Squeenix Rate your Final Fantasy

[Xor]

I've played through FF8 twice; the first time when it first came out, and the second time a few years ago when I read the Squall is Dead theory and wanted to see if it held water (it actually does).

I don't know what the Squall is dead theory is, but I suspect it's as accurate as the indoctrination theory in ME3.

The first playthrough I played it like a traditional rpg and I had mixed feelings about it; enthralled but I hated everything about the moronic junction system. My second playthrough resolved those feelings and made me really appreciate it. First I played it on PC so no load times, and second I used the no-encounter GF-ability so no stupid victory animations. And what the game ends up being is an adventure game, like Myst without the insanely difficult puzzles. Like taking what made Myst special and getting rid of the "gameplay" that made Myst frustrating. FF8 is just a simple adventure game with enthralling world building and a linear plot to progress through that has very light puzzles that anyone can finish without consulting a walkthrough.

It's more like a visual novel for teenagers. The story and characters did absolutely nothing for me. Maybe if I had played through it when I was 14, like I did with FF7, I'd have been able to appreciate it better.

Gold Box, IE and JA2 are enthralling game experiences, and landmark games, but surely you don't replay them in the exact same way each time? You give yourself a new challenge or try new content or try a new strategy or explore a new area. FF8 enthralls with its production, completely separate from gameplay. The story in FF8 is completely linear, railroaded, no C&C, even moreso than BG2. If FF8 lacked its production value, there would be no reason to replay it, just like a book poorly written would not be reread for pleasure even if it contained great ideas.

A few things. BG2 is linear for a cRPG but it's downright open world compared to the average JRPG. And I don't know about others, but when I replay most RPGs I don't change my playstyle very much. Maybe I'll use a different character, or try to finish a side quest I never bother with, but I don't impose artificial limits on my gameplay. And I don't really see what any of this has to do with FF8 having replay value. I've played through Chrono Trigger at least a dozen times, and maybe more. On the SNES, on an emulator, with the fan translation (God, that was a mistake), on the PS1, on the DS...that game has replay value.

That's why I think FF8 should be compared to Ocarina of Time.

What?

Most would argue that Ocarina of Time is a better game. But are games today more like Ocarina of Time or more like FF8, for how they try to design the experience? For me its pretty clear that they are better at copying what worked in FF8.

...What?

Most games today may try to imitate Ocarina's gameplay but they fail, but they imitate FF8's production value and cinematic style and succeed. That's what I meant by FF8 being influential and changed gaming. Bioshock and Last of Us and countless other games of this and the previous generation don't owe their gameplay to FF8, but they are following FF8's formula in terms of production and totality.

I was with you until this paragraph. You've lost me. Modern games are trying to imitate OOT's gameplay? In what respect? And they try to imitate FF8's "production values"? Again, how? What did either of those games do that was 1) original and 2) influential?

If traditional games and rpg's are cheap and exploitative because they pander to bourgeois values (creating player pleasure by rewarding them for accomplishing easy, simple and mindless tasks), perhaps FF8 and the games influenced by it can also be criticized for being fascistic in their totality (creating player pleasure by taking away choice and reducing the player to a passive spectator, in this way movies and books also fall easily into fascism, cinema especially guilty of using music to dictate the audience's emotional response). These games strip away a player's individuality, subjectivity and creativity. If you value those things in a game (and that's what is pleasurable about sandbox games) you probably wouldn't enjoy FF8 (like you said, you feel like you are being forced to endure the moronic characters. I guess at least BG2 gives you a larger choice of NPCs to party with, and your main character is a blank canvas. That's also probably why Imoen gets so much hate, when BG2 players feel like they are forced to take her for story purposes). Different pleasures. FF8 has a beautifully crafted world but it's not one that you can fill with your own characters. Fascism in a nutshell so it doesn't quite escape the bourgeois trap.

Okay, I'm not touching the rest of this. I just wanted to shit talk FF8, not get sucked into a serious discussion of FF8 as a work of art.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Gold Box, IE and JA2 are enthralling game experiences...

FF8 enthralls with its production...

You can not be serious.

 

[Ninjerk]

Gold Box, IE and JA2 are enthralling game experiences...

FF8 enthralls with its production...

You can not be serious.

He mentions Gold Box, IE, and JA2, but I'm convinced he's never played them (or anything resembling excellence).

 

[GarfunkeL]

He copied them from my earlier rant.

 

[Trodat]

I would say FFXI is still vastly underrated among people, or it just went under everyones radar. FFXI wasn't just a grind-to-max-shit-fest, it had interesting story missions with difficult fights and much more. Well, it was good up until about 2009 or 2010 when SE just went full retard with the patches. Of course typical Final Fantasy crowd is not ~generally speaking interested in MMORPG's but XI was a "different" MMORPG developed for a more mature audience, and the people that played it and kept playing for years really loved it.

Kind of surprising if theres no one here in the codex who used to play it for more than a few hours before rage quitting becouse it's too difficult getting bored.

 

[Starwars]

I played FFXI for way too long. Had a lot of fun with it. Especially the NA release (I imported the game) when everything was new and people made mistakes. I had tremendous fun exploring the world (which was beautiful) and some of the story content was over expectations given the fact that it's a MMORPG. What killed it for me in the long run was when people settled into the MMORPG grind, when it became more about optimizing more than anything else. Boring. Still, I think I was one of the first players from the NA release who got Beastmaster to 75 and Fishing to 100 (without using a bot). Damn, spent a lot of time on that game.

Should replay some of the FFs someday. Mostly find them silly nowadays but there's a huge nostalgia there for me.

 

[resilient sphere]

Not attempting to rate these games in terms of gameplay because there's so much stuff you have to ignore or skip past to enjoy them. I must admit I enjoyed spending extra time in FF6 and 7 just enjoying the sheer number of different enemies you can encounter but they both score a zero on my urge to replay them.

music-wise:

Top tier:
7

Good:
4
5
6
8
10
TA

Gah:
1
9
12

 

[Trodat]

It was truly the ultimate time sink, but so addictive. My first maxed job was PLD, it took such a ridiculously long time because of people prefering NIN tanks for faster exp. But yeah, I didn't do much of the end game stuff because I was too young to stay up until 2 am to grind dynamis or whatever.

 

[Ayreos]

I guess i'll spare Codex another thread on this topic and just necro this one a little. (It's only on page 2 after all...)
I have to post this, since i spent the last two years slowly replaying them all, for better or for worse. Also, sometimes you just gotta nudge that consensus a bit!

God Tier
11 - For making what people like about FF real to an extent. (As long as you had 1-5+ years to waste entirely.)

Top Tier
9 - For the art and the atmosphere.
8 - For the fucking fantastic visual design, charming world and Junction. (It's also my favorite for that first reason alone.)
7 - For the daring plot(holes) and Materia mechanic.

Mid Tier
6 - For Kefka and the game's opening. (FF9 has a better theatrical scene.)
10 - For the battle-exp system and decent plot.

Low Tier
5 - For the machine-generated plot. (Gilgamesh aside.)
4 - For being overall unimpressive. I 've seen more compelling stuff made in RPG Maker. (Also that sequel...)
3 - Same as 4.

Shit Tier
12 - For the broken Overdrive mechanics, lack of protagonist and Argentinian soap opera-like plot. (The murderer is... drumroll... The suspect's TWIN BROTHER!)
13 - For being a corridor with a psychotic battle system. (The only thing i enjoyed was reading the in-game journal.)
10-2, 13-2, 13-3 - For being morally and artistically corrupt.
14(ARR) - For crushing that little "amazing thing" FF11 had to dust. (And being casual shit.)

Special Tier
1 - For actually making you engage your imagination.
2 - For the brave (albeit broken) exp system.
14(beta) - For having impressive potential.

 

[Ilya]

I've never finished a FF game:

Final Fantasy VI: I started playing this like two weeks ago and at first I was really liking it until I got bored because all the fights were extremely easy, even the boss fights. I saw there's a difficulty patch to make it harder so I may try that.

Final Fantasy XII: I have mixed feelings about this because I love it but never finished it, I even started it all over again like three times but always ended up losing my will to play it for some reason, I could even just grab my old ps2 and play it again but I cba to do that, If I'm going to play a ps2 rpg I'd rather complete Nocturne first.

Final Fantasy IV: Didn't finish it because I'm lazy, bretty gud game nonetheless.

Right now I kind of feel like downloading FF Tactics Advance, I really wanted it as a kid but never got around to playing it, I may try it now...

Now, the FF games I started but got so bored I couldn't keep playing:
FF III
FF V
FF VII
FF XIII (I actually kind of liked this one I don't know why I stopped playing it, I miss my xbox)

I also may try FF X when I get a new pc that can emulate ps2, it is not my priority tho.

 

[LJ40]

God Tier
6, Tactics

Top Tier
4, 7, 9, 10

Mid Tier
1, 3, 5, 12, Tactics Advance, Tactics A2, Legend 3

Low Tier
2, 8, 10-2, 4: TAY, Crystal Chronicles, Dimensions, Mystic Quest, Legend, Legend 2

Shit Tier
11, 14 - There's not much in the world that could get me to despise a FF game more than playing with other assholes. That being said:

Fuck You Tier
13, 13-2, 13-3 - I'd rather travel back in time and abort myself with a rusty coat hanger than play this shit again.

 

[Ermm]

The sad thing about ff7 is that not enough companies made enough rip-off's of it, at least to my knowledge.

Sure, everyone is complaining how every JRPG now tried to rip it off, but to my knowledge, I don't remember any other cyberpunk-ish JRPG, which was even remotely similar(maybe aside from a few Cloud or Seprioth look-a-likes like the antagonist of BOF4). Overblood 2 kinda fits the bill (even though it is not a JRPG).

 

[Hobo Elf]

Long white / silver hair is too generic to attribute Fou-Lu to Sephiroth. Very different personality as well.

 

[Kem0sabe]

FF IX was the most fun i had, the character designs were amazing, the story was fun.

 

[Makabb]

FF 7 best FF and a great game.

 

[Severian Silk]

VI

 

[Hobo Elf]

I would say FFXI is still vastly underrated among people, or it just went under everyones radar. FFXI wasn't just a grind-to-max-shit-fest, it had interesting story missions with difficult fights and much more. Well, it was good up until about 2009 or 2010 when SE just went full retard with the patches. Of course typical Final Fantasy crowd is not ~generally speaking interested in MMORPG's but XI was a "different" MMORPG developed for a more mature audience, and the people that played it and kept playing for years really loved it.

Kind of surprising if theres no one here in the codex who used to play it for more than a few hours before rage quitting becouse it's too difficult getting bored.

Yes it fucking was, and to get to the "interesting story missions" you had to grind out of your asshole. Not to mention that grouping with a bunch of shit people would get you wiped and lose XP. You could even delevel in this game ffs. People were constantly releveling themselves to max level after doing end game raid shit. The game was nothing BUT a grind-to-max-shit-fest. Over and over again. The only FF that is vastly underrated is FF12.

 

[Ayreos]

FF11 was great because by 2007 it had an amazing community and loads of content to be done at every level. The vast majority of the players would however still choose to "grind-to-max-shit-fest" for dozens of hours per week just to reach max level and be one of the "cool kids", often just to proceed to idle with their 1 max level job, while complain about endgame. Even then, they would treat challenging content (like Divine Might, capped CoP, BCNMs/KSNMs, and heck, even dune parties) as some terrible annoyances akin dentist visits. Even better is that most would understand this to some degree, yet be unable to break out of the virtual "social expectations" of them grinding, in what is a grand parallel for life and the daily rat race. Whether it sounds far-fetched or not, FF11 taught me and many others what life is all about.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Me after reading this thread

 

[CryptRat]

I have played some FF (always until the end, which already means that no one was complete shit).

God Tier
FF6 : Very good cast with many unique characters, no main protagonist, Epic (dark, sad, touching, sometime funny, note that for example the phantom train part fills all these criteria)
FF9 : Not as good as 6, but still better than almost anything else, Freya is awesome, everything around Black Mages is very cool.

Top Tier
FF7 : Everything (Story, cast, world, systems(s)) is good, nothing is extraordinary
4 heroes of light : Sympathic story and characters, good class system, some very hard bosses, AP system (exactly like Paper Sorcerer, it's very good, but the fact that you carry over your APs from a fight to another sucks)
FFTAdvance : Experimenting the class system makes the game enjoyable until the end, and of course a tactical battle system is better than any true FF battle system.

Mid Tier
FF5 : The class system is awesome, the mediocre story is bearable since it's not an "interactive movie".

Frustating Tier (average, and should be better)
FF12 : Very good world, some bosses are cool, but the game has so many questionable design choices : for example all the playable characters are correct but we are in Ivalice, I want to play a Bangaa, etc...not so many stupid humans. The void chests and the nowhere to be found monsters are boring, and I finally didn't really like the combat system.
Crisis core - Final fantasy 7 : The story has probably as many good as bad parts, the combat system and the materia fusion system are pleasant for a while, but revisiting the same dungeons again and again is horrible.

Exasperating Tier (nearly enjoyable system but vomitive story)
FF8 : Horrible characters, stealing magic is boring, but the G-Force system is sympathic
FF10 : Horrible characters (some silencious bearable ones like Lulu the fool widow witch or Khimari), the "last part" recquires horrible grinding, the fights are still with characters which are really different from each others during the most part of the game.

 

[Jasede]

Try 4! I recommend the DS/Steam version. If you feel like a challenge, don't use any "augments".

 

[CryptRat]

OK, thanks.

 

[Delterius]

I'm told that the FFT Advance Job System was toned down from the original FFT. So if you enjoyed that then you must try the original.

 

[made]

The Only FF Games I Could Stand To Play From Start To Finish Tier:
FFT - Excellent tactical battles, fun character system to mess around with, good writing thanks to fan translation. Excessive random battles can be avoided with save states.
FFXII - Amazing writing (particularly for a Jap translation), several interesting characters and engrossing story. Boring-ass grindan combat but at least it can be set up to play itself, like you program robots or something. Actually the gameplay was really shit, but omg the storyfaggotry!

I tried to play the ones people usually recommend, like VI, but I just can't get into them.

 

[Rahdulan]

The Only FF Games I Could Stand To Play From Start To Finish Tier:
FFT - Excellent tactical battles, fun character system to mess around with, good writing thanks to fan translation. Excessive random battles can be avoided with save states.
FFXII - Amazing writing (particularly for a Jap translation), several interesting characters and engrossing story. Boring-ass grindan combat but at least it can be set up to play itself, like you program robots or something. Actually the gameplay was really shit, but omg the storyfaggotry!

I tried to play the ones people usually recommend, like VI, but I just can't get into them.

I see you're an Ivalice man.

I still think FFT is probably the best written game in Square's entire portfolio; plot, lore and characters combined, with probably Vagrant Story being a close runner-up. Really makes me wonder how many of story and setting changes in FF12 were genuine and how many were dictated by the fact it was supposedly made into a numbered core game mid-development because you can kinda tell they still wanted to tell a layered political story, but you got your Vaan's non-existent sky pirate adventures and other shenanigans between story developments as well which fall more in line with a typical "main story" for a Final Fantasy title. Then again, I'm biased as hell towards Ivalice.