Ahead On Our Way - The Top 21 Numbered Final Fantasies Countdown

[jpfriction]

I wish the battles had come down to a bit more than “spam elixirs until everything is dead”, but I also very much enjoyed my time with the bros.

I understand there are some post game dungeons with item restrictions and I tried those a bit but by then I was pretty much done and on to the next thing.

 

[Purple]

FF15 is past the "I am not buying games because I get so many in bundles and can't afford a pair of shoes that fit" line so my exposure is pretty much:
- I saw a let's play of the one optional late game dungeon where there's no monsters and it's just like, Tombraider platforming everywhere. That's a neat thing to have.
- Cup Noodle
-It's kinda total BS to go and break the streak where every game from 4 on had exactly 3 girls as playable characters and dropped all the way down to 0. More messed up that 16 seems to be running with that.

 

[spines]

But that may say more about me than it says about the game, and, in the end, I finished 7R while that 7 playthrough stalled out on (what would have been) disc 2. One thing I'll say in 7R's favor: 7 throws a lot of characters at you and doesn't give you much reason to care about most of them, while 7R makes each character very distinct -- even many of the weapons have a big effect on how the character plays. And while you have hardly any control over who's in your party, the bench gains experience along with you, so you don't feel handicapped when the roster changes. IIRC, this isn't true of any mainline FF game until XIII.

i do totally agree that the different playstyles is a huge perk of 7r's design, even if the way the AI works on hard specifically kind of just makes cloud the best character in the second half

I immediately tried Hard, but I stopped when there was no obvious way to skip the lengthy story bits (e.g. the long, long walk into Shinra building at the start of the chapter). I picked Hard to engage with the mechanics, not to replay the whole game.

i also get this, even though i enjoyed the game enough to easily sit through it all a second time, since there are other games (like dmc definitive edition and star ocean 5) that i thought were fine but not amazing and would've probably kept playing if not for the same thing

As an addemdum, I really really dislike XV's art style - the modern setting dissonance really is a turn off.

this part is definitely not how i feel, though learning that naora was also the art director on stuff like ff7 (and most of compilation), 8, 10 and the playstation 2 saga games make it easy for me to say that i don't think this is my favorite of those games by a long shot in terms of overall style. but despite some of the character designs and flourishes in the game coming off not so great, there's elements i really like, and i'd love to hear more about where they came from, because to me, they scream "southwestern united states." obviously, i'm perfectly aware that's more than a little because that's where i'm from, but also stuff like the market at lestallum has chile ristras up, which seem to me to be pretty specifically regional, alongside the overall design of lucis featuring dry plains climing gently up into twisting mountain highways. and that leads to why it was #1 on my prospective list and i spent no time debating this: this is the only FF game that brings something i really haven't ever gotten from any other game, and that is...a weirdly accurate-feeling echo of stuff i did every summer as a teenage boy 15-20 years ago: fishing, camping, hiking at night, and driving through bizarre, dusty, anachronistic rural towns with weird restaurants that look like they still think it's the 50s a couple hours from a big modern city. there were adults and vans, but of course it was all about the camaraderie and cruelty of being with a bunch of other boys around your age. and i mean, based on that, and the general story and tone of the game, i don't blame anyone for dislike or disinterest in it, but for me it was a strange time in my life i hadn't reflected on much. it's really special.

and there's a reason everybody talks about this game in terms of "the bros", because even the combat isn't really an rpg, or an action game. it's about the guys. noctis' attacks are mostly weak and awkward, and his special ability, the warp strikes, will blow out your mana quickly. in fights where teleport stabbing guys doesn't just take them out instantly, most of the damage comes from trying to fish with party members for team attacks, or telling them to use big special moves with the atb bar. the food system, including ignis' cooking, is comedically more powerful than similar systems in games like tales or star ocean, with effects like "your combat level is equal to the enemy's" that let you hit damage cap against hunt bosses 50 levels stronger than you. you can eat cake at the campfire during the ending and everyone becomes like 80% impervious to the damage of the final bosses. and prompto takes pictures of you scrambling around monsters, which really only helps in the really really long term if you do it all the time i guess, but it's cool. obviously, this game had a pretty long troublesome development, and it's hard to think the jank and wackiness of the combat isn't at least partly a result of that, but i have a ton of regard for the people who managed to turn it into something expressive despite that, which i think is way more unusual and impressive, especially as increasingly i think peoples ideas of what "good combat" is are becoming more and more solidified and often kind of tedious to me. even the fishing minigame is kind of more about impressing that sort of tension than other fishing games.

basically, i don't think ffxv is a bad game, although it certainly has problems. but if it is, i have got to play more bad games

 

[Peklo]

I liked XV most for its iconoclasm in context of the larger genre it occupied; open world fever was maybe at its height around the mid-2010s and you could not accuse the game of acceding to the concept's conventional wisdoms or expected play rhythms, leaving interacting with its larger world novel and interesting specifically because it offered oddities and unexpected friction or the ability, accidental or otherwise, to leave off and make negative space matter instead of resorting to theme park-isms. I also liked the nouveau retro-ism inherent in its attempts to recapture a long-ignored past as many other major series at the time attempted in their soul-searching, in looking back to the earliest points in the series through knowing signifiers and gesturing: four warriors of light, with their menu screen in its dedicated BGM, fighting exactingly adapted Amano critters in the wilderness. When the game brought all those elements to bear, with the dynamism of going out at night and coming across a pack of beasts of prey for an impromptu slugfest, having an imperial dropship suddenly deploy its automatons in the middle, and then having a group of Iron Giants manifest from the ether on top of all the rest, resulting in a ridiculous melee in which you only had nominal control over the flow of it... that's when I could see what they weren't necessarily going for but had irrefutably landed on. The things I don't like about the game are not worth talking about.

 

[Positronic Brain]

For those we have lost, for those we can yet save.

#14
Final Fantasy XIV

a.k.a. The MMO with an expanded free trial that includes the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.

262 points • 8 mentions • Highest rank: #1 (Juno, Oathbreaker)​

Released on September 30, 2010 (Worldwide)
Producer: Hiromichi Tanaka (Original), Naoki Yoshida (A Realm Reborn onwards)
Director: Nobuaki Komoto (Original), Naoki Yoshida (A Realm Reborn onwards)
Lead Composer: Masayoshi Soken

Following the success of FFXI, Square embarked on an ambitious project - make a rival to World of Warcraft. So the FFXI team got crackin’ and developed a new MMO, Final Fantasy XIV.

Word on the street is they almost sunk the franchise.

Is not that the game was bad per se, but it was a victim of Square’s troubling transition to HD. It had severe performance issues (reportedly, a flowerpot had as many polygons as the character models) and the ambitious idea to not have loading screens made the game maps be connected by long boring tunnels to hide the loading, The leveling system was flexible - maybe too much, as there were skills that were so successful that everybody ended with the same build anyway. Lots of details that added up and made Square decide to restart ad remake the game almost from scratch with a new team,

Under the direction of newcomer Naoki Yoshida, the game basically pressed the nuke button and, well, destroyed the world. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, version 2.0 of the game, takes place in a game where the heroes failed to avert the apocalypse and the world is rebuilding itself from The Calamity. A new adventurer (you) is chosen by the Mother Crystal, Hydaelyn, to receive the Blessing of Light, and as her champion you have to deal with both the political machinations of the factions that are fighting for what’s left of the world’s resources and with an ancient sinister force known as The Ascians who, turns out, were behind the Calamity - see, there have been seven of them so far, and you’re the only obstacle between the world and an eight one.

FFXIV is designed with the idea of being as player-friendly as it can. For example, you don’t need alts, all characters can master all jobs and switch between them outside battle. To prevent the issue of parties refusing persons who don’t have optimal builds, each job has only one tree and all classes are balanced to be viable. The team keeps adjusting jobs and abilities to make sure content is always fair. And the content is great - plenty of dungeons, great battles against great foes, incredible set pieces and even greatest music (the battle against Ice Primal Shiva is just awesome). The community has rewarded their efforts by making this one of Square’s most profitable projects, and currently they are retooling the game so it can be played entirely single-player.

Regarding the story, FFXIV has the advantage of having been in development through ten years and five expansions, with most of its lore pre-written after the reboot. Like a long-lived TV series, the creators have had time to develop the story and build intricate arcs, with the biggest one - the conflict between Hydaelyn and the Ascians and the endless cycle of Calamities - being fully wrapped up last December with the Endwalker expansion.

This is both XIV’s greatest strength and greatest curse. The story starts slow, but gains momentum fast and really goes places. For my money, Shadowbringers, the fourth expansion, is IMHO the best Final Fantasy in decades, and its main antagonist is the best Final Fantasy villain by miles. And to experience this awesome part of the game, you only have to play through the first three expansions for around 60 hours each or so.

So, yes, the game is huge, and that plays both for and against it. But if you’re willing to invest the time, the reward is worth it.

Something Old

Oh, boy, what doesn’t XIV recycle homage - the game is, by design, Final Fantasy: The Theme Park. You’ll find plenty of references and activities from old Final Fantasies that you and up to 23 of your closest friends can partake in. Do you want to chocobo race? Maybe you want to kill Chaos? To assault the Crystal Tower? Battle Gilgamesh at the Big Bridge? And then kill Chaos again but harder?

Some of those references are just for flavor (wait until you find out what Cid’s airship name is), some are deeply ingrained into the lore (wait until you learn what Bahamut has been up to) and some are straight up groanworthy (wait until you watch the scene where you learn the birth name of the Empire’s most prestigious playwright!) but they all will tickle your fanservice bone.

Something New

It’s a bit too soon to know what influence XIV will have in the series. We may have an answer soon, as the team responsible for A Realm Reborn and its expansions are developing Final Fantasy XVI. So, besides really cool music, my bet would be on the Primal/Summons exclusively developed for this game. Expect to see Ravana or Good King Moogle Mog (Twelfth of his name) as enemies in future Final Fantasies.

Something Unique

Again, it’s a bit too early to see what concepts unique to FFXIV will be used in the future, particularly if XVII ends up as a MMO. But while the game that has been introducing non-human races and monsters for a decade, my guess is that we won’t see many of these come back in the series.

Score: 22/24 of a full alliance

 

[Positronic Brain]

Yes, XV is #15 and XIV is #14. I swear we didn't plan it that way.

 

[RT-55J]

extrapolating from those two points of data I have some predictions for what we'll be seeing from 13th to 1st place

 

[FelixSH]

Every time I read or hear about FF XIV, I desperately want to play it (reading about plans to make it completely single-player is just the best thing for me - I want to experience it with other players, but having others along, when doing big quests and I want to immerse myself in the story sounds bad, even if the others are so kind to wait, I still would feel like I had to rush). All the references, all the fan-service, and assumingly a (bunch of?) great storie(s).

I tried the free trial once, 1.5 years ago, I think, but got distracted by something else. Not because of the slow pace, I like slow build-up. I consider that essential to a well-built world, at least for the best ones. Maybe after I'm done with FF XIII, and therefore with my project.

Oh, and I can't wait to dress my catboy up in all kinds of clothes. The fashion sense of that world is probably the best I have ever seen in a video game, it looks so much fun.

 

[Lokii]

From all accounts, the best MMO. Appropriate it's a Final Fantasy.

 

[Positronic Brain]

even if the others are so kind to wait, I still would feel like I had to rush

The thing that still amazes me is how welcoming the community is, particularly for an MMO. First time in a dungeon? Total strangers will wait for you to see the cutscenes, no complains. They also watched that cutscene for the first time once!

 

[FelixSH]

The thing that still amazes me is how welcoming the community is, particularly for an MMO. First time in a dungeon? Total strangers will wait for you to see the cutscenes, no complains. They also watched that cutscene for the first time once!

Oh, I heard that a few times and believe it. It's just, I will assume that they are just nice, and want to get on, instead of waiting around, so I will not take the time I want with it. I don't think I can get that out of my head.

Still, always great to hear about the great community. I did hear Nadia Oxford on Axe of the Bloodgod tell about a team, where she was called the worst dragoon someone had ever seen, but I understand that that's an outlier (and kind of funny, considering she seemed to take it with humor, and her always talking about the welcoming community). Speaking of her, she has a sibling podcast to Axe of the Bloodgod, where she talks about her experience with FF XIV. I don't listen to that, to avoid spoilers at least in that direct sense, but I do enjoy listening to her a lot, when she talks about games. So, fans of FF XIV might want to give that podcast a listen (I don't know the name, but I'm sure it should be easy to find, if you search for her name and Axe of the Bloodgod. Also, I swear I'm not paid by them, but they (Nadia and Kat) have been members of this forum, and I do enjoy their podcast a lot, and I assume I wouldn't be the only one.

Anyway, whenever she talks about FF XIV, I want to play it.

 

[Oathbreaker]

Having confidently put it at the top of my list I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, that FFXIV isn't higher. But it is an MMO, so I get it. The writing and music are easily where it shines brightest for me and I am not the right person to articulate exactly how phenomenally good they get. It's one of the only videogame narratives that have made me cry, and the emotions its music can drag out of me no matter how many times I hear it are A LOT. Some of its gameplay and MMO time sink designs probably aren't the best things but in total it is easily the best MMO I have ever seen and played. That the community is generally good and far less toxic than any other MMO community I've seen says a lot all on its own too.

 

[Issun]

Okay, PB, you finally got me to click on a picture with this one. Then I went back and read all the others. Very (too?) clever.

 

[Purple]

I wasn't even aware that was a feature the forums supported. Huh.

 

[Juno]

Speaking of her, she has a sibling podcast to Axe of the Bloodgod, where she talks about her experience with FF XIV. I don't listen to that, to avoid spoilers at least in that direct sense, but I do enjoy listening to her a lot, when she talks about games. So, fans of FF XIV might want to give that podcast a listen (I don't know the name, but I'm sure it should be easy to find, if you search for her name and Axe of the Bloodgod.

It's called "Sharlayan Dropouts", which is basically an in-universe equivalent of the phrase "College Dropouts".

 

[Positronic Brain]

Having confidently put it at the top of my list I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, that FFXIV isn't higher

Oops, sorry. I extracted the highest vote data before I got your list - I've fixed that. The point count is accurate, though.

It got more points than XV even though it had less mentions - less people have it in their lists, but those who had it tend to like it a lot.

 

[Mogri]

Okay, PB, you finally got me to click on a picture with this one. Then I went back and read all the others. Very (too?) clever.

I wasn't even aware that was a feature the forums supported. Huh.

+1

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

FF4DS: I think I own this? But never even popped it into my DS at all. I like the idea of it, and if this game had come to me as a teenager I bet I would have loved it. But the all accounts big increase in difficulty scared me off from ever giving it a try. I'm too old to have patience anymore for games with punishing difficulty and grindy mechanics.

FF7R: I think I ranked this #3 on my list IIRC. It is a crazy good game. There are a handful of criticisms I have for it, but mostly it was just really freaking good. It also came out at a time where I was completely locked down at the beginning of The Pandemic, and the experience of getting lost in Midgar was so enthralling and such a great escape from reality and immersive experience that I don't think I've felt this way about a single player game since college. I'm mildly surprised more of y'all haven't played it, but when you all get around to it eventually, I think you'll all be very entertained.

FF15: I placed #6. It's a game that's got a lot of flaws, and was very clearly a salvage project. I think most of the patches and DLC actively tarnishes the game. And after playing the game's demos, you can tell the designers thought very lowly of their audience and also lacked a lot of confidence in their own product considering how much the combat system was paired down and diluted, and how much content was just straight up ripped out of the game at the very last second. But what it got right, it really friggin' nailed. The art direction is top notch, the soundtrack might be one of Yoko Shimomura's finest (which says a LOT), and the general experience... just wonderful. I grew up going on a lot of road trips with my family that were boring as hell, and spent a lot of time staring out the window wishing I was sharing those experiences with friends instead. I don't know if it works for everyone or hits as close to home, but FF15 was like living out one of my greatest fantasies - just going on a cross country roadtrip with the bros, and having a merry old time on the way. Just an incredible experience. The overarching story might be a mess and nonsensical, but the personal journey of Noctis and his bros are a masterclass in storytelling. The story falls apart at the end in a way that is reminiscent of how Xenogears had a very trunicated back-half born from development compromises, but just like Xenogears, I think it's more interesting for having done so? I don't know. It's easy to imagine what if they had more time to finish the game, but again, considering all of the stuff that got added post-launch, I have my doubts it would have ended up being any good.

FF14: I don't have a lot of nice things to say about my time in Eorzea, so I won't trash the game. But like FF4DS, if I had come to this game much earlier in life when I would have been more receptive to what it puts down, I probably would have enjoyed it a lot. Certainly more than FF11. But MMOs are just not for me.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I need to apologize, I was bitten by a nasty stomach flu so I’ll have to skip today’s post. Yep, a stomach bug, they’re no recalibrating my positronic matrix or anything. But I’ll hope I’ll be OK tomorrow and we’ll catch up! Thanks for your patience.

 

[Kirin]

No need to apologize, tbh it's kind of a relief when ongoing threads pause over holiday times when lots of us aren't online as much...

 

[Positronic Brain]

I'm back and I'm feeling totally like myself, yep siree. Time for today's entry,

 

[Positronic Brain]

The crystal shines brightly.

#13
Final Fantasy III

a.k.a. The one with the kids beating the half-naked lady.

399 points • 15 mentions • Highest rank: #2 (FelixSH, JBear)​

Released on April 27, 1990 (Japan)
Producer: Masafumi Miyamoto
Directors: Hironobu Sakaguchi
Composers: Nobuo Uematsu

Did you remember when I said that III had been extremely popular? It was. And it’s not hard to see why, since it took the best parts of both its predecessors and proceeded to improve upon them. Instead of I's 6 jobs (12 if you count promotions) there were now 21, and you could change between them at practically any time. Instead of following I’s vignette-like approach to story, III embraced II’s storytelling and weaved a epic story about four children discovering the Crystal of Light and trying to prevent evil Emperor Xande from allowing the Cloud of Darkness destroying the world. And with the whole team bringing their A-game, with gorgeous art and great music, this game was destined to be an instant classic.

Why did we never get it in the West, then? Bad timing, mostly. It arrived late to our shores, and Square had moved to SNES development by the time III was considered for localization. Apparently localization did start for III, but was abandoned in favor of localizing IV instead. However, its influence was long-felt, and a lot of its contributions to the series have echoed in every entry since then.

One interesting anecdote - this was NASIR’s last hurrah for the Final Fantasy series. Midway through development his work visa expired so he had to move back to California, where the production system followed him in order to finish the game. This is the first Final Fantasy created in Japan and the United States, yet it never was localized until after IIIDS was released.

Something Old

Being the third title, some things were finally coded as part of the meta lore of the series. Particularly, the classes - jobs like Knight, White Mage, Black Mage and Red Mage made their return here and would become staples of the series. Also returning - Cid. This was the first game with a recurring Cid, so this is the one that technically started the tradition to include a character of that name in every entry of the series.

Something New

III added a lot of things to the series that we now take for granted, like XP and levels (which had skipped a whole), auto-targeting to prevent whiffed attacks, multiple overworld maps and the initial implementation of the job system.

The job system in particular is huge - not only could you change jobs for your characters, changing a job meant more than having different stats or spells lists, you could get abilities that added extra commands to your menu window. Sounds really familiar and kinda obvious now, but it was mind-blowing them, giving the player incentive to play around with jobs. Later games wouldimprove on it, but this one started it all.

Something Blew

In III some jobs are meant as introductory jobs, to be discarded into other jobs as better versions of them become available, like a softer version of Promotion in I. Jobs becoming unviable is something the series shy away from in future installments.

Something else that never came back? Summons made their debut here, but unlike other games, the ability of the summoned monster would change based on the job of the invoker. This aspected summoning would never be used again, with Summons becoming just stronger spells during the NES and PSX era and then branching into other mechanics for the PS2 and beyond.

Score

18/ 21 jobs

 

[FelixSH]

Oh, I love FF III. I was wondering what I had placed higher - IX, as it turns out. Could have been V, though, which I also adore, or VII. These four were at the top, but kinda ordered at random.

This game is an amazing achievement. FF had been ambitious from the start, but this here includes so, so much, and it is so fun. This one might feel the most like a fun, lighthearted adventure (like I, but with better graphics and so, so amazing monster sprites). You stumble from weird plot to weird plot, while unraveling the big story behind it all. There is implied lore that delights my heart. Every location is an Easter-egg hunt, giving all the towns an additional layer of fun, and honest-to-god reminded me a bit of my childhood, when a friend would hide a little figurine or something, and the other person would look around the room to find it.

An important introduction: Moogles! They are adorable, and awesome, and I love them.

And, of course, a flexible job system, where nearly every job has its time to shine (with the sole exception of Bard, which is a shame). I really like, how this take on the job system is so very different from all the ones that came later (and I don't think the later version is superior, I enjoyed what I got here). You basically get a set of toys, and can play around with them. The game even tells you, by giving you the right equipment, that you could, maybe, try this toy out NOW. And suddenly, you have a bunch of thieves that rip all the monsters apart, at least for some time.

The only problem is the item limit, but aside from that, I loved exploring the different jobs, and just changing to what the game wanted me to use. More like a puzzle game (and again, I think the point was to make the player actually try out all these different jobs). I also think it might not be so hard to actually keep four jobs for the most part, maybe? A thief is supposed to be viable until the endgame, due to the insane amounts of hits he gets, I think? Sure, there are places were you simply need a Dark Knight or a Dragoon, and I guess the very endgame is too hard, if you don't use the superclasses? I will certainly try, at some point.

A detail I really liked was, how the seed for Cecils journey from Dark Knight to Paladin finds its seed here. There is some lore, which I forgot the details about, but that are about the Dark Knight and where it's power comes from, or something. Like all games in this series, you get ideas in one game, which are really interesting and get then explored in the next.

I love the summons, and even if they are less practical, I think I enjoyed how they worked. And just having them introduced here - summons are great.

There is quite some nice lore, and when you get to the Cloud of Darkness, and its world, I couldn't stop seeing a world where the power that protects it went too strong, and basically destroyed it, enslaving the ones who are supposed to guard it. Like it would happen in the world of Light, if that side became too strong. With the Cloud of Darkness not as a willing antagonist, but more a force of nature, that will devour everything, if there isn't some sort of equilibrium. I love the world building in this game.

I'm forgetting stuff, I know. But I think this is an amazing game, and one of the most purely joyfull experiences of the series. As Positronic Brain mentioned, it took the good stuff from I and II, and mixed it. Personally, I think the result is amazing. Also, look at some of these sprites, they are incredible:

I adore this slime. He looks so grumpy.

Dullahan, I presume. Great, but nothing against

the great and mighty Hein. No idea what, but I love everything about this guy, despite having nearly no backstory, and love his inclusion into the backstory of VIII.

And, granted, the best is also last:

Well, Xande is plenty fine, but I'm talking, of course, about

What an awesome sprite. so much detail, so much...there. The spritework in this game is great.

Oh, not to forget the best sprites of them all:

The cutest sheep of them all

his majesty, and

this guy. Your were brave, little one.

Well, that's enough. I love this game.

 

[Patrick]

I’ve only played the 3D remake. Looking forward to playing the Pixel remaster.

 

[Kirin]

I was unfortunate to have a bad history with III. I learned of its existence during the time of IV and VI, when nerds lurking on the early internet quickly discovered that we'd missed out on V, as well as II and III back in the 8-bit days. And so... emulation! These days emulators are pretty robust and cool unlocalized games often get near-professional quality fan translations, but things were a lot shakier back then. I tracked down a *partially* translated ROM of FFIII, which had basic menus and items in English... at least at first, but the further you got in the game the more was untranslated or just kind of wrong. So I was struggling to understand what I was doing at the best of times. And then, when I was I think more than halfway through the plot, the emulator crashed and took my save game with it, and the last backup I had was like a dozen hours old. That was too much and I gave up on it.

Of course it wasn't to be too much longer before we got legit English versions of II and V in Origins and Chronicles on PlayStation, but III was nowhere to be found, so... I never came back to it. I think it's the only main-line non-MMO FF I've never played to completion. Maybe with the pixel remasters on console I'll finally try it out again!

 

[JBear]

This game is so fucking good. I am mad at myself for listening to the internet for so long and only playing this for the first time a few years ago. It was a revelation. I loved every second of it, and wrote a giant wall of text love letter to it back on TT 2.0. It was such an obvious heavy influence on FF4 (and FF5), and I had no idea. It was like I had found a hidden time capsule with *more FF4* (in particular the easter egg hunt nature of each town that Felix mentions above). And that music! The first time *the thing* happens and you discover that the game is just getting started and that sad lonely music cuts in is just so uniquely amazing and I wish I could have experienced it as a child. Man, what an incredible fucking video game.

That said, my vote was for the Famicom version, and only the Famicom version. I think the DS version is significantly worse with some real design missteps (and I resent how it unfairly poisoned the well against the FC version, as well as created some stubbornly persistent misconceptions about how the original game works), and I think the Pixel Remaster is "fine" insofar as it got a lot of people to play *some* version of this game who would never have otherwise, but I think that version loses a lot of the charm, and is far too easy/frictionless, not to mention that the facelifts to both versions obfuscate some of the explicit links to FF4 & 5 that I adored so much, and it really bums me out how few series fans have experienced that original, excellent game.

ETA: Oh, and the Invincible is the best airship in any FF game, hands down, and the only one that even comes close (FFL3's Talon) wasn't really a FF game at all *and* was clearly heavily inspired by this one.

God, and this game has so many great beats too that lose something in subsequent versions, like the startling abruptness of your first air ship's explosion, or the adorable FC representation of the kingdom of Salonia and their squared off army lines. Man, this game.

 

[FelixSH]

You know, I feel like this is where Final Fantasy starts really being Final Fantasy. The first game, to me, is more a D&D game, and less an FF one. And with the second, while I love that one too, it feels very different from the rest of the series - interesting, considering that "change" is a major component of every part. This here feels, to me, like the basis, where they got a great standard, that the rest of the series would use as a baseline. Be it the story-driven games, like IV, or the system driven ones, like V (which are, of course, also story driven, even if in a different way).

 

[Peklo]

There's solid competition, but I'm pretty sure the Crystal Tower, Eureka and World of Darkness comprise my favourite end-game in the series. All the game's presentational, mechanical and narrative aspects reach their peak dramatism there in a really memorably coherent way. It's not even particularly disruptive of series precedent in how all that is accomplished--I just love a good tower, and this is one of the grandest.

 

[JBear]

It's not even particularly disruptive of series precedent in how all that is accomplished--I just love a good tower, and this is one of the grandest.

It is wild to me how universally beloved FFIV's Lunar Subterrane is compared to how universally loathed FFIII's end-game is given how the earlier is so clearly directly inspired by the latter, owing, I think, almost entirely to the fact that save points hadn't been conceptualized yet (the impact of which, I think, is routinely overstated, given that you can minimize a lot of the risk/impact by trekking back outside before entering the WoD). Otherwise, you can draw pretty direct lines between the two, with a comparatively easy starter dungeon on the way, a branching path once you enter the dungeon proper with a bunch of optional superbosses guarding end-game weapons, and a final cosmetically distinct area where the difficulty is ramped up before a final boss.

ETA: oh, and, of course, the parade of comrades that grant you their spiritual power to overcome the big bad.

 

[FelixSH]

The save points are probably a big part there, yes. I actually used save states, I think the only part of the game where I did so, because it was long and dangerous, and I simply don't like to repeat too much. In IV, I can kill a boss, and return back to the save point, until I cleared out everything. And I think it's easier to flee (Edge has a 100% flee chance ability, right?) in IV, so you can go straight from the save point to the final boss, when you want to fight him, with nearly no danger. All of that makes the final dungeon of IV a good deal easier, even if it can be pretty hard in itself - the monsters are no jokes.