My friend and I (both die hard fans) were chatting and reminiscing the other day about the glory this franchise had once achieved. Like literally, these games made our child-brains try to understand concepts way over our head and it was awesome. Love it.

In fact this drunken ramble kept going where he proposed the idea of playing each title of the series, 1-13, and Tactics, in order.

I want to ask fellow fanatics here... has anyone actually tried this, and is it even possible? My other friend chimed in and said that your head would definitely blow up after 2 (I can believe that). Now I may try to spend the next year attempting this, and if I successfully complete and LP of each game, my friend will buy me a 30 rack (maybe by the time I beat it I won't have money or something.)

What do you think would happen if this were attempted? How far have you got? Is there just too much Japan there for any normal human to handle?

It's certainly possible, but there's no way I'd advise it. That would just be insane, especially given how much Final Fantasy changes in such a short span of time (the first three games alone are nothing alike).

I actually don't know how anyone has had the patience for FF2. Like, that game is just dumb.

I think some of those games are just so archaic at this point that they'd just be frustrating rather than fun to play through, especially 1 - 3. Besides that it would just take fooooorever.

It's worse than dumb. It's just plain bad all the time, and it only get's worse as you get into the game. There are so many things wrong with that game. Why do you keep getting a completely useless 4th party members who rotates out every dungeon and is effectively level 1 every time you get them?! Why! I just killed them myself and left them dead for they're stay rather than grind them up to my "Level" and then lose them 30 minutes later.

Getting through every final fantasy shouldn't be too difficult. GO FOR IT MAN! Just take a breath every now and then and watch your fluid levels. Best of luck to you!

They're mostly pretty decent games so why not? FF2's leveling is so easy to exploit to make your characters have comical amounts of HP and thus negate any particular issues you might have. You should definitely try to fight Warmech if you're going to play FF1, its a rite of passage at this point.

If you play I-VI on emulators with liberal usage of fast forward during battles you can probably get through all of them in less than 100 hours, the rest will each take 30-40 hours, 60-80 if you're taking your time. For Final Fantasy Tactics keep a backup save a few battles back or you'll probably have to restart when you realize the game didn't want you to make Ramza random class X.

Wasn't there a user on here who was trying to play through all of them?

Anyway, yes, it certainly seems possible, but it's extremely time consuming and isn't really going to do much for you. You might consider it bragging rights, but do you really want to brag about playing through all of the Final Fantasies in a short amount of time? I mean, it's fine if you've played through them all as they've released over the years, but deciding to play through all of them in 2014 isn't a good idea. I'd strongly recommend just playing IV and VI instead.

@pontron: Over a year? That seems reasonable. You could finish 1 in like, less than a week.

You know, I tried to like 2. I played the PSP remake and it looked pretty nice and I was looking forward to the additional content, but I could not get past the absurd leveling. Stats increasing based on how many times you use them and how much you get hit sounds good on paper, but is absolutely infuriating in practice. I spent hours grinding because I didn't feel comfortable moving on. This is made especially worse since the remake has a dungeon featuring the characters who die, so you have to take the time to level them too. I spent so much time grinding that I felt I made no progress at all in the game, and I just put it down and never finished it. It remains one of two main series games I haven't finished.

Just those two? There's more to the series than that, even if we limit ourselves to the "canon" ones.

I recommend you play it in a way that allows you to use a fast forward button.

I've seen people attempt this on the forums before, never heard anyone say they actually completed it though.

I've more or done it, but I've played them at release (or close to it) which has been well over decades...

I'd just recommend playing the ones that interest you.

Yeah, I'd make the same recommendation. You might at least give each one of them a shot to see what you'd stick with, bu there's no need to force yourself through any of them that you're not enjoying.

I actually attempted this with a friend as well, we both finished up to IV and were at the end of V before we both (in roughly the same period) kinda stopped playing. It was kinda crazy to stop too since we both really wanted to play VI arguably the best in the series but we set a rule to finish one game first before moving to the next so we're stuck in limbo.

Sorry, I was thinking "classic" FF, as in, before VII. I don't know why I was thinking that specifically. Should probably add VII and X to that as well, that seems to be the commonly-accepted "best-of" list and would give any player a good idea of how varied the series can be, how it evolved, etc. Maybe toss the original in there if you're going for that, too.

Anyway, I still think that playing through all of the numbered FF games these days sounds kinda silly unless you have tons of free time or you plan on taking a long time to do it. It just sounds like something you would get bored of or annoyed with long before you ever finished, so just play the best the series has to offer and then look into V, VIII, XII, and XIII if you want more. What I played of the first FF didn't feel like it held up all that well, and it doesn't seem people think too highly of II either. And apparently V (and Bravely Default) do job systems way better than III did, so maybe it's not worth playing that one either.

I have played like one battle of Tactics, I can't say much of anything about it.

@believer258: You seem to have too many holes in your FF experience to be able to narrow down what ones to play o.O Outside of the Last of Us Tactics is the best video game story ever with the best character, plus its a shitload better than the well-liked new XCOM on the combat front. Everyone interested in RPGs should play I, even if its on fast forward in an emulator; its a very influential game and still pretty fun.

I think I might have to document the whole thing. Most things gaming are possible with enough red bull/local pizza place/beer.

I mean, it's not like you have to do every side quest and find every hidden items in each game. If you're just looking to complete them just get your characters to a decent point and charge through the story.

Since when has the internet been populated by people who know what they're talking about?

I'm a fairly recent newcomer to FF games - I've only really been playing them since early last year, and I've only actually gotten around to beating IV and VI (both of which were pretty great). I thought I'd give my two cents worth anyway. Might be worth hearing the thoughts of someone who hasn't been playing them since the 90's.

What I played of I seemed fine, but it seemed more like a template for what future FF's would be, instead of a fully-featured and engaging game.

I'll stand by suggesting IV, VI, VII, and X, instead of trying to run through the whole bloody series.

@believer258: If there's one thing the internet knows things about its Final Fantasy! My birth as a forum troll began in the bosum of a Final Fantasy site which no longer exists, I guess in some regards Final Fantasy is what Star Wars used to be (when I was 8) for me, even though I don't care at all about SW anymore I still have some amount of brand loyalty/respect for Square.

Are we counting Final Fantasy XI as part of the challenge?

It's not exactly some crazy, out-there idea or anything if you ask me. Honestly, the biggest hurdle is time, but if you're doing it over the course of a year though, that's waaaay more than enough time to burn through them all. Other than that, there are large sections of older FF games I have no interest in playing in this day and age. That's just me though. It's not that those particular sections are bad per se, but everything about them feels archaic in every possible way. Give it a shot though.

I would just like to add that I hope you're including X-2, XIII-2, and Lightning Returns. Out of that bunch, the only one I actually like is X-2 (it's legitimately my favorite FF game), but I still feel like if you're going on this journey, those are pretty much required as well.

There is a better use of your time than to play them all.

I've been going backwards from X. So far I've completed X, IX, and VII (couldn't find my VIII disc at the time). I'm currently on a gaming hiatus thing, so I haven't been playing/editing my thoughts on it for some time now, but I'll get back to it soon enough. I haven't really been keeping strict terms on this though, so if I feel like I'm going insane halfway through one, I've reserved the right to just call it quits and move on to the next if I'm still up for it. So far, though, it's been going fine. Maybe that might change once I get to the 1-3 area, though.

I did that a few years back, besides FFXI(MMO) and FFXIII(wasn't out yet).

It is possible, but you're better stretching it out across a week than trying to do them back to back. Also, having some guides(speedrun guides. ha) can be of a big help.

It's possible. A buddy of mine has played 1-10. It's just not something to marathon.

If you play FF3, just stick with the onion knight class. They are way stronger than they should be, and since you never have to start your level over if you never change class, you end up stronger than you would if you switched classes. It's absurd.

There are have been several times where I've said out loud to one my brothers that we should try to play all the Zelda games in order from start to finish (which would be a similarly crazy endeavor), but then I realize that would take months or years and I never actually do it.

I've done this with all of the ones that were on the virtual console. It was very possible and fun, but the time was split between a few people.

Also, Fuck it I'm doing it and streaming it for charity. Skipping FF2 though cause its pretty much like hooking a controller up to an ass and trying to play that (if that's even a reasonable analogy... I don't know.)

@pontron: Stream subscriber stretch goal is to finish off the run with FF2. Believe.

Emulate them and hack save states. You can completely subvert the grind. Or make the difficulty a complete joke. Many years back, I played through FF1 in an emulator, hacked all my stats to be max and Chaos: the final boss, ran away from me. It was awesome.

I've beaten FF1 - FFXIII, though not in order, and I don't count FFXI. I did beat X-2, but haven't beaten XIII-2 or Lightning Returns...and I'm not sure I ever will!

I worked on playing VIII, IX, and XII this year, since I had barely seen any of them before. I still haven't played pretty much any of the pre-VII games, except for a decent chunk of FFIV before I threw it across the room in a fit of rage (stupid hard DS version). I don't know if I care enough about those early ones to even bother, barring VI--I'll probably only play that if they rerelease in some way, though.

@truitt: You should! They're both great!

I suggest you play the ones that came out in North America, so IV, VI, and VII-XII. You're not missing out on much by skipping I-III and V.

I think all the main line Final Fantasy's are great but 1 and 2 are easily the hardest to get in to but still worth playing. I can't recommend 4, 6, and 8 enough but that's a personal biased.

@tobbrobb:

This made me die laughing.

This sounds crazy, and just about as probable to happen as WinterKewl had finishing YogVentures!

TOPICAL!

As someone who had trouble just going through ONE Final Fantasy game this summer, I would sincerely advise against doing that. Then again, I think playing the 3 NES games back to back might be persuasion enough with all that grinding and cheap difficulty (and in the case of 2, baffling mechanics).

But seriously, if you are willing to go down this dark path my only advice is to play the international version of XII because it is significantly more interesting with its character builds.

I recently finished playing the original Final Fantasy, and I have to say it isn't as difficult as you make it out to be. Just be smart about how you play (save your better spells for the boss of a dungeon, try to avoid encounters when going for bosses, etc.), and you're in for a moderately challenging experience.

Also, not as grindy. I managed to finish the game five levels under the incredibly low cap:

@video_game_king: I know the first game isn't as hard as one would expect it to be, but FFIII (or at least the remake, can't speak for the NES game) is kind of a jerk.

Final Fantasy III on the DS is a hard game, but then, so is the DS version of Final Fantasy IV. Both are modernized in various ways, but nerfing the difficulty wasn't an aspect of that.

For FF4, at least, I remember there being at least a few areas where the developers softened the difficulty (the Dark Elf fight probably being one of them). I'm guessing it didn't help much, considering that Zeromus ranks up there with Riku as "video game bosses so fiendishly difficult that I began memorizing their preceding cutscenes because I fought them so many damn times."

@hailinel: @video_game_king: Isn't Edward not god awful in the DS version? I'm sure Zeromus is still reasonably difficult, particularly if you can turn up the speed at which you fight him.

@fredchuckdave:

I've played the PS1 and DS FF4, Edward was a useless piece of crap each time. I'm glad he's dead.