The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Final Fantasy series of video games. What are your favorites? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Visual Novels, Hollow Knight, Nintendo DS, Monster Hunter, Persona, Monkey Island, 8 Bit Era, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
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I have played and enjoyed every single Final Fantasy game. Even XIII has some great stuff going for it. The series strong suit is that it’s never stale. Each game is a fresh, new take on a somewhat familiar net of design philosophies.
My favourite is XII. I love its job and gambit system, as well as the world design and music. IX comes just a tiny bit short, then V, probably.
XII is my favourite as well. Interesting how controversial gambit system ended up to be, some love it, some hate it. I personally love that it gives the freedom to do any type of weird stuff you’d like to do and maintain good pace in battles.
Those who dislike it, I imagine, don’t enjoy combat where the player doesn’t have to push buttons, but 1) you never have enough gambit slots for everything you’d like to do, so you have to adapt and choose magicks/items yourself at times; 2) many RPGs suffer from exactly the opposite problem - you encounter a familiar enemy, know of one efficient way to defeat it and have to choose the same options in battles against it time after time just because you know that it works; mindlessly pushing a few buttons isn’t much different from not pushing any buttons at all in this case.
The problem with the gambit system was it was too easy to script an attack setting that the battles played themselves and you could only lose if you were grossly out leveled.
Finished the game like this by just walking thru it, just killed the challenge. And it wasn’t set up well to use commands, more just the gambit system.
“If weak to fire then cast Fira”. You don’t even need to have your characters learn the weakness first by scanning them, they just intuit every weakness.
Well, to each their own. Gotta note, though, that the vanilla and Zodiac Job System PS2 versions are more challenging than the Zodiac Age version.
XII was one of the first mainline games I played through, and I really got into it. After playing most of the rest, I get why it doesn’t come off as a “proper” FF game. That said, I always wanted more just like it. Perhaps a spinoff, or maybe ivalice alliance could be reinstated as a more tactics-focused FF franchise while the main line goes on doing… whatever it did for XVI.
I’ve played Tactics only this year and was surprised how much XII resembles it in mechanics despite these games belonging to different RPG subgenres. It lead me to think that XII only happened because there was this proper foundation of Tactics, so I doubt there’d ever be another mainline game in Ivalice, but more Tactics games are possible, I think.
I wish I’ll have enough time at some point to get to the Ivalice storyline in XIV.
I’m the weirdo that thinks FF8 was the best one. Squall actually grew as a character, matured from an angsty emo teen into an adult who assassinates authoritarian leaders (or at least tries to)… And don’t forget that Rinoa launches her dog like a wrist-mounted crossbow, as an attack. Best FF game.
Teenage me was blown away by the “free, unlimited” use of Guardian Force (summons in previous games). First time summoning Shiva was magical.
The worst part, for me, was the excessive use of FMV parts, mostly because my PSX suffered a cousin-related accident and would, more often than not, fail to properly play videos. It was like 5s, freeze for 3s, 1s play, another second frozen, 10s…
I think there’s a fair few of you. Don’t feel bad.
I like it but found the fear of using items you might later need too be exacerbated to an uncomfortable degree by the magic system. I suspect I’d enjoy it more today than when it came out.
I loved 8! I got so into the characters and their stories. I was always excited to see more Laguna & Co. I remember downloading the Eyes On You song, probably off one of those sketchy P2P music sharing services.
- 1 - …I respect the historical importance of this game.
- 2 - Actually, dual-wielding shields and attacking yourself to grind evasion is peak game design.
- 3 - Beta for FF5. Shame about that final dungeon.
- 4 - First game that actually holds up.
- 5 - Peak.
- 6 - I liked this game up until I found out that I was supposed to be grinding three distinct parties the whole time.
- 7 - I went into this expecting the first 3D installment to be another example of historically important but poorly aged. Was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up.
- 8 - I went into this knowing it’s the weird one. I was the sicko that liked 2, but I still couldn’t get through it.
- 9 - Bought it alongside 8, when I dropped 8 I never got around to this. I will eventually… maybe…
- 10 - Perfects the classic formula while still feeling sufficiently modernized. Uh, for some definition of modern…
- 12 - Hated hated hated the combat. Painfully tedious to take manual control, automation is too primitive. And I don’t want to automate the game away, I want to play it!
9 is one of the best. Not sure what you didn’t like about 8, but 9 feels a lot more true to the older games imo.
I have heard a lot of good things. I’ll probably start on it whenever I finally finish Persona 4 Golden.
- 1 - …I respect the historical importance of this game.
I had a coworker who swore by this game in the nineties. When I finally got to it, I played most of the way through, but lost the save and haven’t been able to pay through again.
- 4 - First game that actually holds up.
Played through in college over a weekend. Got pretty far in. Loved it.
- 6 - I liked this game up until I found out that I was supposed to be grinding three distinct parties the whole time.
Borrowed from a friend in high school and beat sneaking to play overnight. Fell in love with the series here. My friend from work said this was the weakest of the three, but I appreciated the story.Three distinct parties don’t matter if you constantly rotate them and then use the yellow dinos to power level.
- 7 - I went into this expecting the first 3D installment to be another example of historically important but poorly aged. Was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up.
High school friends were all into it. I couldn’t play until I could get it to play on Bleem! Currently on my 15th play through.
- 8 - I went into this knowing it’s the weird one. I was the sicko that liked 2, but I still couldn’t get through it.
Friend of mine and I played all the way through on this. The draw system is unusual, but looking back it was a great story. It was weaker without the cyberpunk dystopia of Midgar, and felt like I was now playing as the enemy. I also remember the trigger system infuriatingly.
- 9 - Bought it alongside 8, when I dropped 8 I never got around to this. I will eventually… maybe…
This got so much criticism when it came out. It’s actually a beautiful game that sticks close to the original premise.
- 10 - Perfects the classic formula while still feeling sufficiently modernized. Uh, for some definition of modern…
The grid on this is different, and the game is linear compared to some of the others. In contrast the characters are each so distinct. Also, the voice acting was a huge change.
15 was also automated. My problem with an open world is that it feels like you should scrape the world clean. Also, I was never sure when to move forward and got stuck forever in the first area.
2 gets a bad rap. Hitting yourself to increase max health works against yourself in the long run. Many late game monsters do % of max health damage. Characters with inflated max health will struggle more in those battles. I played the game normally with minimal grinding and ran into no issue.
Percentage-based damage doesn’t make you struggle more with more health, it just means a few attacks take the same number of hits to kill. You’re never any worse for it, and you’re still better against every other attack in the game.
Also, I said evasion anyway, not health.
Tactics is my favorite by far, possibly because of how grounded its story feels compared to most other Final Fantasy. The tactical combat is also amazing, unlocking the jobs from playing and leveling up different combos instead of at set points of the story (FF3, FF5) was very engaging. There was a lot to discover and teen me didn’t access GameFaqs often back then.
Anyday now I’m going to spend “decades” playing just to get the child prince into his teen years. I’m 99% sure the texts of the game won’t change, but it’ll be funny nonetheless.
We have been spoiled a bit with games recently yet I still crave a FFT full remake.
Thanks to Tactics I hugely got into XCOM later, and I still hope for some kind of proper remake or sequel.
Hopefully one where they don’t fuck up magic effects and summons dropping FPS because of shitty code that the community figured a 4kb fix on the PSP
Tactics was actually my first introduction to FF as a whole. I was intimidated by the numbers attached to the titles of all the other ones, so tactics seemed like a good place to start. I still love the music and the atmosphere of Ivalice, and I feel like so much is left unsaid about that realm.
I love how the 3 first music you hear are one of inner calm, with Ovelia praying, suddenly changing to tension with the arrival of enemy soldiers and finally one of the best combat music of the game
Vagrant Story takes place in Ivalice as well and is the only game I’d say I love as much as Tactics when it comes to sheer vibe/atmosphere. The opening gameplay sequence is amazing.
Yeah dude, Tactics was incredible. Art style, music, gameplay, story, just the vibe, man. My only beef is that it had the typical FF ending feeling of getting too sort of “out there”. Went from a very human story to the typical third act of oh now there’s some big weird big bad I have no emotional investment in to pose a more serious threat I guess.
Agrias remains one of my all time favorite characters.
Screw Algus.
I’ve always liked FF. We had FF1 on the NES back when but the battery in it was dead so we had to the leave the console on. My brother got through it after a good number of afternoons.
I never got into it though. I like watching it. I remember the obsession around FFVII.
Then I picked up one of those SNES Mini things that came with… FFIV. That one got me. I wasn’t surprised to find out that loads of people love that one in particular.
I don’t like recent FF tendency of reducing the playable party to just one character. The whole beauty of JRPGs is that you can play around with your party, and XV and XVI don’t have that, which is a shame. VII Remake, however, is great at combining action with the party management, I hope Square would choose this path for future FFs.
I am probably in an extreme minority here, but my favorite final fantasy game is… XIII. I remember being so hyped when it came out, the graphics on my PS3 were unreal. This was at a time in my life where I was unable to finish any big game due to limited attention span, but I played the first hours of that game a lot and really enjoyed it. Since then I’ve tried getting into VII, IX, XII and XIV, and all of them I bounced off of. However, trying XIII again years later on PC, it just feels so comfy. I don’t need to think too hard were to go or what to do, just let the game guide me and enjoy the music and spectacle.
I’ve noticed lately that I absolutely love linear games: half-life, portal, uncharted… are all experiences I adored because of their simplicity. Just move forward! I feel that a lot of mainstream gaming has become about side objectives, open worlds and collecting 100% of collectibles, and it is honestly exhausting. If you have any linear game recommendations, please chime in :)!
I always wanted to play the one I saw my friend’s older sister playing on her Xbox 360 when I was younger. The main character had pink hair and it looked really good for the generation of consoles. Not sure which one it was though
That would be 13. :p
Aaaa thank you! I’m going to game exchange and seeing if they have it now hahaha
Some how the game doesn’t exist on Google…
No problem! There is about 40 hours of walking down a single path, but I actually like 13 a lot.
I’ve never seen google do that, by the way. That’s crazy.
Haha I know right. I thought it was a funny bug.
I did go to game exchange and completely forgot… But I got Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch
(For the most part, excepting those I haven’t played the main questline end-to-end.)
SSSS: X
S: VII, XIV, XVI
A: XIII, XII, Tactics, FFTA, VIIR, VIIR-2
B: VI, IX, XIII-2, Type-0
C: VIII, IV, Crystal Chronicles, Dissidia, X-2, LR: XIII, Bravely Default
F: Crystal Chronicles S, the Android port of FFTI love everything I’ve listed at C… for me, that just means “interesting ideas that I really love and hope they’ll revisit, but that ultimately didn’t land for me as a game in the form it was released in.” And yes, Bravely Default is a Final Fantasy game imho.
[Sorry for continually editing this, the Markdown formatting keeps giving me issues.]
For context I played the first one on NES when it came out. I liked how the different games each felt imaginative and a little different yet familiar due to certain common themes. I liked the games where the battles felt more tactical, like X, XII, and of course Tactics. I really like the setting of Ivalice, couldn’t say why but the setting is just appealing. I don’t like the turn the series has taken lately. XVI was a shallow action game and an even shallower RPG with paper-thin characters acting out a superficial imitation of A Game Of Thrones. I was way more invested in the character arcs of the cast of characters in VI than in the forgettable cast of XVI.
XVI looks like an Ivalice-setting game to me, but without the tactical approach of XII/Tactics. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but felt that the game tried too hard to be like one of the
cool kidsclassic installations in the series. It didn’t have a new idea, a spark behind it, only a concept that it has to have all notable FF elements like familiar summons, moogles, enemies, weapons, etc. But it’s a good game overall, didn’t go through development hell like XV and sold well.I actually really liked 16’s main storyline. Not sure where I rank it, exactly, but parts of it were extremely cool.
What I did not like were the barrel-bin jrpg-tier sidequests where characters show up out of the blue because they’re supposed to be in this scene and “you really thought I wouldn’t see the two of ya’s slinkin’ off” was all I guess the project had the budget for.
I can’t tell you how many times it felt like a character would tell me to go somewhere to do a thing because they can’t go, and so I’d go do it, only for them to show up anyway so they could thank me with sad music.
It was just exhausting how shallow and uninspired most of the side content was.
FF VII and FF VIII where the first two games I played in the series, but i was very young and didn’t really know what I was doing. I think we had rented one game, and borrowed another. I really don’t remember much about either game, but FF IX came out on ps1, and to this day it’s my image of what FF means.
The unique worlds, characters, incredible (at the time and not bad for today) cutscene cinematic. It was the first game I discovered you can outpace yourself and wind up in a battle with a level 60 dragon when you’re only level 13.
My brother really got into FF X and i remember watching him play. To this day, I hate Blitzball lol. We both sucked at it.
FF VII-2 for the psp was actually really cool. I don’t remember much anymore but the story, gameplay, and music were all great. I would like to try replaying it!
I played a little of XIII and quite a few hours of XV. The games have really changed. Especially XV, some things have improved for the better but there’s a lot of tropes and unfortunate stereotypes that could have been…removed.
Edit: Vivi is the best FF character! 😊
I’m a real youngster here, so my first final fantasy game was 16, but I really loved it so I picked up 14 and 7 remake. I never really got into 14 because MMOs, but 7 was an absolute blast! I’ve got rebirth and 16 lined up, but lately I’ve been getting more and more into retro RPGs so I’ve been considering going back and playing some of the older titles. I’ve heard tons of good things about 6, but I wonder if anyone else has any recommendations?
I really loved the original FVII. And FFIX and FFX. The older you go back the more boring the battle mechanics imo.
What I love about the series is that there are so many varied entries that everyone can find their own favourite, consensus be dammed.
I’ll always consider VI the absolute peak Final Fantasy - beautiful pixel art, Active Time Battles, SNES Mode 7, brilliant score, a fantastic story with a memorable villain and a large and varied ensemble cast of great characters… It has it all for me.
I also have to somewhat ashamedly admit that for whatever reason I actually have some fondness for XV. I’ve posted about it before but I have such a hard time succinctly putting my feelings about it into words, because it is by no means a good game. It’s probably the biggest discrepancy I’ve experienced between the objective quality of a game and how much I enjoyed playing it. Whether it’s the stellar fishing mini game or the random wholesome interactions between the gang and the overall bro trip vibe I don’t know but there is something there. And the score is no Uematsu perhaps but I really enjoyed it and thought they did some wonderful leitmotif work.
Yoko Shimomura is actually my favorite JRPG composer. She did Kingdom Hearts, Mario RPG/& Luigi, and Radiant Historia before this game.
Her combat music always stands out to me in particular for being emotionally unconventional. Everybody else makes a battle theme and all that’s on their minds to convey is “cool and/or scary that violence is happening, throw in some grandiosity if it’s a big one” but she’ll do stuff like “the enemy is the panicked one here; they’re trying to front like they’re badass but actually I weep for them” or “you are losing a nonverbal rap battle.”
XV actually let me down a bit in that specific regard but the soundtrack as a whole is very solid.
Yeah it’s funny now that you mention it but I don’t really remember the battle music if XV all that well. But I have stuff like Valse di Fantastica/Sunset Walz/Dewdrops at Dawn and Ardyn’s themes seared into my brain.
I love them. FFIX was the reason I got a Playstation (2). To me, VI to X + Tactics were peak. I had a hard time finishing the older ones even though they were decent, but from VI forward it seems like they put a lot of thought into the characters.
I own FFXIII AND XIII-2 but didn’t get more than 5 minutes in thanks to the battle system. One day I’ll give them another try.
I really like the trope of a secret island in a corner of the world map.
Funny enough, 13 is actually the one I’ve replayed the most. I think I’ve beaten it like 3 different times, in addition to whatever runs I didn’t finish. It’s kind of grown on me as one of my favorite ones.
Do be ready for about 40 hours of single-path walkways if you ever go back, though. I don’t actually think this is the problem some people make it out to be, but the game isn’t polarizing for no reason.
I like to replay XIII, too. I think its visuals and music are the main reason. The sound of leveling up in Chrystarium is awfully pleasing :D
I enjoy the battle system as well, although can’t quite explain why. Okay, I can think of one thing - the game requires the player to buff and debuff enemies for effective combat (Imperil status is especially interesting), and it’s not time-consuming. Oh, and XIII has cool flashy summons, Shiva as a motorbike is spectacular.
The paradigm shift system also introduces this… I dunno, ducking and weaving style gameplay? It’s like you’re the director of an orchestra looking for the right musical swell at the right time.
This paradigm shifting is the same kind that you do in other games when a party member needs to stop and focus on healing, but now that you have to shift your entire team’s focus, while keeping in mind that each role really needs time and momentum to truly be effective, you end up making these real-time opportunity cost decisions about which urgent thing needs the most attention, or whether you can split your focus even though a team that can do this is much weaker at both things it’s trying to accomplish. I really like the way 13 forces you to think about party formation.
I also give it credit for establishing the stagger meter, which was such a good idea that they’ve included it in like every game since then.
This is quite a nice summary! Yeah, the stagger meter is an awesome addition, especially since you have to take into account how exactly you reach the stagger. Do it with three ravagers too fast, and it runs out before you amass enough damage, for example.
My only issue with this battle system is that oftentimes, if you screw up your tactics, the game punishes you with prolonged combat instead of a game over. No MP, nothing to run out of, but you have to be effective so that battles don’t drag too long.
Something about the Blitzball players all being characters you could find in the world, some of whom would otherwise be unremarkable NPCs really burrowed into my brain with FFX. Something about the fact that you’d have relationships with characters in two different contexts where they would often play a wildly different role in each really made the world feel a little bit more alive than normal.
