I can be more elitist than all y'all! Everyone knows that Final Fantasy X-2 is the epitome of the series, and anyone who disagrees is a fucking retard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*

INSERT LENGTHY OPINION FILLED TEXT HERE

*: Not really. I dunno. I have no interest in ever playing VII, or really anything post SNES era except maybe XII and my brief adventures with X-2, but I fully accept that that is my opinion and that people are free to like what they like.

@Zenaxzd: I'm not criticizing the upgrade mechanics or the multitude of ways you can develop your character I'm criticizing the way combat actually works. You can lavish as much praise on the license board and the equipment as you want, because that stuff is all good, but in the end it amounts to a fraction of the playtime, and combat takes up a vast majority of the gameplay, and if its not engaging you as a player then its failed. Its clear from my post that I was experimenting because I ended up trying two completely different builds for my leader just in one playthrough, first I tried using Basch as a Paladin esque type character whose damage came from his spear, and his bow, but who was capable of healing my party when things went haywire. But because attacking with a melee weapon required no input, and when I found that the healing role was better performed by an ai who could react instantly to any danger with some good healing gambits equipped I started using Ashe as my typical wizard with a staff type character so I would have a few more options in combat.

I found most random enemies would go down in a hit or two from my ai party members with their melee so it wasn't necesarry for me to use my magic on them. So I figured maybe the magic would come in handy with the bosses, but oh wait, I have these attacks that with a little luck can decimate half of a bosses life bar which draw from the same resource pool as magic... I wasnt going around quickening to death every giant cobra I ran into either, when referring to Mist attacks Im specifically talking about bosses. I just found that black magic was unncessary because with the amount of time it took to charge against a boss versus a regular physical attack factoring in the cost of MP, that it was more efficient for me to use quickenings and melee while saving one of my characters mp for healing. If they meant for me to be experimenting in these fights and trying different things against these bosses then they should not have included a system that allows me to cripple a boss with such little effort.

Sure there are an endless number of ways you can customize your characters to change up your play styles, but in my searching I never found one that made me feel actively engaged. You can blame my not having fun on me playing the game wrong, but I don't think that says anything good about the game that I could stumble through the whole thing twice and not find a single build that allowed me to enjoy playing it.

Hey guys.

I just want to say thank you all for reading and replying to this post, whether we agree or disagree it doesn't matter.

Not only this but I know that this is a contentious issue but the vast majority on here are very civil which is really cool.

Best regards

Dave

You know, I couldn't agree more with this blog. Every single line of dialogue in FFXIII was embarrasing as heck, and each time there was a cutscene featuring Snow and Hope I wanted to gut my fucking eyes out. Only through sheer willpower did I manage to force myself to finish that debacle.

And seriously, what happened to the music? Gone are the epic soundtracks of old, replaced by some god-awful jpop/trance/whatever.

@Petiew: Should have added a caveat "That I've played extensively," haha. I've only briefly touched FFI and II and never experienced III so they're off my list. VII is above V and VIII on my with VIII being the bottom of the bunch. For giggles, and I may have listed these differently at some point, my order goes VIII, V, VII, XII, X, XIII, IX, Tactics (because it's the best game ever made and needs to be mentioned as often as possible).

I'm at work so I can't get more into detail but if you want to know I can fill you in on my reasoning later.

@Animasta said:

@Draugen said:

@Zenaxzd said:

We all have our favorites, for now 12 will remain mine and is my mirror of your experience with 7.

Yes! Thank you! For all this time, I've felt so alone. I thought I was the only one in the world.

Fistbump, bro.

me too

Me three.

Damn son, these guys is mad. But I definitely agreed with what you said about XIII just being about the glamour of saving the world. There was a lot more character development in the older games, or at the very least it was shrouded in mystery so it "seemed' like development. In XIII, they simply tell you what the characters are at the beginning, and that's what they are at the end. Vanille is gonna be ditzy and peppy, Hope is gonna be melancholy and spontaneously hopeful... yep, Lightning is gonna be aloof and sober, Fang is gonna be a badass, and Sazh? (i think that was the black guy) is gonna have a chocobo in his hair so everyone will laugh, oh he had a sob story too. Snow was the only one that had a struggle and he basically got depressed, realized it, and then turned right back into the same guy he always was.

Yeah, the first FF you ever play will be your favorite and mine is X. But I've played all the others and even I can tell that XIII was oversimplified in all aspects. And OMG is that XIII-2 song terrible. I mean at least "My Hands" (XIII) and the ones from Kingdom Hearts sound good for pop songs, but this thing is just atrocious.

Also, it's really stupid when you tell someone it's just their opinion so they should shut up in the comments on their blog. Agree or disagree, don't make stupid hypocritical and semantic arguments.

What an exciting pissing contest this was to read! No, seriously. It's great to see so many fierce opinions.

This was very interesting to read, so I figure I'll chuck my point of view in here. I like FF-X the most, the characters resonated with me more than any others in any game I have played since. This was however my first Final Fantasy so comes with all the attatched nostalgia and expectations as to what the series should entail. After FF-X I have sought out and played every game in the main series bar FF-14 and have found them all enjoyable in one way or another (though I have not cleared the majority of them).

That said I had only dabbled in FF-7 in the ps2 era and managed just a month ago to go back to it and play through the entire game. I think the sound track is great, I was affected by Aeris' death despite knowing it was coming (also great use of Aerith's theme to tug at the old heart strings Nobuo Uemetsu did wonders here), and I found it to be a good gaming experience with little prior playing of it in this day and age. Also the use of pre-rendered backgrounds help that game remain visually interesting even to this day. I guess what I'm saying is that without nostalgia I was able to find a great deal to enjoy about the game.

I think that the series has evolved and each iteration changes some things, and so expecting any new Final Fantasy game to be like your favorite is likely to leave you disappointed. Now FF-13 has been critically regarded as poor as opposed to the vast majority of the rest of the series which were praised in the wider press, so perhaps there is something to those that say it is the worst one yet. Personally I enjoyed it although I found the characters disappointing, probably as I was seeking the character development of X.

Finally sorry for the longish post and dragging up an old thread.

@28daveslater:

It's funny seeing people pine over Final Fantasy 7 and wonder what happened because I unabashedly hate that game. I think it ruined Final Fantasy.

That being said, I think to answer your question of "what happened", I went to a ballet recently, Giselle, and was overpowered by the sudden realization that the earlier final fantasy games took a LOT of cues from ballet and other performance art. (Specifically the scene where the Maidens of the Dead throw the ususpecting male character into the lake by twirling. It was like something right out of Final Fantasy IV)

Now, Final Fantasy is taking most of it's cues from movies as the rest of the genre is.

OP, you gotta try Final Fantasy 6, Kefka is way cooler than Sephiroth.

@Draugen said:

@Zenaxzd: And it's not just Nolan North. I think that the voice performances in FFXII are the strongest I've ever seen in any game.

I know alot of people complained about it, but I simply cannot get enough of Fran's accent. You know what? I'm blowing the dust off my PS2 right now and booting it up. It's been far too long.

@Animasta: Word

The acting was good in the game but I was unable to fully enjoy it because of the way they sound. All the voice recording have this echo like quality as if they were recorded on bad mics. It may seem trivial but it bugs me to the point were I could not fully enjoy the story.