The first FF was the best game in the series. It was your party from start to finish. You could replay with different class make-ups. They didn’t close off parts of the map as you progressed through the story and dump in characters or take them away as events unfolded. And, you could level 4 black belts to 50 and one shot Chaos with crazy 24 hit combos.
The only one with a truly open world and map. Fight me.
Final Fantasy 2 (actual 2 not the one with Cecil) is way underrated. Its got a dialogue system like Morrowind, skills that get better as you use them, a fantastic villian, and great story beats. Its also the first game to have Cid. Also also people love FF for the mix of fantasy and tech and 2 is the first game to really embrace that theme. 1 has a one off robot and the airship, but 2 really shows the empire abusing technology to retain power.
SPOILERS SPOILERS [people love 6 because the world gets messed up, but 2 did it first with the empire destroying several cities] END OF SPOILERS
And you have talking beavers and I think thats great.
The music is also great! I think people hate it because they try and min-max the combat and not just enjoy it for what it is.
I enjoyed it more after I played SaGa, felt like an earlier version of that idea, really underrated, the only people that really have genuine hate are probably japanese since it was quite bugged at release, but westerners played the mobile or psp ports of it that are fixed, it’s a good game.
I had to scroll a bit but I found a fellow cultured fellow. I have FF2 on multiple platforms and not only do I agree with everything you said, but it makes me very sad that its system never got to be developed further in FF games. I love replaying it because I can focus on different play styles each time. Beyond some moments of grinding (like getting certain spells to drop or leveling select spells) the game/story is short and sweet. Also, one of the things I love so very, very much about FF2 (and 3 for this reason): so many enemies in one battle. I love prioritizing enemies or just AOEing, sometimes unloading just to survive or being very methodical so to conserve spells/MPs (depending on the version). Lastly, I love how good support is: control, buffing, debuffing - it’s all solid. If I hated anything, I’d say that some versions has odd status healing/preventing.
The last good Final Fantasy game was 9.
That is a hot take because X is great.
FFXIV’s combat is face numbingly boring.
Also VIII was better than VII.
FF7 remake’s battle system sucks. Some spells whiff so often they’re basically useless (aero against Eligor anyone?), punisher mode is so much better than operator mode there’s no real point in having the latter except for the fact that punisher’s walk speed is awful, the roll’s terrible range and lack of I-frames make it borderline pointless, items shouldn’t use ATB gauge, and guard break is a stupid mechanic that just stretches out fights while making making them less fun.
Any FF that uses real-time combat is not a real FF game. The series died with X.
Are those two separate, unrelated statements? XII and XIII both had turn based combat.
Cold take, I know, but I think FFVIIR is a falsely advertised sequel.
agreed, it was a clever bait-and-switch-with-an-out
“no, remake doesn’t stand for REMAKE … it stands for RE-MAKE the story, completely, like … history is being REMADE! it’s time travel baby!”
they knew what they were doing; literally EVERYONE was expecting a close remake of the original game for modern consoles, instead we got a FINE and VERY COOL SEQUEL, but nothing close to the REMAKE they led people to believe.
What do you mean by falsely advertised?
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Spoilers
Major story changes and can only take place after the original has already happened. It’s a retread, but a sequel nonetheless. They explicitly said in interviews and such that it would be a faithful remake (despite additions).
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Oh I know it’s a sequel. I just didn’t know what you meant by the rest.
Personally I was pleasantly surprised it was a sequel and I’m glad it wasn’t advertised as so. As I started realising that the little changes weren’t just because of them taking creative liberty on the source material but instead something more and still in-universe to the original, the cogs in my head couldn’t stop turning as I was trying to figure out what was actually happening. I liked that feeling as I was playing.
I enjoyed the game more because it was a sequel and because they didn’t tell us before hand and now that the cat is out of the bag and I’m already hooked in, I am sooo excited for the next games in the series.
I found it to be pretty anti-consumer, but no beef if you enjoyed that.
Anyway, here’s hoping it ages well like MGS2.
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FF9 had better characters and story than FF7
FF8 was underrated and deserved better
100%
My problems with IX are slow combat. My problems with VII are everything else.
The real combat is handling the hours of screen swirls and camera flying uselessly around the battlefield along the way. Otherwise, it would be a fantastic game.
agreed; this doesn’t mean i hate 7 though (it’s only of my favourites); i just think the emotional depth and growth of the ff9 cast - both antagonists and protagonists - is that good.
plus freya is probably the best character in ff history
All Final Fantasy games have bad writing and cringe inducing dialogues. Which was fine when the games had no voice audio, but I just can’t stand it in the modern FF with voice overs. Square Enix really needs to hire competent writers that aren’t solely influenced by manga.
I liked the original ending of FF7 a lot more before the lore was expanded by other entries. I thought that in order to save the planet Holy literally killed every human in the world and it was just Red XIII and a bunch of animals running around in the post apocalyptic ruins.
The games are soundtrack simulators. Nobuo Uetmastu is heart and soul of the series. The rest is just packaging for it.
Jobs and materia are fun to play around with though.
Soken is good, idk about this other guy though.
It really is a core part of the vibes and tone of the series. Even the ones with no story to speak of and/or bad old turn-based gameplay had the good music, design, etc.
Well that certainly is a hot take.
VIII > VII
100%!
I haven’t played all of them, but I am still obsessed with VIII. I don’t think I have played an RPG more than that game. Closest is probably Baldur’s Gate 3, but I have a long way to go still. I could never bring myself to play a game more than once, if I finished it at all, and that was the first RPG as a kid, and as an adult, I had the patience to sit and play all the way through and then some.
I don’t know if I’d quite go that far, but VIII is hella underrated.
I think people pretend to like XII because it was their first contact with a MMOlike, there’s no way someone actually loves that party.
The game improves greatly when Fran is the party leader.
The ‘Squall is Dead’ theory is canon for me and I don’t give shit what the developers say. That theory makes the story infinitely better.
Also, VI is better than VII.
FF8 is the best, exploitable stats mechanics were really fun and even realising enemies scale up their stats to match up with your broken build, so all your leveling was working against you. It was refreshing.
