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Egann on 25 February 2014
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JWeinCom said:
think-man said:
JWeinCom said:
think-man said:

Imo only 13 saga hasn't delivered and I never thought they looked very good to begin with. I don't really count the mmo's as FF.


I think FF12 was a pretty poor game.  FF8 was ok but with some rather massive flaws.  I liked 10, never played 9. 

12 had nice characters (aside from vaan), world and the story was good just wasn't told very well, 8 is probably my 2nd fav FF or closely tied with FF7 (can't make up my mind) The only FF's i've really disliked are FF10-2 and the 13 saga.

And it's pretty obvious which is my favorite FF lol



I HATED FF8 at first, but I've come around to like it a little more. I like the core ideas of the story, but there are plotholes big enough to fly a spacecraft through. The battle system is also a bit flawed, making it too easy to load up on powerful spells, and too easy to trigger limits. FFXII was just poorly paced. I didn't dislike the characters (not even Vaan), but the MMO styling made it too tedious to get anywhere. I like the openness, and I actually like the combat system, but certain parts were just so long and boring they killed the experience. The sand sea. Ugh. The story was OK but it has the same problem of 13 where they just kind of throw around ideas without properly explaining it. With enough repetition concepts sink in, but you always feel a step behind the story. I haven't played 9. I'm been meaning to, but it's just on a long list of backlogged games.

@slob-  Likable characters, a competently told story that makes sense at all points and has a clear direction, a balance between plot progressing linearity and exploration, a job system that is WAY WAY WAY better than either the sphere grid, the license system, or the ridiculous crystal thing, proper pacing, and a strong combat system that rewards proper planning and strategy.  Also very creative use of the 3DS's online features even for a single player game.

I've only played VII, VIII, XIII, and XIII-2. All of them had something great and absolutely terrible. It's incredible how they're almost never the same mistakes and yet Square Enix never manages to get it right.

VII had a great RP mechanic and some solid characters ruined by hippy lifestream. It wasn't until Crisis Core that I actually liked anything about it because Sephiroth is awesome there. If you think about it, his refusal to heal Genesis and the reasoning why is an absolutely devastating criticism of the human condition, and the creepy thing is he's absolutely right.

VIII had a great first few disks, but the RP mechanics were grindy in the extreme and the story kinda collapsed after disk 2. The surreal stuff at the end was kinda cool, at least. The story really needed another draft, because most of the plot holes were fixable.

XIII had a very pretty art style and I do kinda like paradigm shift in theory, but the level design and gameplay were utter garbage. The story actually has some subtle and redeeming elements, but no one notices them because the first and last acts are utterly terrible.

XIII-2 fixed the horrible level design, and the antagonist actually worked...mostly, but the gameplay was still mediocre at best. At least Noel managed to bring some good chemistry out of Snow.

The best Final Fantasy games are actually the spinoffs. Duodecim managed to get Light's personality better than XIII ever did, and that was for a cheap 4 hour beat-em-up campaign. War of the Lions had a fantastic story, but I found it infuriatingly difficult. Crisis Core had a great story, and because it is kinda dark Zach's mindless optimism comes off more as a survival mechanism than a character quirk, but the gameplay was too easy and...random.