All the FFs are worth playing at least once so I'd give as many a go as humanly possible. The older ones are a lot more grindy required than the newer ones but the series has no true decline just some things got worse for core fans of a certain gen. As for myself problems I had where the character stat progressions of 10, 12, 13 and some of the characters in FF 12 and 13 such as Vaan, Penelope and Hope.
That and FF 12 and 13 have dog shit battle systems.
All FF are really easy and I mean really fucking easy to break balance wise and become quite OP. For example, in FF VIII you can have all your character invincible, reduce the bosses defence capabilities real low and spam limit breaks. Whoever came up with the spells for that game gave not 1 fuck about balance.
No FF is anywhere near as good as people make them out to be as FF fans all have their pet faves that are "better than VII" or are one of those fans that like FF VII and over hype it a bit much. That said FF are also not as bad as others make them out to be so take the hype of each game and the hate and its true value is probably smack in the middle.
There's a retro gaming store down the street from where I live and I go there almost all the time. They have a great selection of PSX games and have Final Fantasy I-VI in anthology collections (the first two in a set together, IV with Chrono Trigger, and V and VI together). I have never really played FF before (played the first a bit on an emulator) but have played Chrono Trigger on SNES (a lot of people have compared the two) and immensely enjoyed that. From the bit of the first FF I've played, it was a lot of fun.
However, my understanding is the series has begun to go downhill. I did some research but no one can really agree on when this began. I've heard since XI it's been going downhill but have also read that VIII is when the series began to suck.
I guess what I'm wondering is a few things: 1. Is Final Fantasy a series worth getting into? 2. When would you say the series began to go downhill? 3. If you didn't notice, none of the PSX titles had III. So what would be the best way to experience these games?
With that last one please try to keep in mind, the only systems I have are a SNES, N64, Gamecube, PS2, Gameboy Advance, and a Nintendo DS.
First, note that they are notated a little differently with the old games.
4 was originally released as 2 on the SNES in the States, and 6 was originally released as 3 on the SNES in the States. 2, 3 and 5 were not released in their original media in the US.
Here's my opinion.
4, 5, and 6 are absolute must-plays. The GBA versions are a little more polished but the difficulty is turned down a little, especially for 4. Better graphics (especially with 4) and cleaner translations mostly. The sound has also been changed a little to accommodate the GBA's slightly lower quality sound chip, and I've known that some people consider it a loss of quality (for some songs, they are a little worse, for others, there is significant improvement). Personally though, I prefer the GBA ones because bad translations seriously bug me.
3, the NES one (Not to be confused with 3 for SNES, which was actually 6 due to the non-synchronous localizations), is available for Nintendo DS. It's alright, if you like really old school RPGs, you'll like it, but it won't do much for you if that's not your thing.
7 and 8 aren't exactly my favorites, but they're still very solid games. 9 and 10 are must-plays. 11 is an MMO (it's decent), 12 is awful, 13 is kind of unremarkable, 14 is a joke of an MMO.
You'll be able to play all of these on the consoles you own.
Final Fantasy is a problematic series. It's completely possible and common that your favourite and most hated games be in it.
I think that when it comes to RPGs from the SNES and PSX generations, the series tends to focus more on actual content, the story than it does on repetitive battling. The soundtracks are excellent. They were usually scored by Nobuo Uematsu then, but Final Fantasy Tactics has another composer and still sounds great. The graphics are usually better than contemporaries too.
If you want to avoid the entries with the biggest amount of busywork, try 4, 6, 7 and 9. They are very story-oriented and have straight-forward ability systems. Titles such as 8 and 10 have unnecessarily complicated ability systems that don't offer you enough benefits for time spent.
The classic period of the series is 4 through 9.
If you've played Dragon Quest and liked it, you likely will also like 3 & 5. They have characters that can change classes and gain completely new stats and abilities. I think 12 will also be your cup of tea. Although it restricted for the first few hours and it starts very scene-heavy, most of the game is focused on having a lot of sidequests, bosses and dungeons to brave and you can go for hours without having to even think about the story.
Odd. Opinions and different strokes and all that, but FF7 surely has the LEAST disjointed and convoluted plot of the whole series? Either that or I've misunderstood what you mean.
I'm not saying there aren't pacing issues, and it's not going to win any awards for cohesion, but it's the only one in the series where it feels like the writers had the whole story planned out from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that almost all the plot developments are foreshadowed (again, not necessarily with consummate skill, but compare with something like FF6, where Kefka's plan isn't announced until he's about to carry it out, or the entire ending of VIII and IX).
In fact, it feels surprisingly like Chrono Trigger in that regard.
Uh, okay. Disregarding the mentioning of VIII or XI because I said 'prior entries', Final Fantasy 6's plot was pretty much a box of cliches(well, the same could be said about the rest of the prior entries too) but it was strung together quite well, mostly because there wasn't anything to mess up. That's why this clarification doesn't hold up.
SoManyCrimes said:
I've put that badly. Villains springing a surprise is good storytelling. But the mechanism by which he achieves his plan isn't referenced, when it would be so easy to mention it repeatedly as background noise about the world's mythology. Which would make it a far stronger surprise.
Instead, it's almost as if they didn't know what exactly was going to happen until they got to that scene.
He's a prototype magi-knight that was driven insane from experiments. It was well established that these statues are the source of all magic in the world(thus the source of his mental perversion) which is why he made them his means to an end. Not exactly deep but it's cohesive.
On the flip side final fantasy 7's drive for set pieces left plot holes. Why did Hojo make Sephiroth clones? What was Sephiroth even doing for those years between the Nibelheim incident and the beginning of the game? Why would mako make those monsters in the Nibel Mountain reactor? What exactly was Shinra's business plan that entailed effectively destroying the planet they're on? How exactly is Holy the opposite of Meteor, why is that the only means in a technologically advanced society to remove said Meteor threat and if it is the only opposite why didn't it even work in destroying the meteor?
Odd. Opinions and different strokes and all that, but FF7 surely has the LEAST disjointed and convoluted plot of the whole series? Either that or I've misunderstood what you mean.
I'm not saying there aren't pacing issues, and it's not going to win any awards for cohesion, but it's the only one in the series where it feels like the writers had the whole story planned out from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that almost all the plot developments are foreshadowed (again, not necessarily with consummate skill, but compare with something like FF6, where Kefka's plan isn't announced until he's about to carry it out, or the entire ending of VIII and IX).
In fact, it feels surprisingly like Chrono Trigger in that regard.
Uh, okay. Disregarding the mentioning of VIII or XI because I said 'prior entries', Final Fantasy 6's plot was pretty much a box of cliches(well, the same could be said about the rest of the prior entries too) but it was strung together quite well, mostly because there wasn't anything to mess up. That's why this clarification doesn't hold up.
SoManyCrimes said:
I've put that badly. Villains springing a surprise is good storytelling. But the mechanism by which he achieves his plan isn't referenced, when it would be so easy to mention it repeatedly as background noise about the world's mythology. Which would make it a far stronger surprise.
Instead, it's almost as if they didn't know what exactly was going to happen until they got to that scene.
He's a prototype magi-knight that was driven insane from experiments. It was established that these statues are the source of all magic in the world(thus the source of his mental perversion) which is why he made them his means to an end. Not exactly deep but it's cohesive.
Why did Hojo make Sephiroth clones? What was Sephiroth even doing for those years between the Nibelheim incident and the beginning of the game? Why would mako make those monsters in the Nibel Mountain reactor? What exactly was Shinra's business plan that entailed effectively destroying the planet they're on? How exactly is Holy the opposite of Meteor, why is that the only means in a technologically advanced society to remove said Meteor threat and if it is the only opposite why didn't it even work in destroying the meteor?
Side note, FF7's story felt nothing like Chrono Trigger. The only elements that they have in commmon is "This is gonna destroy our world, better stop it" and the hero myth.
It's a good series, overall, but you have to also remember WHEN the games were released.
If you start comparing a game released 20+ years ago to a modern game in the genera...it's not going to go well.
While some JRPGs have aged INSANELY well (FF6, FFT, CT, etc)...
Some JRPGs have aged OKAY (FF4, FF5, FF8, etC)...
While even more have aged HORRIBLY (FF1, FF2, FF7, etc)...
I, back when FFX2 was released, played though all the FFs released at the point and it was a mixed bag.
Nostalgia, and cheats that gave you 10x (or more) EXP, helped me get thru several of the games that I thought were 'untouchable' when I first played them.
-I still can't get over how much I LOVED FF2 has a kid, and now I see it as a 'mediocre game with GREAT ideas that were POORLY utilized).
What games are good and bad is entirely up to preference.
I personally love FFXI, the first mmo in the series.
Just so beautiful, the music is hypnotic, the class system is superb, I loved the 'menu' based combat - even though many people claimed to hate it. Black mage and Red mage will always be the best classes of any class to be classy, with the later being the buff spamming badass of the two.
If I had the money to, I'd go back and play it RIGHT NOW.
He's a prototype magi-knight that was driven insane from experiments. It was established that these statues are the source of all magic in the world(thus the source of his mental perversion) which is why he made them his means to an end. Not exactly deep but it's cohesive.
Why did Hojo make Sephiroth clones? What was Sephiroth even doing for those years between the Nibelheim incident and the beginning of the game? Why would mako make those monsters in the Nibel Mountain reactor? What exactly was Shinra's business plan that entailed effectively destroying the planet they're on? How exactly is Holy the opposite of Meteor, why is that the only means in a technologically advanced society to remove said Meteor threat and if it is the only opposite why didn't it even work in destroying the meteor?
Side note, FF7's story felt nothing like Chrono Trigger. The only elements that they have in commmon is "This is gonna destroy our world, better stop it" and the hero myth.
Was that established? I'm happy to defer there, but I remember all those plot points barely getting a line or two of dialogue. With stories taking over a day to experience, I'm not sure that qualifies.
But I think we're talking about different things. By "disjointed", I assumed that you meant "feels like a series of distinct episodes only loosely connected". And I think FFVII is the entry which suffers from that problem the least. If you just meant "internally consistent" then, sure. None of them make any sense. Although I still think FFVII offers the best compensation against that, because of its tighter structure and stronger, thematically relevant set pieces.
especially the one about Shinra's business plan. It's a heavy-handed game about environmentalism! It's not like there aren't plenty of real-world companies who seem to be willfully ignoring the problems of dwindling resources and environmental damage. I'd be happy to agree that the world isn't fleshed out enough to make Shinra seem plausible. The only real population centre is Midgar, and that's a shithole from top to bottom. I think the message would have been stronger if we'd been shown a lot of people living in luxury off the back of everyone else. But worlds feeling empty and constructed entirely for the benefit of the player characters is a problem with Final Fantasy all the way up to XII.
I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean about the meteor. Why would you expect them to be able to destroy it in any other way? Their technology isn't that advanced, surely? Other than their fancy reactors and giant cannon what do they have? I was under the impression that (in keeping with the environmentalism theme), the party's plan with Holy was "well this may not work, but there aren't any other options, so there's nothing to lose by trying".
And I don't think you can complain that something wasn't established as working in a particular way AND that it didn't!
I'm not saying FFVII is a wonderful story. I just think it's the best twenty-hour plus video game story (that doesn't get its power from player insertion) that anyone's made up to this point. That's not much of a compliment.
And I only meant that FFVII and Chrono Trigger feel similar because of how plot information is threaded through them, rather than being kept from the player until it's basically redundant. I agree that the similarities stop there, but I think it's that technical expertise that makes them both hold up even now.
I'm happy to keep discussing this (it's always helpful for my job to hear why people did or didn't like particular stories), but we've drifted off-topic. I think the take away from this diversion for the OP is that it's not worth getting into Final Fantasy if you like your plots tight and cohesive.
He's a prototype magi-knight that was driven insane from experiments. It was established that these statues are the source of all magic in the world(thus the source of his mental perversion) which is why he made them his means to an end. Not exactly deep but it's cohesive.
Why did Hojo make Sephiroth clones? What was Sephiroth even doing for those years between the Nibelheim incident and the beginning of the game? Why would mako make those monsters in the Nibel Mountain reactor? What exactly was Shinra's business plan that entailed effectively destroying the planet they're on? How exactly is Holy the opposite of Meteor, why is that the only means in a technologically advanced society to remove said Meteor threat and if it is the only opposite why didn't it even work in destroying the meteor?
Side note, FF7's story felt nothing like Chrono Trigger. The only elements that they have in commmon is "This is gonna destroy our world, better stop it" and the hero myth.
Was that established? I'm happy to defer there, but I remember all those plot points barely getting a line or two of dialogue. With stories taking over a day to experience, I'm not sure that qualifies.
But I think we're talking about different things. By "disjointed", I assumed that you meant "feels like a series of distinct episodes only loosely connected". And I think FFVII is the entry which suffers from that problem the least. If you just meant "internally consistent" then, sure. None of them make any sense. Although I still think FFVII offers the best compensation against that, because of its tighter structure and stronger, thematically relevant set pieces.
especially the one about Shinra's business plan. It's a heavy-handed game about environmentalism! It's not like there aren't plenty of real-world companies who seem to be willfully ignoring the problems of dwindling resources and environmental damage. I'd be happy to agree that the world isn't fleshed out enough to make Shinra seem plausible. The only real population centre is Midgar, and that's a shithole from top to bottom. I think the message would have been stronger if we'd been shown a lot of people living in luxury off the back of everyone else. But worlds feeling empty and constructed entirely for the benefit of the player characters is a problem with Final Fantasy all the way up to XII.
I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean about the meteor. Why would you expect them to be able to destroy it in any other way? Their technology isn't that advanced, surely? Other than their fancy reactors and giant cannon what do they have? I was under the impression that (in keeping with the environmentalism theme), the party's plan with Holy was "well this may not work, but there aren't any other options, so there's nothing to lose by trying".
And I don't think you can complain that something wasn't established as working in a particular way AND that it didn't!
I'm not saying FFVII is a wonderful story. I just think it's the best twenty-hour plus video game story (that doesn't get its power from player insertion) that anyone's made up to this point. That's not much of a compliment.
And I only meant that FFVII and Chrono Trigger feel similar because of how plot information is threaded through them, rather than being kept from the player until it's basically redundant. I agree that the similarities stop there, but I think it's that technical expertise that makes them both hold up even now.
I'm happy to keep discussing this (it's always helpful for my job to hear why people did or didn't like particular stories), but we've drifted off-topic. I think the take away from this diversion for the OP is that it's not worth getting into Final Fantasy if you like your plots tight and cohesive.
See, this is why I can't have this discussion with fans. I've heard that same kind of noise from people who say Final Fantasy 6 is the best game ever with its deep rich storytelling.
Just as FF7 is for environmentalism, FF6 is anti-war peace shouting. The war of the magi and the desire to avoid another war is pretty much the constant background noise. In the magitek factory you overhear Kefka flaunt his desire to revive the warring triad tauntingly when torturing the espers. So obviously since you hate this dick you gotta look into it. So then it's later established that it was the three gods of magic themselves that started the war hence why they're known as the warring triad. They sealed themselves in stone to end the war hence they're also known as the Statues too. And then oh my god why am I even defending this comparison they both sucked.
If you want to hear my personal biggest condemnation of final fantasy 7's story: its pacing makes it an absolute slog and kills my interest. By the time you get out of Midgar I've already stopped caring and in my multiple attempts to give the game another chance I can't even get past the first disc before I stop and tell myself 'no more'. Which is some credit I can give ff6, I'm at least able to finish that multiple times.
Also, I didn't say it wasn't established, it was. I was saying there was no justification for its establishment because it made no sense even within the internal logic which is why it's all the more aggravating that they copped out and had it not work at the last minute for the thematic flare. Therefore I will complain about it.
Wow, I was seriously not expecting this many replies. I'm going to have a fun time going through and reading all of these. I did notice a theme though as I skimmed through these, a lot of people seem to want me to keep in mind when the games were released and that graphics have changed and other things. I would like to state that I am a serious retro gamer and find game play to be more important than a story or graphics. If a game has good game play AND a good story, then it only adds to the game. I just wanted to clear this up because I noticed it mentioned quite a few times within this thread.
The Final Fantasies didn't get fun for me until IV. Then I pretty much like all the ones I've played except XII and maybe VIII. Even XIII isn't THAT bad. I just can't see myself playing it more than once.
Anyway, if you're looking at the older games, I can definitely recommend IV and VI. III and V have interesting job systems as well, so you may want to look into them for that. I and II haven't held up well, in my opinion.
Okay, so I took some time to read all of the posts (except arguments between posters) and I have decided to definitely check out the series. I want to thank all of you for your responses and especially:
Shoggoth2588
RJ 17
Eric the Orange
ChristopherT
for selling me on the series. However, as ChristopherT pointed out, the PSX ones have audio flaws and both he and Shoggoth2588 pointed out the ridiculous load times. I'm going to search around a bit on amazon and the game store for good prices. I may definitely end up going the route of GBA/DS but they can be rather pricey. The aforementioned audio problem and loading times were a big part of this but also the fact I already own Chrono Trigger on my Super Nintendo (I realized that I didn't mention the fact I already own that). I'll definitely check out 1-6 and maybe check out VII as well, depending out what I think of the series up to that point.
Oh and I'll check out a few other games you guys have mentioned (such as Dragon Quest) as well. Thanks again to everyone for the responses, they all played a part in the ultimate decision.
There's a retro gaming store down the street from where I live and I go there almost all the time. They have a great selection of PSX games and have Final Fantasy I-VI in anthology collections (the first two in a set together, IV with Chrono Trigger, and V and VI together). I have never really played FF before (played the first a bit on an emulator) but have played Chrono Trigger on SNES (a lot of people have compared the two) and immensely enjoyed that. From the bit of the first FF I've played, it was a lot of fun.
However, my understanding is the series has begun to go downhill. I did some research but no one can really agree on when this began. I've heard since XI it's been going downhill but have also read that VIII is when the series began to suck.
I guess what I'm wondering is a few things: 1. Is Final Fantasy a series worth getting into? 2. When would you say the series began to go downhill? 3. If you didn't notice, none of the PSX titles had III. So what would be the best way to experience these games?
With that last one please try to keep in mind, the only systems I have are a SNES, N64, Gamecube, PS2, Gameboy Advance, and a Nintendo DS.
First off, DO NOT buy the Playstation One anthology collections! These versions are marred by horrible lag every time you enter a battle and even when you want to enter the menus. Believe me, when playing a JRPG, this is the last thing you want to experience, as you'll be doing a lot of fighting and customizing. Personally, I'd recommend playing 1-5 on emulators, then buying FFVI for the SNES or Wii (the Wii Virtual Console version is based on the SNES version, and is therefore not marred by the horrible lag. The PSN version however, is a port of the PSOne version and suffers from the same lag issues). Then the rest of the games starting from FFVII you can buy for the PSOne/PS2/PS3.
My favourites in the series:
1) FFVII
2) FFVI
3) FFXII (very, very underrated. Amazing world, lots of exploration and the best battle system in the series by far. And NO RANDOM BATTLES, which is a huge positive)
4) FFIX
5) FFX
I'd even recommend you try out the much criticized FFXIII. Sure it's not one of the strongest FF's (too linear, removal of cities and shops are the major complaints), but it's a stunner and it will keep you entertained.
Final Fantasy series has had its ups and downs with the games, I mean nothing is perfect. I would say if you haven't started the games before, a good benchmark game would be FFVII or FFIX, maybe FFVI if you can stand the graphical engine. These 3 games have good game mechanics so help beginners in the series get the feel of things. Progressing from this I would say that FFVIII is worth a playthrough for the storyline, though the gameplay style is slightly different, as with FFX, though I found the story/minigames a bit lacking here.
Yes it has gone down in the overall 'i connect and feel with the characters and love playing this game' dept. FFXII and XIII were good enough games for the time, however they were missing that connection you feel with most games, and focussed more on jaw dropping graphics/cutscenes I feel.
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