ever had in a game. Our party consisted of a Knight, Ninja, Black Mage, and White Mage. Ninja was gone first, followed by the BM.....WM held out for awhile, but he was next to go. The Knight was the last one standing with no way to heal himself at this point. We had one more hit before we knew the next hit from Chaos would kill us. We hit, but it wasn't a kill blow and Chaos was up. He hits and as soon as we think we're gone, we see that our Knight has 1 HP left. We go for another hit hoping it will be the one to kill Chaos, but no! Chaos' turn and he decides to power up, heal himself, or something; but doesn't attack us. Now, the last hit comes down from our Knight and its a critical hit...taking Chaos out!

Such a good day