What is your favorite Final fantasy game?

[Runa216]

COKTOE said:

Runa216 said:

but why? Aside from graphics/sound it had no redeeming factors, and even the graphics/sound were generic and bland even if they were crisp and detailed. 

:) For now, I don't want to get into it tooooo much. I wouldn't say the graphics and sound  were generic or bland, but hey, more power to you.  From a gameplay standpoint, the battle system was easily my favorite. It's main weakness for me was that it to way to long to fully reveal it's excellence. In the main series, I have only played 6, 7, 13, and half of 13-2 ( I bailed because I totally messed up the character bulids ). FF VII basically made me quit the series for a decade. Not a fan. I think the original FF Tactics is my favorite game that bears the Final Fantasy name. It's between that and XIII.

but the battle system was terrible; at best you could time your character layouts and that was it. The entire game's battle system came down to 'switch to one of 24 possible battle positions at the right time'. You couldn't control your secondary and tertiary characters, if your main character died it was game over, and with the exception of chapter 11 the game might as well have been a rail shooter. 

And the story was easily the worst in any FF game. Possibly the worst told in ANY game. Seriously, you shouldn't have to do homework to understand who characters are or why they're important to the story. The in-game datalog is fine for stuff like enemies or bosses, but when you have to scour through hundreds of pages of datalogs just to get key plot elements, that's a failure of narrative. 

I just don't see any good in it. The main characters were flat and one dimensional, I don't even REMEMBER who the end boss/antagonist is (Barthandalus or something?), the plot was poorly told, the world was poorly developed, there was virtually no exploration or side content, the combat was rigid and fundamentally flawed, and it was WAY too linear. I don't mind Linear, but after playing VII, X, and XII in quick succession, getting platinum trophies on all of the above, I can honestly say that linearity has NO PLACE in Final Fantasy. Having a Linear story is one thing - almost all games do that - but having it so there's almost no exploration except one small area is not okay. Even Final Fantasy X had exploration and branching paths and a lot of world variation and engaging endgame content.

I just don't get how anyone likes Final Fantasy XIII. I really don't. PEople have told me dozens of times but it's like a scat fetish to me. I understand the appeal on paper and in theory based on what folks have told me but it's still people turned on by shit. 

And don't get me wrong, FFVII, VIII, IX, X, XII, and XV all have problems - some of them quite significant - but XIII is just bad from almost every angle.