So I'm in the mood to talk about Final Fantasy, the franchise that has probably dominated much of my videogaming habits ever since I started playing games, waaaaaaaaaaay back when I was a kid. Several milestones were hit recently, such as FFXI's 15th-Year Anniversary, and I think XIV just recently had an Anniversary too. I also seem to remember months back, some huge milestone for the entire franchise as a whole. It's crazy, isn't it? The franchise is over 30 years old (the very first Final Fantasy game appearing in North America... what, '85? 86? something like that?) and it has been strong ever since (well there was that quiet time between FF1 and FF4 where 2 and 3 were released in Japan only). Either way, I thought the best way to kick off the thread, is some personal thoughts on each game that I've played in the series. I am not going to include the Final Fantasy Adventure (because that's actually a -Mana game, if you're curious about that, look up Sword of Mana on GBA, same game only remastered). I am not going to mention Final Fantasy Legends 2 and 3 because I've barely played those. I will Mention Legend 1, because I've actually played that one, lol. And I am skipping 13, 13-2 and Lightning Returns due to me not playing either of those, however I will post some thoughts at the end. So anyways, let's get started! Final Fantasy 1: Ahh, the game that started it all. I used to rent this way back when I was a kid, when renting NES games was a thing. I never got anywhere because you know, I was a teen and this game like many other NES games was NintendoHard unless you really knew what you were doing. This game had punishing difficulty and there's no way you could expect to get clear to the last dungeon and defeat Chaos within 48 hours. At least, not unless you knew the game and were speedrunning it. There are obvious NES limitations at play, such as having to buy 99 potions one-at-a-time with lots of Yes/No prompts, only being able to hold 4 weapons and 4 armor per character (including the ones you have equipped), and the game explaining exactly nothing about how any of its mechanics really worked (and some mechanics being buggy, or outright not working at all, like the swords meant to damage certain enemies). But still, for it being a 1985 NES game, it was loads better than the first Dragon Warrior, and I would even say it surpassed DW2. If you were in 1985-1990 and you wanted an RPG.... Final Fantasy was where it was at. You wouldn't find any better until DW3 or DW4. Final Fantasy 2: Sadly, this game never came out officially in NA until its many re-releases and remasters. However, I played it long before that as a NES ROMhack, a fan-translated version. At first, its weird leveling system made it nearly impossible to get anywhere, until I figured out the exploit of having your characters engage incredibly weak enemies and then just attack themselves, heal back up, attack themselves, etc until you ran out of MP and then kill the enemy off. You could easily max out all of your stats at the very beginning of the game with a few hours' grinding, making the rest of the game cakewalk. Be that as it may, the Storyline was cool and there were many innovations, many improvements upon the design. I think they would have been better off with a straight up XP/Levelup system, but otherwise it's a solid game once you get past the weird leveling system. Final Fantasy 3: I considered not covering this game because I know scant about it. I bought it for the DS back when I got my DS (I bought the stupid thing for this game alone, lol) but... the leveling in it is so.... strange. I literally could not, for the life of me, understand what caused people to increase in skill/stats/etc. Sometimes people who did absolutely nothing in a battle would get random skillups, while people who did participate didn't... but yet another battle, it was the opposite. I just couldn't figure it out and I was having troubles with a seriously lopsided group... I eventually lost interest in the game and I haven't touched it since. Final Fantasy 4: This was actually my first major experience with Final Fantasy. Yes, I had rented FF1 before I was able to play this game, but FF1 was so ridiculously hard I could never get anywhere in it until I came to own my copy. But that was after my cousin/neighbor got ahold of this game and he allowed me to borrow it. It was this game (and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom) that got me hooked on J-RPGs. It took awhile, but I eventually was able to get to the end of it, and it was awesome. The SNES version does indeed have a lot of translation issues, missing items and abilities, renamed spells because of censorship, etc, but it is still a solid game. There's a ridiculous amount of improvement on the formula since #1 and especially #2, we're back to XP and levelups, but this time the characters are named and have actual story behind them. You're not some random nobodies carrying crystals. Each character you meet has a name, a personality, a backstory, a place in the world and it just felt so much better. If you ever wanted to play this, my recommendation as to which version is the Complete Collection found on PS4, because of... Final Fantasy 4: The After Years: Even though this came out much later, and starting with the Wii, I'm putting it here in the list because it is basically a continuation of FF4. The story is... a bit weird and I didn't really dig it that much, but the gameplay was fun once you got to the main story. Grinding up the dungeons in everybody's side-story wasn't quite so fun, and many characters seemed extremely weak and for the longest time you're fighting the same enemies over and over again, but once you get to the last dungeon and once you get a group good enough to handle it, it gets fun quick. Especially if you were able to grind out all the adamantites to get Cecil's best armor, lol. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip! Final Fantasy 5: Everybody worships this game, and I have no idea why. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game! It basically takes FF4 and adds a Job system a'la Final Fantasy Tactics (more on that later) but yet you still have character levels. It's basically FF4+FF3 mixed into one system and it's cool. Instead of random skillups, you gain AP to level the jobs, so you get consistent character growth and no more "why did this idle character get skill and the other who actually did stuff didn't?" type stuff here. The story was rather unique, and the whole thing with the two planets was awesome where you got Planet A, Planet B and then Planet A+B. But yet, the problem I have with this game, is game balance is all out of whack. Some jobs are entirely overpowered early game, but then get obsolete later (Magic Knight...) and other jobs take absolutely forever to get what you really need and are rather powerful later but weak as balls at first. Even when fighting the best AP enemies in the game, it took me many hours to max out everybody's jobs and I reached Level 99 long before I achieved this, so the growth on some jobs is just too slow. Final Fantasy 6: This is another game that I had the pleasure of owning like, right after it came out. They improved FF4 even further! You still got named characters (you can rename them yourself if you wish without needing a weird bunny guy), but they have backstories, etc. Also, the Esper system was rather cool but sadly it allowed for ridiculous exploiting, where if you did it right you could max out everybody's stats. Once you did that, you had a group full of carbon copies except for their unique command (most of them were lack-luster). Kinda silly to have a girl with a paintbrush doing just as much damage as that knight with the katana, lol. And don't get me started on the overpowered accessories, such as pairing the Offering and the Gengi Glove together which allowed for 8 hits that did 9000+ each every time you chose the "Attack" command. It made a lot of abilities obsolete, and you only needed 1 character with these in the group, and the rest are just there for cure and raise and some minor damage to tack on. It felt very... unbalanced. Final Fantasy 7: First off, I do not worship FF7 like so many other people do, and I might end up taking flack for what I'm about the say. The game made several improvements over earlier ATB-based games (like FF4, 5, and 6) and it improved upon the Esper system so that you weren't so freaking overpowered (at least at first....) and so that characters maintained their design/personality and didn't all become carbon copies of each other once you maxed out their stats. However, the absolutely terrible graphics make this game difficult to actually play, which is sad because the story is OK, the battle system is a lot of fun, and it's fast-paced and the minigames... oh man, I remember spending hours racing chocobos just because it was fun. The graphics are a killer, though and sadly Square-Enix is NOT doing what they SHOULD be doing with the FF7 Remake. They want to re-make the whole game, but yet change the gameplay which is a huge mistake. Just a remaster would have sufficed. But nooo, they gotta turn it into one of those lame spectacle fighters like FF13+.... sigh Final Fantasy 8: Now we're talking. Better graphics, at least somewhat. Though I would have to say if you're going to play this, you probably don't want the Playstation1 version. If you can find a way to upgrade the horrible music I've heard comes with the PC, I'd say do the PC version because it at least sharpened up the character models some. The story isn't bad, though some don't like it, but I thought it was decent. Gameplay (the battles, rather) is still fun, but that Junction system? Yuck, I think they were better off with Materia, or even Espers. Again, Stat+ upon levelups returns with Guardian Forces being able to permanently increase stats with levelups, and for some idiotic reason, they chose to make levelups meaningless, in fact, leveling up makes you weaker because enemies gain strength faster than you do unless you strategically plan every levelup in advance so that you max your stats out at Lv100. Just weird. Why they feel they gotta re-invent the wheel every time is beyond me. But... sometimes... they do something awesome, like in... Final Fantasy 9: NOW we are talking. Finally, a game whose graphics are more than good enough, and the PC version is actually rather decent if you're lucky enough to be able to play it without constant crashes like I've heard some people having trouble with in Steam reviews. Rather decent story, but the meat here is the stats/progression system. Weapons teach you your character's abilities so it is impossible to cheese, and you can't make people carbon copies of each other. No, your knight in plate armor is not going to be casting black magic, stopping to raise and heal that dead person all at the same time. No, your black mage is not going to clock an enemy for 9,000 damage with his physical attack. Characters' classes actually mean something in this game, and they stick to their guns. The knight is the knight, the healer is the healer, and so on and so forth. With abilities being tied to weapons, you aren't going to become overpowered too early (though I would make an exception for Zidane... some of his Limi -- errr Trances -- are entirely overpowered when you get them, but there's actual in-game story as to why the kid is so ridiculously strong. All in all, one of the best FF games ever. (continued)
Final Fantasy 10: Again, SE decided to re-invent the wheel for mixed results. The Battle System is nothing short of amazing. It is turn-based this time, and not ATB. However, your turns are affected by many conditions... your character's speed, the presence of buffs or debuffs, and even what action(s) you take in battle (and also what action(s) the enemies take). If you do a huge powerful hit, it will put you several slots down on the action bar. Quick Hit makes you get your next turn much sooner. Some bosses also do things like this, like charging powerful attacks that gives you several turns to prepare for it, and the game tells you who will get their turn when. It's a lot like Shadow Hearts 2, and I think the system was done very well. The Sphere Grid system, though is the weak point of the game. Again, you can eventually have everybody be carbon copies of each other (ugh...) so that you can take Yuna down Auron's tree and have her pounding enemies into submission with her staff. Or you could take Lulu down Yuna's tree and the goth lady herself ends up being your healer. Oi. That, and the annoyance that only people who take actions can get AP and thus the only characters to progress means that either you take at least 1 action with each character (which makes random battles take forever), or you end up with a very unbalanced group, where some people are strong and others laughably weak and who knows when you might end up being forced to use your weak members because of story reasons. Final Fantasy 11: A lot of people omit this game from similar lists, but I won't. FF11 is a Final Fantasy game through-and-through. I don't care that it is an MMORPG, it's still Final Fantasy, and I played it (and still do, mind you) and so it's going on this list. Obviously, being an MMORPG, it is going to have a lot of differences in gameplay, the way the story is presented to you, etc. And being an early MMORPG, there's the grind factor (which is what turned a lot of people off on this game) but I am happy to say that these days, FFXI is a lot easier to get into, and if you jack the settings up (you'll need guides as to how), you can make this game look rather nice despite it's 15 year age. I still have fun with this game to this day; I log on daily. Final Fantasy 12: I was rather..... meh.... about this game to be honest. It was hyped to extreme levels when it was first announced, and we all waited for it with bated breath, but then it came out and it was........ OK-ish? It felt like an MMO-in-a-single-player-box. You're basically playing a Singleplayer game that wants to be an MMO. It's like they took Final Fantasy 11, took its MMO setup and tried to box it into something like FF4 with obvious updated graphics. You got the Gambit System that everybody seems to love, but IMO, it takes the fun out of it when you can rig up gambits to play the game for you. If you unlock everything and figure it out, you can beat nearly anything without ever touching the controller. That fun is that? I didn't plop a J-RPG into my PS2 to watch a somewhat interactive cutscene. The game's main story also felt pretty short; it's the only Singleplayer Final Fantasy that I managed to clear in 21h on my first (and only) playthrough. Oh, and the License Grid is just laughable. It makes no in-game sense, and the whole thing is just... ugh. Let's just stick with simple XP levels, please? Final Fantasy 14 (ARR+): I also play this. Basically... take World of Warcraft, improve upon it a bunch, give it way better graphics, and add everything Final Fantasy you can think of -- Moogles, Chocobos, and everything else and you got FF14. I don't really think I need say any more on this. The excellent graphics, music, the coolest boss fights around, what are you waiting for!? Now... that's the 1-14 rundown, skipping 13 and its sequels. Let's now look at the side-games: Final Fantasy Legend (1): This game is... strange. It's the first FF gameboy game, and it shows. They had limited resources to work with, so they tried to give you something that felt like a Final Fantasy game within the small confines of the Gameboy platform. The game turned out to be OK, but also NintendoHard. The last boss is almost impossible without abusing the Saw glitch (it insta-kills him, lol) and just progressing through the game is such a pain in the butt if you don't know what you're really supposed to do. It did have some memorable tunes and scenes, though. I liked it. Still play it on rare occasion. Final Fantasy Tactics (the ORIGINAL one! NOT the remake!!!): The original PS1 version was cool. Too bad they had to kill it with that stupid remake, but meh. Let's forget that even exists. The first one gave you a Job System like FF5, and it was a tactics game (obviously), but it felt very Final Fantasy. It was like Tactics Ogre, but better IMO. One of the most complex games that are easy to learn but hard to master I've ever seen. So many variables, conditions, things that can change during battle... the complexity is simply ridiculous. But that's the game's strengths. Once you learn the nuances, you become unstoppable. Until you do, though, expect to get your butt handed to you a few times in some select battles. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Most people seem to diss this game, but I rather liked it. Most people forget what the game was meant to do: it was to teach people who had never played a J-RPG before how to do it. It was an Entry-to-RPGs because back then, RPGs were struggling to catch on over here in the States. The game is easy as pie (with the exception of the last boss, who is a large notch above everything before him), but there were memorable fights, and the soundtrack... dude, I've never heard so much guitar in a Final Fantasy game before. The composer was REALLY trying to appeal to a western audience with that, lol. Now, my thoughts on Final Fantasy 13+: I've never played these games, but I've seen clips of them on Youtube and all I have to say about it is "ugh". These don't even look like FF games whatsoever. They are spectacle fighting games, not RPGs. When you take an old J-RPG veteran like me who has played the majority of J-RPGs out there, and have me watch a clip of FF13+ and I can't even tell you what the elements on the UI are even for.... then you know you have a very badly designed J-RPG. I've tried to make sense of the UI and what is actually going on, and I.... can't. They went for "flashy and cool" for the newest generation... but yet what they wound up with, is a mish-mash of a confusing garbled mess. Oh, and I own the PC version. Why haven't I played this? Fifty-Freaking Gigabyte Download. No thanks. I have 3Mbit. I'm not downloading 50GB, lol. That's just ridiculous. Anyways, there you have it. If I somehow missed an FF game that is escaping my mind at the moment, do let me know.
Well, I do not know if you count them as part of the Final Fantasy universe, but both of the Dissidia games? And what about other games related to other Final fantasy, like, Dirge of Cerberus or Crisis Core for the FF 7 universe, or Final Fantasy Tactics Advance?
I don't really count Dissidia, no. But then even if I did, I could not include it anyways because I haven't played it. Dirge of Cerberus and Crisis core were omitted for the same reasons. Tactics Advance falls into the same boat as the remake of FFT (or is it the remake itself? I forget): I consider it an abomination because of that stupid lame "Judge" system they added which is just so silly and makes no sense. The original FFT was better.
Fair enough! For the FFT Advance, true, the laws system never worked even for me, but I loved this one (and the other one for Nintendo Ds years later) a lot for one simple reason: races. I loved all the races of Ivalice and I loved the idea that a specific race had its own jobs, though I have to admit that the story was way better in the first one.
Final Fantasy Tactics is one of my favorite games of all time (not hyperbole, I've poured sooooooo many hours into it). Delita could be one of the most interesting characters I've ever experienced and I love his part in the story! To be honest, I love the whole story in general. What did you not enjoy about the remake? I'm guessing you're referring to the psp version. I haven't played it, but I do like that they animated some of the cutscenes. Did they really change the game that much? I'm mostly curious because I was thinking about buying it and hadn't seen your particular brand of negativity toward it.
They added this lame "Law System" where there are judges (you know, the ones from FF12?) and each battle has a set of rules that if you break them, you get punished etc. I've not played it either, but the whole idea of it sounds incredibly lame. If you're thinking of buying it, I highly suggest looking up how that system works because it sounds pretty lame IMO. You're fighting a war against very evil people but yet here are these judges telling you what you can and can't do in a war. It's like "wut?" The original never had judges, or laws or anything like that... I think they only did that to do some sort of backwards compatibility with FF12 since they are both set in Ivalice and now Ivalice is the go-to for SE when they want to make a Final Fantasy game it seems. I know the original's good so I'll just stick with it. I know pSXf emulates it to near-perfection (while using the original CD), so that's all I need. lol.
My good sir you did NOT include Crystal Chronicles and I am very much disappo- just kidding! I love that game, but I know it was not everyone's cuppa tea! I have not tried playing the older titles, I seem to have difficulties when it comes to it, but I have fond, and slightly frustrating memories about FF12 and 13, I loved 12, the characters were ok, they had some pretty interesting moments and the way the world was laid out felt enjoyable to navigate (for some time) ... 13? I do not... I wish I could forget that game entirely, it was very enjoyable, but I found it to be absolutely awful when it comes to it's story, it really annoyed me to the point I still cant push myself to get the new game or the online game... which I know both have NOTHING to do with.
I've never played Crystal Chronicles, wasn't that the one-and-only Gamecube J-RPG? If you want to play the older ones, I suggest the following: 1). FF1: GBA version. 2). FF2: I think there's a GBA version of this too? 3). FF3: That's a tossup... DS/PC version have these weird 3d sprites... if you don't mind 8-bit, get a fan-translated ROM of the original NES game. 4). FF4: PSP "The Complete Collection" which also has The After Years. 5). FF5: Either the SNES fan translation ROM, or the GBA version. 6). FF6: Original SNES works fine with few-to-no issues. All of these can be obtained in ROM format, with the exception of The Complete Collection, which you'd need to download the .ISO. For emulators: SNES: BSNES, hands-down. NES: I use FCEUX, but I'm sure there are better. FCEUX does the job fine, though. PSP: PPSSPP, though you will lag when there's too many animations on-screen. If you enjoy Final Fantasy, I highly suggest giving the older ones a try! And if you are really into challenge? Try the NES version of FF1... but be warned... buying 99 potions 1 at a time gets old after awhile lol.
Oh, yeah it was, now that you mention it. GBA... hmm, that may work! Nes FF1? is that the game where there was one specific tile in the beginning explorable area where you could fight end game enemies due to an issue with the way the spawns were laid out? and lol, I dont mind sluggish potion buying, I had to deal with that in CC, in 5 different save files. And I would love the challenge! I have a SNES emu actually, been using it since 1997-ish, should be compatible with this computer... I just need to get it from my old laptop.
Even if you have an old SNES emu, you might want to try to find a copy of BSNES. SNES emus when they first came out, were lacking all kinds of stuff and ran very inefficiently. BSNES emulates to 99.9% perfection at the cost of some computing power (but any PC capable of playing games nowadays should be able to handle it). If not, then I'd say at least head on over to zophar.net and see if you can at least find an updated version of the one you were using (probably Snes9x or something). As for the NES FF, yes there's one tile near the 2nd town, or actually two I think at the very end of the northern peninsula that will cause enemies found on the nearby continent to spawn if you run into a battle on either of those two tiles. It's because they drew a large grid on the world to set up where spawns will be, and this grid barely clips the northern part of that peninsula. You'll find Frost Giants, Frost Wolves, etc which give you at least 5-8x more XP than enemies you normally fight there..... but the Frost Giants will mop the floor with you. Definitely want to use Save State if you plan on abusing it. I'd recommend against doing that, getting Level 50 removes a lot of challenge from the game and even without that glitch you can easily get Lv50 before you fight the 2nd Elemental Fiend (the Fire One) as the Centipedes that come out near its volcano will easily take you to lv50. If you ever want pointers, I can help you with that game, lol. Also want to note that the GBA versions of FF1 and FF4 have optional content after the main storyline. FF4's yields entirely overpowered equipment (Edward becomes one of the strongest characters in the game with his endgame weapon lol). So if you don't like the idea of downloading .ISOs, and you don't care about After Years, you could get the GBA version of FF4 instead which is very viable. It keeps true to the original SNES graphics, and the translation and some of the bugs/missing abilities were fixed. EDIT: Come to think of it, I knew a friend playing FF4 with an old emulator years ago... there was a glitch concerning the Tower of Bab'il. At one point, you are supposed to walk across a bridge and it is supposed to collapse (which is required to progress in the story)... but for whatever reason, in their emulator, the scene did not trigger and the story was impossible to progress until they found a newer emulator. It left them quite confused as to what they were supposed to do until they asked me and I told them that it was supposed to collapse. They got a new emulator, loaded up the save and *boom* it worked.
Oh I may do that then, I always enjoyed GBA titles, or remakes made for it, far more than the originals. I have an updated emulator, I hope it will work without any drawbacks... By the way, completely unrelated, but speaking of scripted scenes reminds me of a glitch in Shinin Soul 2 and the gba emu that would prevent from fighting one of the end bosses, as they would be stuck right before their dialogue triggered, it was eventually fixed too, it just reminded me of the FF4 glitch Thank you for the suggestions!
np! I hope you have fun with those Final Fantasy titles. The FF1 optional content on the GBA remake is rather.... weird and trippy, and some of it requires a Lot of powerful stuff otherwise you might end up getting killed lol. I found it confusing, lol. Here's hoping you have some fun! One of these days I should pop my DS FF3 into my 3DS XL.... you can do that, right? DS in a 3DS? and see if I can't actually get through the game this time or at least make some sort of attempt at it lol. I stopped playing it because the DS is too thin but yet too heavy at the same time, and caused cramps in my hands. I miss my GBA, lol. Sadly it started corrupting save files, which ruined my Metroid: Zero Mission cart... and then it started crashing while on GB games like Metroid 2.
Huh... my GBA is running fine, tested it today with my pokemon yellow... darn lvl 72 pikachu is 18 years old now, though Megaman Zero is ... not reading my save, and I had to start anew... sad times these are... But yeah! I will get to those FF games for sure, in an emu because god knows I will not find cardtridges anywhere these days.
I still have #1, #4 and #6 as cartridges, and I have #7-10 as discs from when I first bought them (I never sold them). Though I suspect the batteries of long since gone dead and I don't feel like trying to deal with soldiered-on batteries.
I bet someplace, somewhere, someone would pay a prime for those, lol. Maybe not today, but in the future! speaking of future I hope they pick up Ivalice and do something like the first Final Fantasy Tactics (for the gba, the DS one was... meh)
That, or a fan will. Or something. lol. But yeah, I sorely miss the good ole J-RPG. There's RPGMaker, but sadly most people who play around with that, tend to do so rather lazily and the games made with it tend to be basic at best. Though you will occasionally find something like Skyborn that is just pure awesome. A single-player game with an Enmity system? They pulled it off somehow, and it actually works, and it adds MUCH more strategy to a simple turn-based system.
Wait, what is this you speak of, where is Saint Google... oh there Edit: oooh pretty, now if only RPGMaker games did not look like the characters and everything in the screen has been press-pressed like medicine... still, pretty amazing!
Yeah, the graphics aren't stellar by today's standards, but the gameplay is pretty nice for an RPGMaker game, compared to most others. You can tell the authors of this one put actual detail into their game and some actual effort with custom sprites, music tracks, even some pixel art backgrounds for story "cutscenes", as well as character art. And, like I said, that enmity system. lol. I've never seen any other single-player game with enmity systems.
