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What Are Your For Real Favorite Final Fantasies?
- Thread starter Issun
- Start date
X and VII were pretty quick lock-ins, but after that it was wide wide open, and I ended up picking VI. I could have easily picked IV, V, VIII, or XIV. I wanted to have III in there too, but it's more top 5 material and not top 3.
IV and VI were an easy lock for me, after that I had to go on feelings. It honestly could have been I, V or VII but I went with VII because how important that game was to me at one point in my life and how the Remake rekindled so many of those feelings in a new way.
Replaying a recent fan translation of FFIV, I came to appreciate the game as a limbo space between the 8 bit era of the series and where it would go in the future. The designers came nowhere close to capturing the full potential of the SNES, so the game they made is more like a really, really polished NES game and it's great not in spite of that, but because of it.
Replaying a recent fan translation of FFIV, I came to appreciate the game as a limbo space between the 8 bit era of the series and where it would go in the future. The designers came nowhere close to capturing the full potential of the SNES, so the game they made is more like a really, really polished NES game and it's great not in spite of that, but because of it.
VI is always going to be a lock-in, period. But I admit that my "instant click" for XIV comes from sheer infatuation with it, borne from the last 8 months I've been mainlining it. I felt very similarly when I played XII and XV, placing them near or at the top of the list during, or shortly after, my main playthroughs. Unlike those two games, though, I'm certain XIV will survive the "novelty factor" and keep the top spot in the current list.
At least, until XVI knocks all other entries down a peg.
At least, until XVI knocks all other entries down a peg.
Didn’t even hesitate, it’s absolutely the SNES games.
No room for debate
No room for debate
FelixSH
(He/Him)
After my recent playthroughs, I'm very sure that III and V are my favourite taste of FF - going on a fun adventure, that might have its dramatic moments, but doesn't take itself too seriously. III has the easter-egg hunt aspect and its own version of the job system, that I enjoy, and V has a great cast with a beautiful chemistry, and did very nice things with its story.
Everything after VII is murky, because I haven't played those games in years. But I remember adoring IX, and I assume it is very much a spiritual successor to III and V, more than the others (might be wrong, but the lightheartedness and the colorful dark-fairytale world make me think it's true). Also, nostalgia. VII would fit in here as well, as it is an excellent game in so many respects, and so excessive in its ambition. I loved replaying that one, it just offers so, so much.
I don't think there is much of a contest, outside of these four. That said, I think they are all great games, some are just more to my taste than others. Like, VI doesn't work for me anymore, and IV never really did, but I can see what others find in them. It's just a great series, all around.
Everything after VII is murky, because I haven't played those games in years. But I remember adoring IX, and I assume it is very much a spiritual successor to III and V, more than the others (might be wrong, but the lightheartedness and the colorful dark-fairytale world make me think it's true). Also, nostalgia. VII would fit in here as well, as it is an excellent game in so many respects, and so excessive in its ambition. I loved replaying that one, it just offers so, so much.
I don't think there is much of a contest, outside of these four. That said, I think they are all great games, some are just more to my taste than others. Like, VI doesn't work for me anymore, and IV never really did, but I can see what others find in them. It's just a great series, all around.
12 is a game I really love for its setting and its combat system and character designs, but it's not a complete package with its main story being kind of slipshod. And story is probably the most important thing for me personally. 7 was the hardest cut for me. If 7 and 7R could be considered one game, I think it would have made it, but it's not. 15 making my list might be a bit of recency bias, but I just loved that experience from beginning to end. And it did so many awesome things that were not just awesome, but specifically things I'd wanted in a FF game all my life. 8 and 10 are my auto-locks. 1-6 I just don't love like that.
Fyonn
did their best!
Even the one Final Fantasy I don't have a ton of love for, IX, is still gorgeous and the worst things I can say about it is "sometimes the battle system is slow" and "I don't like the character customization mechanic."
My picks are Final Fantasy 7, 13, and 15, in no particular order.
Final Fantasy 7
It was my first real attempt at playing a Final Fantasy game. I've played through it to completion at least a half dozen times. I feel like it probably doesn't give players enough non-Magic Materia early on to teach them the value of refraining from Magic, but once you understand those percentage penalties add up, there's interesting space for character role specialization. The dynamic between characters who can and who cannot hit flying or distant targets does add some nuance to the proceedings, too. Final Fantasy 7 can be kind of easy if you have any experience with JRPGs, and if that bothers you, can I recommend playing in Active mode at the highest battle speed? When played as such it is a completely different beast that is all about being intimately familiar with what all your party members can do and already having plans formulating for their next turn the second you give them a command.
Final Fantasy 13
13 has some problems, mainly that battles are generally too long, but given its combat system, harder battles would be absolutely brutal if they were any faster. The ranking system isn't nearly enough to stop many players from sitting in COM/RAV/MED (that is a physical attacker, a magical attacker, and a healer) indefinitely, ruining their own fun by using a setup that will probably win most battles eventually, but as slowly as possible. At its best, FF13 is played as quickly and aggressively as possible, and its best designed encounters will wipe your party out if you even think about healing before you've used focused fire or mitigation to lessen the impact of numerous or multi-hitting enemies. I also have a soft spot for it thanks to being one of the two hugely obvious mechanical influences on Get In The Car, Loser! the indie JRPG from Christine Love that skyrocketed into my favorite JRPGs list the second I started it.
Final Fantasy 15
If you look up "more than the sum of its parts" in an encyclopedia, there's a screenshot of this game next to it. Tons of weird and questionable decisions about combat mechanics, world design, dungeons, and plotting. It's also obviously unfinished. But also I had a great deal of respect for the game by the end of my first 90 hour playthrough, and then I learned to love the game's mechanics on a second 90 hour playthrough where I disallowed myself from using healing items in battle. I've also played a good 40 hours of FF15 Comrades, a Monster Hunter / Phantasy Star Online esque side game where you make your own canon FF15 character and have adventures during the plot's time skip. Comrades is a refinement of FF15's combat system that feels like it is wholly complete, a very funny indictment of Noctis's skill as a mage since other people seem to be able to cast magic all regular-like, and unfortunately not nearly as well structured as Monster Hunter or PSO. If you'd like to bring some of that refinement to the main game, I recommend buying the ability to play as Gladio ASAP and switching to him any time a battle starts to get repetitive.
Also, honorable mention to Final Fantasy XIV, which I think is the best Final Fantasy game, but requires me to overcome more anxiety to play it than I would like. And no, the fact that I'm a pretty good tank compared to most Duty Finder tanks I've encountered does not reduce my anxiety about being a bad tank.
My picks are Final Fantasy 7, 13, and 15, in no particular order.
Final Fantasy 7
It was my first real attempt at playing a Final Fantasy game. I've played through it to completion at least a half dozen times. I feel like it probably doesn't give players enough non-Magic Materia early on to teach them the value of refraining from Magic, but once you understand those percentage penalties add up, there's interesting space for character role specialization. The dynamic between characters who can and who cannot hit flying or distant targets does add some nuance to the proceedings, too. Final Fantasy 7 can be kind of easy if you have any experience with JRPGs, and if that bothers you, can I recommend playing in Active mode at the highest battle speed? When played as such it is a completely different beast that is all about being intimately familiar with what all your party members can do and already having plans formulating for their next turn the second you give them a command.
Final Fantasy 13
13 has some problems, mainly that battles are generally too long, but given its combat system, harder battles would be absolutely brutal if they were any faster. The ranking system isn't nearly enough to stop many players from sitting in COM/RAV/MED (that is a physical attacker, a magical attacker, and a healer) indefinitely, ruining their own fun by using a setup that will probably win most battles eventually, but as slowly as possible. At its best, FF13 is played as quickly and aggressively as possible, and its best designed encounters will wipe your party out if you even think about healing before you've used focused fire or mitigation to lessen the impact of numerous or multi-hitting enemies. I also have a soft spot for it thanks to being one of the two hugely obvious mechanical influences on Get In The Car, Loser! the indie JRPG from Christine Love that skyrocketed into my favorite JRPGs list the second I started it.
Final Fantasy 15
If you look up "more than the sum of its parts" in an encyclopedia, there's a screenshot of this game next to it. Tons of weird and questionable decisions about combat mechanics, world design, dungeons, and plotting. It's also obviously unfinished. But also I had a great deal of respect for the game by the end of my first 90 hour playthrough, and then I learned to love the game's mechanics on a second 90 hour playthrough where I disallowed myself from using healing items in battle. I've also played a good 40 hours of FF15 Comrades, a Monster Hunter / Phantasy Star Online esque side game where you make your own canon FF15 character and have adventures during the plot's time skip. Comrades is a refinement of FF15's combat system that feels like it is wholly complete, a very funny indictment of Noctis's skill as a mage since other people seem to be able to cast magic all regular-like, and unfortunately not nearly as well structured as Monster Hunter or PSO. If you'd like to bring some of that refinement to the main game, I recommend buying the ability to play as Gladio ASAP and switching to him any time a battle starts to get repetitive.
Also, honorable mention to Final Fantasy XIV, which I think is the best Final Fantasy game, but requires me to overcome more anxiety to play it than I would like. And no, the fact that I'm a pretty good tank compared to most Duty Finder tanks I've encountered does not reduce my anxiety about being a bad tank.
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for me there's two picks pretty far ahead of the rest
i think 15 is the easiest vote for me, because aside from its merits and flaws as whatever else it is...it is, somehow, the only game i have ever played that speaks to a very specific time in my life as a teenager camping and roadtripping (and fishing!) in the southwestern us. and the fact that it's a messy, and trippy open-world game full of anachronisms in the setting bolted onto an angsty teenboy rollercoaster of a jrpg main quest (that nonetheless has a character enthusiastically declaring that "we aren't even in our prime!" when they're all in their late 20s about an hour before the end, which came off to me as a really special moment given the tone of everything else and i'm still thinking about it) really only heightens that for me. it's a really special game that i only know like two people i would ever actually recommend it to. but until i play something else with powerful Colorado Vibes, dusty night hikes far away from the city, and that certain dynamic of guys who are emotionally close but at a weird distance due to masculinity and everything...well, i'm not about to call much of it "good" without reservations, but it's one of a kind in my book, anyway
7 is the other gimme, certainly the one i find the easiest to just Enjoy Playing, and not despite but honestly partly because of its frequent and bizarre sideshows, only a couple of which i feel are particularly frustrating (the junon parade sequence, mostly). aside from that, it's also easily got my favorite "character building" mechanics (out of all of the ones that the player has any particular control over), with cool combinations and limitations that feel like just the right kind of "puzzle" to me, especially because everything is reversible enough that there's no reason to ever feel like you've made some kind of mistake that lasts longer than it takes to open the menu again. plus the joke value of massively reducing a character's health with the biggest summons you have, or-
and i similarly adore its world, characters, and story for the most part. it's definitely the game in the series that most has that sense of, like, "what it feels like to be alive right now" for me, and that's something i tend to be really into. and i think remake nails a ton of those same things, and is also really fun, but i will be just a little surprised if what it's reaching for ultimately makes me feel that i love it more than the original. not because i even think i know exactly what that is. i just love ff7 a ton
after that...hahaha, i dunno. i wouldn't say that ff is particularly one of my favorite rpg series on the whole, and many of the other games range from having worlds and stories that i really like but mechanics or design elements i find really unpleasant to interact with to "pretty fun but just have never captured my thoughts or imagination in the same way". and 13 is a game i rushed through when it was new and haven't played again, so while i had a really positive experience and my ratio of gripes to things i liked is relatively low, i also don't feel strongly enough about it in this moment to definitively say "yes, it's my third favorite" (although if someone arrived at my desk and told me i had to vote i'd probably go that way)
i could go on entire pointless and convoluted rants about my feelings on 14, a lot of which aren't really based on the game itself so much as the shifts in how i've personally come to interact with it over the past five years, but this is definitely a thread to leave that out of
8 is the true wild card, a game i have never gotten close to finishing, haven't tried playing in years, and have been wanting to give a full and stubborn shot at getting through for a little while (since last year, i guess). i have a feeling this is a game i am either going to love or hate in the end and it's really hard to tell, so i'm pretty excited
i think 15 is the easiest vote for me, because aside from its merits and flaws as whatever else it is...it is, somehow, the only game i have ever played that speaks to a very specific time in my life as a teenager camping and roadtripping (and fishing!) in the southwestern us. and the fact that it's a messy, and trippy open-world game full of anachronisms in the setting bolted onto an angsty teenboy rollercoaster of a jrpg main quest (that nonetheless has a character enthusiastically declaring that "we aren't even in our prime!" when they're all in their late 20s about an hour before the end, which came off to me as a really special moment given the tone of everything else and i'm still thinking about it) really only heightens that for me. it's a really special game that i only know like two people i would ever actually recommend it to. but until i play something else with powerful Colorado Vibes, dusty night hikes far away from the city, and that certain dynamic of guys who are emotionally close but at a weird distance due to masculinity and everything...well, i'm not about to call much of it "good" without reservations, but it's one of a kind in my book, anyway
7 is the other gimme, certainly the one i find the easiest to just Enjoy Playing, and not despite but honestly partly because of its frequent and bizarre sideshows, only a couple of which i feel are particularly frustrating (the junon parade sequence, mostly). aside from that, it's also easily got my favorite "character building" mechanics (out of all of the ones that the player has any particular control over), with cool combinations and limitations that feel like just the right kind of "puzzle" to me, especially because everything is reversible enough that there's no reason to ever feel like you've made some kind of mistake that lasts longer than it takes to open the menu again. plus the joke value of massively reducing a character's health with the biggest summons you have, or-
and i similarly adore its world, characters, and story for the most part. it's definitely the game in the series that most has that sense of, like, "what it feels like to be alive right now" for me, and that's something i tend to be really into. and i think remake nails a ton of those same things, and is also really fun, but i will be just a little surprised if what it's reaching for ultimately makes me feel that i love it more than the original. not because i even think i know exactly what that is. i just love ff7 a ton
after that...hahaha, i dunno. i wouldn't say that ff is particularly one of my favorite rpg series on the whole, and many of the other games range from having worlds and stories that i really like but mechanics or design elements i find really unpleasant to interact with to "pretty fun but just have never captured my thoughts or imagination in the same way". and 13 is a game i rushed through when it was new and haven't played again, so while i had a really positive experience and my ratio of gripes to things i liked is relatively low, i also don't feel strongly enough about it in this moment to definitively say "yes, it's my third favorite" (although if someone arrived at my desk and told me i had to vote i'd probably go that way)
i could go on entire pointless and convoluted rants about my feelings on 14, a lot of which aren't really based on the game itself so much as the shifts in how i've personally come to interact with it over the past five years, but this is definitely a thread to leave that out of
8 is the true wild card, a game i have never gotten close to finishing, haven't tried playing in years, and have been wanting to give a full and stubborn shot at getting through for a little while (since last year, i guess). i have a feeling this is a game i am either going to love or hate in the end and it's really hard to tell, so i'm pretty excited
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
@Lance Noble Aster : I agree with you on FFXIII. It's not a perfect game at all, but it's the best "corridor RPG/RTS" I've played. That battle system depends a lot more on switching your lineup on the fly and not doing any micromanaging or getting stuck in one setup. I'd constantly swap from mixed/all defense/all offense/all healing teams constantly, and it's clear that was the developers' intent. And that sort of real-time adjusting to the battle flow makes that system all sorts of fun. I'm high on the game overall despite its flaws just for that reason.
I just went with the correct choices, a few multiples of 3.