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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
- 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!
- 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.
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Frankly fo my time, best gaming series ever. With a few exceptions each one stands alone as it’s own story, but there are the ever present threads that in some cases turned into almost easter-egg items in a given game. Where are Biggs and Wedge going to show up this time? Can I get my hands on a choccobo? Hey Cid, thanks for the airship…