Any FF that uses real-time combat is not a real FF game. The series died with X.
Are those two separate, unrelated statements? XII and XIII both had turn based combat.
FF7 is laughably overrated.
The best Final Fantasy game is the one Final Fantasy game I played as a kid.
FF7 is immensely overrated.
Final Fantasy 8 is clearly the best.
The junctioning system is super fun!
It is totally not impossible to find General Caroway under that arch to continue the dialogue to progress the game. I definitely wasn't stuck that way for years!
The games are soundtrack simulators. Nobuo Uetmastu is heart and soul of the series. The rest is just packaging for it.
Jobs and materia are fun to play around with though.
All Final Fantasy games have bad writing and cringe inducing dialogues. Which was fine when the games had no voice audio, but I just can’t stand it in the modern FF with voice overs. Square Enix really needs to hire competent writers that aren’t solely influenced by manga.
Final Fantasy 2 (actual 2 not the one with Cecil) is way underrated. Its got a dialogue system like Morrowind, skills that get better as you use them, a fantastic villian, and great story beats. Its also the first game to have Cid. Also also people love FF for the mix of fantasy and tech and 2 is the first game to really embrace that theme. 1 has a one off robot and the airship, but 2 really shows the empire abusing technology to retain power.
SPOILERS SPOILERS [people love 6 because the world gets messed up, but 2 did it first with the empire destroying several cities] END OF SPOILERS
And you have talking beavers and I think thats great.
The music is also great! I think people hate it because they try and min-max the combat and not just enjoy it for what it is.
FF9 had better characters and story than FF7
FF8 was underrated and deserved better
100%
My problems with IX are slow combat. My problems with VII are everything else.
I have two. First, I'm in the VIII > VII camp. To be fair, I played FF8 before playing FF7 (though I've been playing FF since V), so the downgrade in visuals really hurt. I also don't get what's the deal with the Squall hate. Sure, he's a bit whiney at the beginning, but you can really feel his growth. Same with his relationship with Rinoa (that's her name, right?). I could see those two falling with each other in a more believable way than other jrpg ships.
Second one, V is better than VI. Sure, VI has higher production value, and arguably a better story, but the class system in 5 was top jrpg system in the snes era. I also felt more closely attached to the small cast of V rather than with the gigantic cast of VI (I honestly cried in the aftermath of Galuf vs Exdeath). Again, V was my first FF, so that may be nostalgia talking. Though I recently replayed with a patch that improves the class system, and it was a banger of a game. Plus, Battle on the Big Bridge.
Feel free to fight me.
Lightning Returns is a great game.
I mean, it should have been called Second Strike for one thing.
ATB is the worst turn based system in any game.
My people.
It really is the worst of both worlds.
I'll accept ATB as a compromise and an attempt to jazz up a basic turn based system, a product of its time. I think X2 had a fun take on it with attack chains and different abilities having different casting/cool down times to consider. My ideal is deep turn based combat I need to take my time thinking about.
The worst for me are the action games, personally. I play Devil May Cry and like it, but that's not what I want the flagship JRPG series to be. There are lots of places to get great action games, I don't need Final Fantasy to chase trends.
I haven't seen anything done with ATB a simple dynamic turn order wouldn't do better. Not only do I strongly dislike any kind of time pressure, you also get rid of the wait time between turns.
Maybe X2 does something a simple dynamic turn order could not, I honestly don't know. I got the game for free when buying X and only played it for like 10 minutes. After coming out of X thinking it had the best battle system out of any FF yet, I quit X2 after the first battle just for going back to ATB. That being said, I'd rather go back and try X2 again instead of playing XVI. I completely agree on action gameplay in FF being worse.
Nostalgia creates some massive rose-tinted glasses.
I've used to love FFVIII as a teenager and decided to buy it again for the Switch last year, but I legit couldn't progress more than a ten-minute-interval without either cringeing at the characters or being angry about them in some way. Why are they all so edgy? Why are their decisions always so incredibly stupid? I eventually realized that the characters are basically what a 12 year old would consider to be cool adults when in reality they're absolutely immature in every aspect.
I really really tried to complete at least one playthrough again in the hopes that it would eventually get better, but snapped when the oh-so-mighty martial arts character, who had been showing off his melee skills in every effing cutscene, flat-out forgot that he has been fighting literal demons with his bare hands for the entire effing game only to realize AFTER a multiple day long imprisonment that he could just slap the guards around without having to get a weapon first. FFS how do you forget such a thing for longer than a week?!
I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it's THE best FF game to date and they're usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn't play it "back in the day" just couldn't understand what was so great about it. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won't try to ruin anyone's fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.
I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it's THE best FF game to date and they're usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn't play it "back in the day" just couldn't understand what was so great about it. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won't try to ruin anyone's fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.
As someone who was around then, it's hard to explain just how revolutionary the game was at the time to someone who wasn't there to witness it first hand.
Though, FFVII is my favorite of the FFs, so there's that too.
I feel the same way. Loved it as a teen. Possibly because the characters were just like teenagers.
It's pretty cringe as a 38 year old trying to play through them again. And I definitely am not going to play for the gameplay. Even as a teen, I only played these for the stories because the combat is boring as fuck.
And yet... Nostalgia hits like crazy. And, uh, Chrono Trigger still holds up, unlike most Final Fantasies.
Edit: Final Fantasy 7's remake is still kinda cringe with the dialogue and made for teens, but the gameplay is so different and there is also a cool twist going on with the story that it's actually more fun than the original to me, and I loved it when it was new.
VIII > VII
I don't know if I'd quite go that far, but VIII is hella underrated.
The first FF was the best game in the series. It was your party from start to finish. You could replay with different class make-ups. They didn't close off parts of the map as you progressed through the story and dump in characters or take them away as events unfolded. And, you could level 4 black belts to 50 and one shot Chaos with crazy 24 hit combos.
The only one with a truly open world and map. Fight me.
FF7 remake’s battle system sucks. Some spells whiff so often they’re basically useless (aero against Eligor anyone?), punisher mode is so much better than operator mode there’s no real point in having the latter except for the fact that punisher’s walk speed is awful, the roll’s terrible range and lack of I-frames make it borderline pointless, items shouldn’t use ATB gauge, and guard break is a stupid mechanic that just stretches out fights while making making them less fun.
Final Fantasy X2 had one of the best battle systems in RPGs. Conversely, its story wasn't great, but I would maintain that most Final Fantasy games have equally terrible writing, just with with more melodrama.
every Final Fantasy is the best one
Six was the last good one
When Squaresoft became Square Enix, the company died and took Final Fantasy with it and the first game they launched was a creepy fan service character assassination of a story.
I honestly found it degrading going from vibrant story criticizing religion and tradition to playing harem dress up in skimpy clothes with three teenage girls in a story that honestly feels like it doesn't go anywhere. It's just creepy things happening with weird unlikeable overly sexualized characters and if you complete all the to-do list you get the ending you want in the most contrived way possible.
Oh yeah Yuna gets with Tidus because she asks the fayth. The whole Vegnagun thing and all the half naked people and guys with greasy haircuts and people horny for the main chacters are irrelevant.
6 is the best one and all PS1 games in the series are over-rated.
Cold take, I know, but I think FFVIIR is a falsely advertised sequel.
FF8 is overrated (though not bad, just overrated) amongst fans of the series, FF9 was better.
I will fight you for calling the most underrated FF overrated.
FF8 is the best, exploitable stats mechanics were really fun and even realising enemies scale up their stats to match up with your broken build, so all your leveling was working against you. It was refreshing.
I liked the original ending of FF7 a lot more before the lore was expanded by other entries. I thought that in order to save the planet Holy literally killed every human in the world and it was just Red XIII and a bunch of animals running around in the post apocalyptic ruins.
A place to discuss all things Final Fantasy.
Praise be to Yevon
RULES
Game Flares
Related Communities
c/FinalFantasy Elsewhere
Official
