Dude im trying to save people from having a terrible expirience, is not hate, is love for my fellow gamers  and JRPG fans. If i dont spread the word people might think FF13 is a JRPG, and go buy it and that would bring shame for the genre, is like buying HALO 4 and finding out i plays like LOCO ROCO,  a lot of people like LOCO ROCO but come on, is not HALO.

Forget the whole internet (lowest common denomonator), I was referring to VGC. I tend to take the community's opinion here a lot more seriously than "the internet's" opinion. There is quite a bit of love for FF8 here, and frankly I don't get it. I would enjoy hearing a sensible argument (or just list of reasons) why folks here liked FF8 as much as they did (hell, there's a good amount of love for it in this thread...which is what prompted the alliteration in the first place).

Hey, this is coming from someone who enjoyed FF12 (not the story, and not so much the characters, but I loved the whole run around the world freely entering/exiting battles at will.

If the story and monsters were so lame, then how could you stand to play it for a month, especially if you played nothing else? Seriously; that borders on perverse.

If a game doesn't get good within the first couple of hours, that's a deal-breaking flaw. It doesn't matter how good it might get after that, because sane gamers have better things to do than slog through multiple hours of something they don't enjoy (for example, perhaps playing something they do enjoy) just for the sake of a questionable promise of things getting "better." A game that doesn't start good, or at least get good very quickly, is not good at all.

I'm real glad everyone has had real strong opinions about Final Fantasy. Just not a fan of personal attacks.

That being said, I see the comments basically falling into two camps:

Pre-FF7

and

Post FF7

My first Final Fantasy was VI, then V, then VII, VIII, and X

With each game until FF8, there was a huge leap in gameplay. 

Job/Character Class System - revolutionized RPGs (simple, highly customizable, and addictive)

FFII-FFV

Espers/Materia System - revolutionized (simple, easy to understand, addictive)

FFVI-FFVII

For me, 5,6,7 are games I want to play over and over again. All the rest of the games are forgettable affairs.  All the mixing, matching, and leveling up of jobs, espers, and materia really made people want to play in different ways. 

While the underlying systems of 8-12 were different, none of them really have people saying please come back to that fighting system. It feels like everything got too complicated, intricate, and clever. I want a deep but simple to understand system that makes me want to play the game over and over.

man is this thread ever filled with trolls.

*sigh*

Another FF thread that went awry because of the same old complains. We get it already, any FF that comes out must be a FF6/FF7 rehash or it will just suck and the same complains will be forever issued to the newest iteration of the series.

As someone already said here in this thread, unfortunatly, FF fans are amongst the most nitpicky and trully mind-boggling fans out there. With fans like these, FF needs no enemies indeed.

My Top 5 games in the series go something like this:

1 - FFVII

2 - FFXIII

3 - FFXII

4 - FFIV

5 - FFVI

I don't know what it is about FFXIII, but it's still INSANElY fun 80 hours in lol. What's your top 5 dude?

Mine's something like this:

1 - FFVI
2 - FFXII
3 - FFIV
4 - FFVII
5 - FFIX

With FFXIII coming just close to FFIX. I loved FFXIII and it was really fun, especially once you get to chapter 7 (and chapter 12 has one of the best CGI scenes I've ever witnessed in my gaming life).
It's not a FF game that everyone will love, yet it doesn't justify the amount of hate it gets. It boggles my mind how some long time FF fans still don't understand that FF is all about change between each new game.  

@letstat - It's all about learning to appreciate the change. I've been a LONG TIME fan of the series. The first time I played was almost two decades ago. Every single game makes huge changes and I welcome these changes 99% of the time.

For me, the battle system is a huge part of any JRPG. Final Fantasy is amazing because they are constantly innovating in this department. This is also the reason I regard FFXIII and XII as two of the best games in the series.

Here's two of the reasons ppl hate FFXIII:

1 - Not a PS3 exclusive. It seriously bothers PS3 fanboys to see such amazing sales for a game that was supposed to be exclusive. Honestly, half the hype for this game turned into hate before it even released.

2 - Not Nintendo exclusive. Believe it or not, there are still nintendo fanboys that are bitter about the fact that Final Fantasy moved onto different platforms. You can spot these people very easily: they think the series sold out after VII.

what I find weird with Final Fantasy is how passionately people hate it. I mean, when a person doesn't like a game, they usually just don't play it. With FFXIII, it seems people will go out of their way just to troll the game. Look at Rhada's signature for reference. It's like they feel the need to express their hate at every possible moment.

Because the graphics were great, the gameplay was fun and addicting, the characters were likeable, the music was enchanting, the battles offered great strategy, the upgrading was addictive, Vannile had a nice booty, and I wanted to see the ending. 

Just because the game had a lame story and lame villains (the manin villains, not the monsters) doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.  Quit seeing things that aren't there.  I loved FF13 while it lasted.  I'm just not going back to play it just to ride a chocobo.  Find somebody else to crusade against.  I'm not the droid you're looking for.

-Oh, and Super Mario has lame villains and a lame story.