Man... I never thought my love for FFVII would put me in the minority. Well, let me jump to its defense then! Seriously though, the opinions we all have regarding these games won't change... we all know what we've enjoyed and what we haven't... but it is fun to discuss! The characters in FFVII aren't nearly as memorable as some that we've seen in the franchise, but I think that they make up a pretty decent collective cast. Cloud is a little stubborn, and a little nuts, and seeing him and the party deal with that is a key part of the storyline. Definitely not your typical protagonist. I think Cid is a fantastic... his quest for space is one of the more memorable parts of the game for me. Vincent too is a great character with a great backstory (explored in more detail in the interesting FF: Dirge of Cerberus third-person action game)... and some of the secondaries are great too. Rufus and the Turks were pretty cool; just wished we could have seen more of them. The graphics are impressive when taken into context. This game marked the transition from a flat 2D world to a 3D environment (albeit very limited by today's standards) and from animated sprites to actual 3D characters. This was also the first RPG to use CG-cutscenes to enhance the storyline. I love the retro RPG style of the early nineties (probably more than most... I still follow the Dragon Quest series which has yet to update its very simple turn based battle system), but FFVII, with its cutting-edge graphics (yeah, yeah... at the time) introduced RPGs in a whole new way. It really was the precedent to today's games that have realistic and fully-realized 3D worlds. I'll agree to the first part to a certain degree. Any character could be your healer, any character could do your magic attacks, any character could be built to have devastating physical attacks... sure. There are some inherent advantages to using certain characters, but, for the most part, you could fashion any character to be what you wanted them to be. As for the second complaint... you could make that case in any RPG. In most games of this genre, you can find something in the game that's just OP, whether it be an ability, a weapon, a character (Orlandu anyone?). In FFVII, by the time you get Knights of the Round or Omnislash, you're probably high enough level to simply walk through the end of the game. If you're planning on taking on the Weapons, then sure, you have to use to those attacks because they can be difficult encounters. Personally, I think both KotR and Omnislash are memorable abilities. Sure, it can be... but that's why its a sidequest! It's hard for me to capture all the aspects that make FFVII such a great game in my mind... For one thing, I really thought that the game had a great atmosphere. Right from the beginning, those first few hours playing around in Midgar, you really get a sense of this world that you're playing in. It is one that is very different than our own, but it's facing familiar issues and the characters have familiar problems. The people and the locations in the world of FFVII made it more complete than anything I had seen before in a video game. The gameplay and the storyline flowed so well. This wasn't just hopping from town to town, talking to a few people in the village and realizing that your next task lay waiting in a nearby cave or tower (although I love those games too!). This was a different kind of RPG. The materia, while a very simple magic system, introduced a good amount of choice and characterization to your party. As for the characters themselves, while you could make what you wanted out of them with your materia selection, I always thought they each had their own unique feel to them... through their weapons and through their Limit Breaks. Anyways, like I said at the start... we won't change anyone's minds here. After this thread is long forgotten, I'll still love FFVII to death. :P
well, if the monkey island remake does well, and squareenix's lust to remake/port FF games at the drop of a hat, it may be the perfect excuse for them to port graphically updated remakes to PSN/XBL (I realy think that Final Fantasy is on the way out, 12 wasn't stellar, and X-2 felt like a jump of the shark)
^ You might be in the minority there. I think what Square has realized is that FF can be more than "just" RPGs, so they've been branching out and making different kinds of games with the FF license. I have no problem with this, either. I also don't have a problem with them making each game its own little franchise, although it's a bit silly to keep numbering them in that case. They should just be named, like Crystal Chronicles, so you know which universe it takes place in. I wish they'd make a sequel or tie-in to VI or VIII, but it seems like VII is the only one they're willing to dump a lot of extra resources into. Well, that, and the Ivalice/Tactics games. They do seem to love making those.
it's not the branching out into different game types i'm against, it's just that I found ff12 rather bland and X-2 was pretty gimmicky
FFVII has to be my favourite of the FF's for a number of reasons:- Length - The length is just right I think, not too long to make you wish they would just get it over with and not too short that you're left wondering "was that it". Story and mood - While the plot itself is serious and dark, it doesn't prevent the story from having it's lighter more surreal moments (which, with the exception of FF9, a lot of the later stories lacked). Characters - Most of them were pretty likable (apart from Yuffie who I could stand) and had oodles of personality. Cloud was no where near as "emo" as his later incarnations retconned him as. He was a bit of a nutcase to begin with, but that's understandable. Aeris, while in the end still a damsel in distress, manages to show she is still capable and not merely there as a love interest. Same goes for Tifa. Barrett's a stereotype sure but still had a decent plot behind him. Villain - As far as FFVII+ go I will say Sephiroth is the best, simply because it the goal of beating him is made very personal to the main characters to the point saving the world takes second place. After FFVII it's FFVI. It's got a resonably good cast (if not fully explored and developed), espcially in Locke, Celes and Kefca. Especially Kefca, that guy is the king of sadistic b**tards. Then it's FFVIII. Again a good cast, with some decent personalities. The focus on romance, while cheesy was still pretty well done. Couldn't give much of a damn for the villain though, nigh totally forgettable. FFIX's art style put me right off from the get go. 2D SD's is bad enough, 3D SD's though are horrendous. I personally found FFX incredibly dull, thanks mostly to it's characters. Except Auron that is, Auron made that game survivable. As for FFXII, it's been the only RPG I can't find the interest in completing. So far the only thing that was good about it is Balthier. As far a JRPG's go, I wouldn't say Final Fantasy is the best series, but I will say it has the best production values.
Balthier is honestly one of the best characters in the whole series. Such a fun guy. But surely there's something to be said for the badass that is Basch?
Balthier is the shit 'nuff said. On the other hand while Basch was a cool character Balthier, Fran, and Asch stole the Spotlight for most of FFXII. For my Favorite FF Games Here I go! Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core: While there were a couple of flaws here and there they were really unnoticable unless you pay attention. But I don't care about the flaws in this game, Crisis Core was the only game I ever played to evoke tears from me, which is like getting Spock to cry. Zack Fair and the cast were stellar and Crisis Core's story rivals that of FF7's. Final Fantasy 10: Though slightly overated, I have had countless of hours of fun on this game. Final Fantasy 7: The same reason everyone else loves this game. Final Fantasy 12: Han Solo...I mean Balthier made this game fun, along with the Gambit system I can go for a can of pop and the boss is usually defeated. BTW how do you get the Zodiac Spear? FF Games I havent Finshed yet: Final Fantasy 9: Eh....it was fun until I got Tales of Vesparia. Final Fantasy 3 (DS): got to the last level then my DS was destroyed FF games I look Foward to: Final Fantasy Dissida: A fighting game with a good STORY????? Oh My Gosh sign me up! Fabula Nova Crystallis(sp?) Final Fantasy XIII: The FF7 of today, it better not fail.
Lets see, haven't played I or II, as I suspect they'd be way too primitive and simple nowadays to hold my interest. My favorites were the middle games. The remakes of III and IV for the DS, as well as the GBA editions of V and VI. Don't get me start on VII. There must be a curse as I've started it many times but never managed to finish. First on a friends computer while I house-sitted for a week. They got home before I could finish. Second time my roomies cheap memory card died and deleted my save games (along with my FFT saves). The third tim eI got lost halfway through the game and just never got back to it. I'm hoping they'll eventually do a DS port. VIII and IX were fun, but to be honest I liked the series better when it was medieval fantasy based, instead of high-tech with a little magic thrown in. Never got a PS2, so I've never played X or beyond. Though I do adore the character designs in X and X-2.
VII was my introduction to the series and I still love it. I was utterly engrossed for months. I don't think the game is flawless - one thing that disappoints is that none of the towns and cities you visit throughout the game are as nearly as interesting or detailed as Midgar. Still the game excelled in every department. I don't count myself as a fan of VIII. The junctioning system never worked for me and some aspects of the game (e.g. finding different items to make into weapons) were pointlessly difficult. Story was made up as it went along. Strangely, despite the characters looking more realistic than in previous games, they felt more one-dimensional and childish (like that girl who makes one-word comments in big capital letters). Revisited the game with an open mind recently, and still couldn't get into it. IX is unfairly overlooked. I love the whimsical nature of the characters, and it's great to have a protagonist who contrasts so strongly with Cloud and Squall. Maybe the plot was a little unremarkable, but I loved the look and feel of the world. I've also played VI (a masterpiece) and X (superb but with annoying characters). By the time the third generation FF titles came along, I tuned out.
^ I fully agree about both VIII and IX. The drawing and junctioning system drove me nuts; the limit-break system was useless (access to attacks only when at minimal health and under heavy attack, thus dying before using what was always a rubbish attack other than Squall's anyway?!); most of the summons were so powerful it wasn't even worth using their spell equivalent - I'd particularly note Quetzacotl, Shiva, Ifrit, Pandemona and Leviathan; other summons were just utterly, utterly pointless - Carbuncle, Cerberus, Cactuar and Tonberry especially; the card game was great fun but got insanely complicated, and once you lost your best cards you'd never see them again; you only collected the cards to synthesise them into items anyway, so you'd probably never have the full set; a lot of the side-quests were dull and pretty pointless; and Eden... was KOTR not long enough and unskippable enough? Really? Eden was just plain painful to sit through. I will give VIII one thing - Ultimecia was the hardest boss I've faced on a FF game. Sephiroth, Kuja, Necron and especially Jast - despatched with ease. Ultimecia, in all her many forms, took me over a month. Sadly, the ending was the longest and dullest ending I've ever known. Also, Malestrom was a brilliant spell, and loved Seifer cutting up Odin mid-summon! FFIX on the other hand was great fun. It was my first taste of character classes, so I had much more fun deciding on a team than who to give materia to. Zidane, Dagger, Steiner and Quina (with Frog Drop, best move in the game) were unstoppable. I thought the cutscenes were glorious, especially the ones of the forces of evil using Eidolons to decimate entire cities - brilliant. The story was more engaging and interesting, and the characters, through being, in the main, not human, were more fun to play with (except Eiko, who I don't think I ever used). I also vastly preferred the Trance system and the Chocobo/Moogle quests to the earlier systems. Other than those, I love VII, loved X but got a bit bored of it when I'd fully completed it - Blitzball and all - and loved VI until, right before the final battle I found out I had to level up practically every single playable character to fight him, and had about 50 levels to make up on some of them. I admit it, I caved and gave up on VI - it was just demoralising.
6 suffers from having a really badly paced last third... which is sad because getting everyone together is one of the highlights of gaming. I mean, all RPGs go through the "gather all the heroes" phase of the game but it was just so memorable in 6.
Thanks for that, the FFVIII system was even weirder than I remembered. It's like the developers decided to make a huge departure from previous games, a noble pursuit in itself, but ended up with a very fiddly and disjointed system that didn't make an awful lot of internal sense. Another strange thing I remember is that enemies powered up with you - if you were at a late part of the game and returned to where the game started, the enemies there would be strong enough to take you on. Perhaps some gamers enjoyed the challenge, but it's not hard to see why a lot of people had issues with the game. I really loved getting everybody back together after the cataclysm. A lot of the re-recruiting was optional, but I wasn't going to leave any of them behind! If there was any problem with VI, it's the fact that some characters' individual abilities made them far more powerful and useful than others (or at least, in the immediate sense). Sabin's Blitz, Edgar's Weapons and Cyan's Swordtech are always more attractive options than Locke's steal.
I'm a huge FF fan. I have played and own all the games from the main numbered series. I've completed FF 1-2, 5-10, & 12. I've still got to complete FF3, 4, & 11. I also own all the main series sequel titles except for the Wii FF4 The After. I would absolutely love to have this but I don't own a Wii and have a hard time justifying a purchase just for that. I already bought my brother's Nintendo DS off of him just because FF3 wasn't available on any other platform. With the FF7 release on the Playstation Network, I've been working on continuing to play through using the players guide to get every item, side quest, etc. I look forward to further FF conversation on this board!
I must admit, I remember going through the trouble of getting everyone back as well. But I just had more time back then I guess. Even with full cheats on, I've only been able to get past the ghost train before getting sidetracked with other stuff. I do like that FF6 and CT were some of the first RPGs in my experience to introduce truly optional sidequests that highly influenced the plot. Saving Lucca's mother or just waiting for Shadow to come back so that you can save him... both highly emotional moments that are so small and completely optional. Sadly, I haven't really seen that kind of subtlety in an RPG for a while now. As for Locke's steal... wasn't that the only way that you could get unique items from the bosses? I remember grinding with Locke just to get some sword... before busting out the game shark.
I don't know why Square makes the weird choices that they do. There's no reason why the My Life as a King titles can't exist on any other platform, short of Nintendo funding the game, but they're stuck on WiiWare for... ever. FF4: TAY would definitely work on the DS... or even DSiWare in the worst case scenario. It's not like they can't just charge 30 bucks for it, given that they are charging 3700 points for the complete WiiWare version. Oh well.
On VI I loved getting everyone back together. It was realising you needed all available characters to fight the last bosses, and I'd only been using Edgar, Celes, Terra, Sabin and Cyan through the whole game. Why would I even consider using, say, Relm or her grandfather instead? Especially once you had summons, Quick, Ultima and the top swords. Shame. If I still had the data I'd have done it eventually, but my memory card got wiped and I never had the motivation to do it again. Same happened with V, but I never got too far on that one.
Just got Crystal Defenders on XBL Arcade-it is somehow related to FF. Not sure if its just a marketing ploy or what...
There are tons of games labeled with the FF brand name. Hell, there are spinoffs of Crystal Chronicles even.
Not to mention all the Chocobo spinoffs for those of us who can't get enough of those oversized chickens. Chocobo Dungeon I and II Chocobo Racing And my favorite, Chocobo Tales. Probably the cutest DS game ever!