TFARCHIVE FORUMS

I decided a couple of month back that I was going to try to play the Final Fantasy games. So I started with the first one and finished it. I quite enjoyed it. I started by playing it through the use of a NES emulator but discovered that I could download a version of it for my phone and so I played it that way and loved it.

I haven't started the second one yet because I've been caught up in a ways to be able to play all of these games.

I have a Playstation and so would be able to acquire all of the games up to IX except for III which I can get and play on my wife's DS.

I discovered that XII and XIV are MMORPGs and haven't yet decided if I'm going to bother with them.

A guy I work with is selling me his PS2 so I already bought X and XII and my wife has a X Box 360 and I have XIII for that.

Our plan is to get a PS4 at some point which will mean I can play FFXV.

I`m not entirely sure about X-2 and XIII-2 though. I might skip those also.

Anyone else into Final Fantasy?

I forget what Roman numeral it was, but I started playing the one where you can put different colored gems in your weapons and alter what they do. (I know, that's probably in all of them, but that's all I remember except something that looked like a space cat.) I got very bored with it and didn't care for all the micromanaging that you had to do in order to effective. I like customization and changing your party members and whatnot, but I found that particular game really tedious in that if you weren't tweaking everything between every fight, you were doomed.

But a friend is very into FF and assures me that most of the other games are not like that. Each game kind of has its own flavor, so there's some he really digs and others that he just finds ok. I guess his favorite right now is actually Final Fantasy Tactics. It looks fun, but I haven't played it myself. Just watched him a couple times.

If I was you I would stop after 8.

Why after 8? 9 was great (of the ones I've played it's my personal favourite). 8 bored me and I didn't even bother finishing it. Some people liked 10 as well. Never heard anything particularly positive about anything that came after.

YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT, YOU'RE A DADDY NOW

Sorry, carrot stuck in my throat. What I meant was- 8 bored the shit out of me, I wasn't a fan of the style of 9 and I stopped playing games for a long time after that so couldn't comment on the rest... but I loved 7. I don't remember a whole lot about the ones that came before 7 (I wasn't so much a huge fan of FF, I liked Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger better in addition to a few of them not being available to me at the time). Someday, I will own my own Chocobo.

Played 8, 9, 10 and 7 from beginning to end. In that order.

Then it got to be an adventure game with chicks with the name FF slapped on it, then it became an online rpg, then I stopped having any interest in such long games. Are we at 14 or 15 now?

7 and 8 are completely devoid of player types, everybody can be customized to work as anything, and 8 threw magic completely off the attacking table in favour of melee.

9 put character classes back in play and felt like more of an RPG than the other 2. Loved the classical feel to it, even though the story made little sense at the end, the limit breaks were random, there was no way to max out your characters on the stats, one weapon for one character basically required you to speed through an entire RPG in like under 12 hours, and the final boss just popped out of nowhere.

10 was amazing, I really got into it, was halfway through maxing out my characters, then I run out of time playing it

Never been a fan of Final Fantasy, I find them a bit over-rated. Especially 7.

Though I do like Tactics. Quite a bit different from the other games, definitely worth a look.

Unicron wrote:Though I do like Tactics. Quite a bit different from the other games, definitely worth a look.

OH, THIS. I think you might really like Tactics, hun.

I only played Tactics advanced (Advanced Tictacs?) on the GBA, but I really enjoyed that.

So after buying a PS2 from a buddy at work I went out and bought all of the FF games. By that I mean that I got FF origins (1 & 2), Chronicles (4 & Chrono Trigger), Anthology (5 & 6), 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, 12, 3 for the DS and 13 and 13-2 for the XBox360.

So I blew through the first game in 2 days, it being my second playthrough, it was a piece of cake. Still a great game. Extremely simple in all aspects but a genius game especially when you consider when this game was made and just how much better this rpg was compared to others of that time.

Went straight into FF2 after that. FF2 is kind of a mixed bag. It has a completely new leveling system, in that you don't level, skills and attributes get better through use. You don't get stronger or more agile unless you do melee attacks, you don't get smarter or wiser unless you cast magic, you don't get more hp unless you take damage. That kind of thing. I didn't like it. It's just too complicated and time consuming. However the story is fantastic and made the game totally worth all the work and time it took to play.

Went right into FF3 after that and thought it was kind of the opposite. The story is kind of threadbare and doesn't really tie the whole game together very well. However the job system they created for this game was fantastic and so much fun. Plus playing this on the DS it looked fantastic and had extra stuff that makes the game really fun.

I've started FF4 but only just. The only new addition that I've noticed so far is a new combat system. They call it Active Time Battle, which means that combat is ongoing while you are choosing what actions your party will do in combat. It means that you are more engaged in the game during combat but it also means I can't walk away from the game during combat either. I don't really have an opinion on it yet. It makes sense and I understand it's used in all of them after this. Still I'm having to get used to it. I have no idea what's going on in the story yet either so can't really comment.

That's about it. I've heard lots of good things about 7 and 10 and lots of bad things about 7 and 8. I decided I'm not going to bother with 11 and 14 because I really don't want to get involved with a MMORPG. I really don't want to deal with internet people in real time, especially gamers and besides for as long as those two games have been around there probably isn't many left to play with.

Couldn't agree more with your assessments of the first 3. Active Time Battle sticks around through most of the series from then on. FFVII has a couple of fights which go on for a good half hour, too. I can't see myself ever sitting down on my home console to play through a Final Fantasy again myself, though I do currently have IX on my PS Vita (lovely piece of kit, it is). JRPGs just work much better on the go for me these days.

Speaking of which, have you ever tried Disgaea? If not you should pick up the DS version of the first one and give it a go.


Edit: Whoops, double posted instead of editing....sorry folks.

I only ever played VIII since that's one of the only games I had for the PS1. I'd like to play it again but god knows where the discs (and the PS1) went.

Of course I played it as a young person (like 10 or 12 I think I was) but can anybody explain why it was hated?

Played VIII, IX, VII and X. Still have them.

I was way too young when my sister bought VIII for me. Thankfully I caught on quick.

VIII gets some hate because unlike pretty much every game in the series before or after it, magic plays a very small role in active combat. You don't level up your magic like VII or IX, you effectively draw magic from opponents and equip them on stats to boost them.

Hence if you equip 100 Fire on HP and start using fire for some reason, your HP will drop and so on.

It made for some weird tactics/combo [equipping...something like BIO on magic attack or vitality gave you immunity to malboro breath, for instance].

And unless you gave guardian forces/summons to characters, said character could only attack in battle, not even use items.

It got a lot of flak back then, even does today, but it remains one of my favourite games in the series.

Haven't heard of Disgaea but it sounds interesting. Might get to it but it will probably be a while.

Used to be. I played them from the very first 1 to X-2 (from the very original Nintendo red white Famicon to PS2. That's more than a decade ). Then felt so sick and tired of it and quit permanently. I also had their original sound track from 1 to 8 which I imported from Japan. Also sold them all on eBay. Yeah, bye bye. No more FF in my life.

I liked the whole series up until 7. From 8, everything went downwards. X is particularly terrible and X-2 was even worse.

Knightdramon wrote:Played 8, 9, 10 and 7 from beginning to end. In that order.

Then it got to be an adventure game with chicks with the name FF slapped on it, then it became an online rpg, then I stopped having any interest in such long games. Are we at 14 or 15 now?

Offically the next games is called Lightening Returns: Final Fantasy XIII I played the demo of it the other night on my PS3, now I love Alli Hillis (the voice actor of the title character) but man the combat system was annoying and really just consists of nothing more of switching between costumes that have different powers, abilites, spells, and etc. It also isn't help by having Day 1/promotional DLC of Cloud's armor and weapons (the lead character for 7) and Lara Croft outfit from the Tomb Raider reboot game when a growing number of people are very tied of this stuff. And honestly I stopped caring about Final Fantasy after 10. The rest were either boring, awful, or both.

Hound. Sades.
If you want to play some really great RPGs I suggest the following:
Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II, The Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Fallout 3 all of which are out and are on XBox 360, PS3, and PC and you can pick them up used for little money and in some cases if you get "The Game of the Year"or "The Ultimate Edition" you MIGHT (don't hold me to that because it depends if it's on the disc or not) be able to pick up most of the DLC as well.

I've been playing TES since Morrowind... we are very, very well-acquainted.

I'm just gonna leave this here for Hound... *coughMorndasmugmaybepostersorlithocough*

She's got both those Elder Scrolls games and I really want nothing to do with them.

I have no desire to play Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

I'm playing FF because I remember these games from when I was young and that's kind of how I am with games. I played Mega Man, Zelda, Metroid, Super Mario and FF when I was a kid and those are the series that I'm probably going to play. They will keep me busy for a very long time.

Hound wrote:She's got both those Elder Scrolls games and I really want nothing to do with them.

I have no desire to play Dragon Age or Mass Effect.

I'm playing FF because I remember these games from when I was young and that's kind of how I am with games. I played Mega Man, Zelda, Metroid, Super Mario and FF when I was a kid and those are the series that I'm probably going to play. They will keep me busy for a very long time.

You don't want to play games with thought-provoking ideas, with some of the best characters, dialoge, and a lot more replay value than Final Fantasy 7-13 combined.

It was Mass Effect and Dragon Age rekindled my love of sci-fi and fantasy, novels, comics, and video games in general.