The best, worst, and weirdest games in the 30-year-history of the Final Fantasy franchise
Thirty years in, which titles in Square-Enix's sprawling swords-and-sorcery series hit the highest highs—and the most dismal lows?
Games Features Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy is a mood. Not in the “taking a picture of your sunglasses next to a plate of over-garnished eggs, then hashtagging it” kind of way. (Although we could totally see the rowdy, road-tripping crew of Final Fantasy XV doing exactly that.) Square-Enix’s 30-years-and-running roleplaying game series—which receives its latest installment this week, in the form of the massively hyped-up remake of franchise stand-out Final Fantasy VII—is unified not by a continuous narrative, or even a consistent aesthetic. Weapons, enemies, funky flightless birds with big cartoon eyes, musical motifs—these all recur across the Final Fantasy pantheon. But the games themselves tend to be wildly distinct entities, from their grand storylines all the way down to the base mechanics of how they play. What they share, what defines the multifaceted crystalline heart of every Final Fantasy title (15 in the main series, 60-plus if we’re counting spin-offs), is a feeling.
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the man who created the original Final Fantasy in 1987—expecting it to be the swan song of his game-making career—had a name for it. “Sabishii,” a Japanese synonym for “lonely,” is how he described the game he wanted to make. And he succeeded.
From that broken, pixelated, but evocative maiden voyage, to latter-day sequels where you make Pacific Sunwear models summon pulsating demon gods to kill improbable fish in between bouts of excruciatingly boring sci-fi water polo, all Final Fantasy games conjure a sense of awe and humility. They dwarf you with beautiful worlds and high melodrama. They burden you with reality’s fate. But they still somehow leave you feeling small. Final Fantasy lets you steer glorious ensembles of swordsmen, martial artists, sasquatches, messianic fashionistas waging war in their underpants, and stuffed cats riding robots, while they all struggle with angst and discover strength in unity. Yet at their absolute best, these characters—and you, by proxy—feel like people who still go to sleep worried about dumb little things. Final Fantasy is lonely; everything else is a detail. And yet the series is also progressive: Every successive game following the first is built at least in part around trying to solve problems inherent in the original work.
“What defines Final Fantasy? It’s no specific word or phrase,” Yoshinori Kitase, director of the beloved Final Fantasy VI, and a current Square-Enix vice president, told me years ago. “One of the creators of the original Final Fantasy mentioned something cool that stuck in my mind: In order to create a Final Fantasy, you take the talent you have in your group [at] that moment and utilize their talents while maximizing the abilities of the hardware you’re developing the game on. That’s what Final Fantasy is.”
And so, the name “Final” Fantasy isn’t quite the misnomer it might seem to be. Each entry in the series is made by a largely different group of artists taking their shot at greatness, and each one is their best possible translation of the series’ signature mood. But despite those best efforts, Final Fantasy has never been a strictly uphill climb in terms of quality. Transcendent? Often. But it’s also been miserable and bizarre in equal measure, a stream split into creative tributaries, some full of time travelling witches beating the piss out of amnesiac teenagers, and others with Cup Noodle-stained Audis. Weighing which one is the best, the worst, and the weirdest isn’t a matter of deciding which is the least flawed—it’s all about determining which entries feel the most complete, incomplete, or alien to the lonely ambitions of this long and winding creative road.
The Best: Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
By that metric, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age remains the game where its creators’ ambitions and their skills were finally fully aligned. At last, the pieces were all there: Deep strategy borne out of character customization. An intoxicatingly tactile setting. The undulating orchestral anthems from composer Hitoshi Sakamoto. The dialogue and emotive voice performances elevating the sharp script from Alexander O. Smith, all in service of a lovingly flawed and human cast, drawn with grace and precision by Akihiko Yoshida. It’s all there—and it only took 14 years of updates and tweaks to get it to its final, most successful form.
But despite a notoriously painful development cycle—which resulted, in turn, in a flawed initial release on the PlayStation 2 in 2006—the things that make Final Fantasy XII so seductive were actually all in place from the very start. Famed Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, whose gauzy ephemeral concept art had been part and parcel with Final Fantasy from the beginning, was less involved with XII than with any other game in the series. But it nonetheless captured his ethereal vibe better than any previous entry, painterly and impressionistic in a way that serves as an ideal reflection of its themes. The story of deposed royal heiress Ashe, her disgraced knight Basch, street rats Vaan and Penelo, and sky pirates Balthier and Fran— a.k.a. Steampunk Han Solo and Chewbacca—is captured with convincing humanity in the art, writing, and staging. And while it loses the charming abstraction of its pixel forebears from the ’80s and ’90s, Final Fantasy XII’s drama is also the series’ most accessible. (Not that it’s any less batshit insane, mind you; this is still a game where courtly intrigue culminates in a lingerie-wearing bunny archer shooting a triangle-shaped ghost until it explodes.) But this is the game where Final Fantasy’s lonesome splendor transcends the more abstract limits of older games, and it’s far more coherent, captivating, and concise than the games that followed it in the years to come.
This is a game, though, and Final Fantasy XII wouldn’t be the best Final Fantasy if it played like shit. It definitely doesn’t—despite detractors who’d have you believe that you don’t really play it at all. Ever hoping to refine franchise formula, FFXII’s creators tried to fix a feeling that previous games often descended into, that of constantly engaging in meaningless busy work in the series’ signature turn-based battles. Up to Final Fantasy XII, fighting in a Final Fantasy game typically worked like this: Outside of towns, you wandered around until a fight with unseen monsters was triggered, at which point you were brought to a separate screen to politely take turns battling it out. Throughout years of variation on that process, the core of what you did in Final Fantasy stayed locked in place: You mostly hit the attack command, watched the monsters attack back, then used a healing ability when you needed it. Over and over for dozens of hours, the only variation coming in bigger fights with ornery rare beasts or big, story beat-punctuating battles.
XII’s novel solution to this tedium was Gambits, i.e., increasingly complex programmed behaviors for the characters in your party to adopt, without you having to directly enter in every single command. That way, when you strolled up to savage Cthuhlu cats in the jungle, your team would just do what you would do anyway, based on the conditions that you’d set. Want to heal when your health dips below 60%? Set a Gambit. Need to use some medicine if some dickish squid blinds you? Go ahead and program it in. It’s a system designed to cut out a boredom-inducing middleman. And when you do directly intervene—as you have to, often, in Final Fantasy XII’s most tense encounters—it feels vital, with each choice carrying far more weight than the old “Attack or heal?” paradigm.
In fairness to the haters, that flexible, forward-thinking approach to combat wasn’t especially well-served by the game’s original version. While the six leads were all distinct as personalities, they were basically indistinguishable from each other as combat assets, all doing pretty much the same thing in every fight. That changed in 2007, with the game’s International Zodiac Job System edition (eventually refined and released Stateside as The Zodiac Age), which allowed players to send each character down a different job path to cover different party roles, giving the game the customizable flair that made earlier titles, like Final Fantasy III and V, so compulsively, repeatedly playable. Now you could create a dynamic team that truly felt diverse. And unlike those previous Final Fantasy sequels, this game actually had a good story to go with the fiddly strategy and customization, marrying the series’ greater flights of storytelling to its more mechanically successful entries. It took a decade and a half of tinkering, but it’s now preserved in all its glory: The best Final Fantasy game.
The Worst: Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
For the first half of Final Fantasy’s existence, every entry stood purely on its own. The passion for, and profitability of, those games, however, couldn’t be ignored after a certain point. In 2003, Square broke the seal by making Final Fantasy X-2 (as in “the second Final Fantasy X game”)—a game that asked the question: “What if we took the most annoying, gaudy Final Fantasy and turned it into Charlie’s Angels, as conceived by Alejandro Jodorowsky and the creators of Laugh In?” After that, all bets were off.
What followed was a whole host of sequels, most centered on the still uber-popular Final Fantasy VII. (Although Final Fantasy XIII got its own share of very weird follow-up installments, the last of which, Lightning Returns, could fill all three slots in a Best/Worst/Weirdest bracket of its very own.) But while mercenary corporate thinking has undoubtedly led to this trend of sub-franchising in Final Fantasy, by and large, the results have been positive. A shocking number of these tacked-on sequels have had plenty of merit, and a solid reason to exist. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years does not. It is the only mainline Final Fantasy that is so truly horrible that it tarnishes the good work of the original game it’s associated with.
You can sympathize with designer Takashi Tokita’s desire to make The After Years, though. Final Fantasy IV was a bold aspirational step forward in storytelling when it came to the Super Nintendo in 1991, with dramatic staging, a sprawling cast, and a more directed, linear structure that enhanced its emotional thrust far beyond its more primitive predecessors. Equally austere and weird—androgynous knight Cecil must literally fight the evil in his soul, become a paladin, and then fly to the moon inside a giant space whale—it also doubled down on making its party feel vital and unique. There are a whopping 12 characters to play as, all of whom have unique abilities. While nowhere near as distinctive or moving as follow-up Final Fantasy VI (a razor-close second for the best game in the series), it was nonetheless a beloved benchmark. That Tokita wanted to revisit its world once he had the option to do so makes sense. What he made is a miserable, tiresome slog.
Taking place seventeen years after Final Fantasy IV, The After Years’ story manages to be both needlessly complex and sleep-inducingly boring, retreading archetypal character beats and adding new characters with little to do or say. The lead this time is Ceodore, son of original heroes Cecil and Rosa, fighting monsters and trying to solve the mystery of why there’s a second moon in the sky causing all kinds of sinister goings on. All well and good, but his method of doing so is to wander through cramped, nondescript caves and dungeons, getting in endless random battles devoid of the variety and pep that makes classic turn-based fights irresistible.
Final Fantasy IV’s mechanical innovation to the series was the instantly intuitive “Active Time Battle” system: Instead of having turn order in combat be rigidly defined by characters’ attributes, a meter filled up on screen letting you know when your next fighter could take a turn. It was simple, straightforward, and engaging. The After Years needlessly gilds this lily by making combat actions also dependent on the current phase of the in-game moon. So if you’re steering around a party of bruisers who specialize in physical attacks, you’d better hope the moon doesn’t arbitrarily declare that only magic is effective, or every single encounter will take three times as long to fight through. Coupled with drab, generic settings that are recycled over and over as you play through the same environments with different characters in successive parts of the story, it makes for grueling play.
The After Years isn’t somber, or beautiful, or even just crassly enjoyable as a cash-in. It’s banal and crowded, the worst things Final Fantasy can be.
The Weirdest: Final Fantasy II
To be clear: Final Fantasy is always weird. Lightning Returns takes the stoic soldier lead of Final Fantasy XIII, puts her in a thong, and turns her into a 500-year-old Christ figure saving souls stranded in a crumbling, deathless reality. Everyone’s favorite, Final Fantasy VII? There’s a part in that game where you have to make a guy wearing a Shaq-sized broadsword flip off a dolphin’s face just so he can climb some industrial waste. Determining which Final Fantasy is the weirdest based purely on content is like trying to decide which oxygen molecule in front of you is the most breathable. With the right tools and patience, you could probably make that distinction, but why in the hell would you spend the time?
Final Fantasy II’s narrative is comparatively chaste when held up against the stranger story beats of the games that followed it. Released just one year after the original, it brazenly lifts the plot of Star Wars, complete with a scrappy band of youths led by a blonde-quaffed swordsman with a heart of gold toppling an evil empire. Firion, the swordsman, has to find legendary mystic warriors, all of whom have been wiped out. Our desperate rebels are trying to destroy an unfinished mobile super weapon called the Dreadnought. It’s all pretty on the nose. Sure, the emperor turns into a demon after being thrown into hell at the end of the game, but really, that’s just the old Final Fantasy flavor coming out.
What makes Final Fantasy II so truly bizarre—and what’s largely kept it on the fringes of the series’ legacy, beyond the occasional bashing from diehard fans—is how its fighting works. Rather than refine the clunky combat from the original game—in which your heroes and the monsters traded blows, with characters leveling up as they accrued experience points doled out at the end of every fight—Final Fantasy II designer Akitoshi Kawazu threw it out wholesale and replaced it with an absolutely bizarre approach to character growth that has a dignified, if misguided, logic to it. In order for any character attribute to grow in Final Fantasy II, it has to be used. Repeatedly. Even if it makes no earthly sense why you’d be doing it.
So, say, if you want rebel leader and archer Maria to bolster her defensive capabilities, she has to be attacked repeatedly. If you want the animal-loving Guy to beef up his brawling skills, then have him attack, over and over again. Winning a fight does nothing on its own merits—only repeatedly using the skills you want to foster. In theory, it makes sense, a video-game version of practice makes perfect. The problem is that growing each individual skill in a straight fight is so laborious that it becomes more economical to just beat up on your own party, ad nauseum. Watching your four heroes stand in front of a horde of harmless goblins, beating the crap out of themselves so they can withstand punishment from fiercer foes, is bizarre, even 32 years later.
None of this makes Final Fantasy II a bad game—at least, not as bad as its reputation would lead you to believe. There’s an appealing, distant quality to it—and the SaGa role-playing games Kawazu would continue to make afterward, which massively expanded these systems—that distinguishes it among its peers. Many of the aesthetic tropes that run through the entire series started here as well. Chocobos, those chicken-y beasts of burden inseparable from the Final Fantasy brand, first showed up in II. (Unlike the fluffy, manga-eyed delights they’d become, though, they were depicted in official art as fleshy monstrosities that look like they’d peck your face right off.) Moogles, the other plush critters that recur across the series, also spawned from this game—though they were cut from the final game and replaced with sentient beavers. All of it is lovely, but it’s hard to feel really lost in the hostile countryside when you’re taking time out to be sure to shoot Leon the dark knight with 50 arrows every battle, so he’s really good at not getting hurt by arrows—but also so Maria can get really good at shooting those arrows, too. Nothing is quite so lonely as punishing yourself for gains, though. No one can take that away from Final Fantasy II.
It’s notable that Final Fantasy XV, the most recent numbered entry in the series, shares some of its soul with Final Fantasy II. Self-flagellation isn’t a fundamental part of character growth in it, no. But there remains a willingness to throw caution to the wind and marry experimental ideas with a big, strange world and characters with beating hearts populating it. There are gaudy magic fights galore in Final Fantasy XV, but its best moments have you guiding its boy band principals to campfires in open countrysides, sitting under the stars, and preparing hyper-detailed gourmet meals in relative quiet. One of your final acts in the game is leading Noctis, its deposed prince, away from his friends, but picking a photo from their adventure to remember them by. Sabishii indeed. With Square’s focus on remaking Final Fantasy VII as an entire series of games that’ll dominate its line-up for the foreseeable future, it’s starting to feel as though Final Fantasy XV will truly be the last of its line. If it’s not, though, the next generation of creators need only tap into that wild feeling to guide them forward again.
274 Comments
For me, the worst is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.Yeah, let’s remove the most interesting aspects of the franchise (unique visuals, beautiful character designs) and replace them with a generic sci-fi story starring Ming-na Wen, Alec Baldwin and Steve Buscemi.As someone who went to the cinema as a kid after finishing Final Fantasy VIII and IX, my disappointment was immeasurable. Where’s the fantasy aspect? Where’s the giant swords? Where’s the hokey romance? What is this Starship Troopers ripoff? I could’ve stayed at home and played Diablo II instead. My mom & dad were watching America’s Sweethearts at the hall next door and I could’ve joined them instead of watching this abomination of an animated film.It didn’t help that many in Squaresoft like Sakaguchi-san said that they went for a sci-fi route because “Americans don’t like fantasy”, only for Lord of the Rings to make bank two months later.
If they could’ve waited a decade, maybe they could’ve made a decent adaptation of any of the Final Fantasy games to cash in on the success of Lord of the Rings, Sword Art Online and Game of Thrones. If they did that, Hironobu Sakaguchi would’ve stayed in Square Enix and we wouldn’t be getting a bland FFXIII as a result.The funniest thing though is that they paid Maxim to make Ming Na-Wen’s character on No.1 “Sexiest Girl of 2001″ list. Such lazy marketing is hilarious especially when they basically shopped in Aki Ross’ face onto a CGI bikini model. Plus, the last time I ever heard that movie being talked about was in Episode 1 of Life is Strange to establish that Max Caulfield has terrible taste in film. So bad.
Spirits Within very much captured the “uncanny valley” feeling on the big screen for the first time with its CGI humans. For all the unforgivably terrible CGI of the early 2000’s it deserves credit for going all in on creepy CGI, even if the story makes it feel like a feature length video game cut scene.
I thought Advent Children should have been the wide theatrical release instead of Spirits Within. At the height of 7’s popularity it would have put more butts in the seats, and we likely would have seen more theatrical releases.
Square learned their lesson…until recently with The Spirits Within. Besides, Advent Children is basically FF7 fanservice because that plot, dialogue and movie length is not going to sell tickets. Square dodged the second bullet by not having it go theater.
Spirits within didnt come out during the height of 7s popularity. But probably should have gotten a theatrical release. Problem is getting us movie theaters to show it. The Spirits Within had big name Hollywood voice actors.
Maybe, but Advent Children’s story is such a mess. It’s story depends on you having finished Final Fantasy VII, yet at the same time it’s front-loaded with so much boring exposition to get all the people who didn’t play it caught up. You spend way too much time with boring villains we don’t care about, and not enough time with the characters we actually came to see.
The Bahamut fight and the Sephiroth fight were the moments it finally felt like a Final Fantasy film, and it takes forever to get there.
Not really a game, though.
It’s biggest sin was being so generic. Even if you remove the final fantasy name and quash those expectations, it is… nothing. It’s just bland. All the characters are bland. The supporting cast is awful. The actual direction is terrible (so slow, so dull… this was early in CGI films but come on, Pixar was already A Thing). You’re supposed to care when the crew gets picked off one by one… why?
It pains me that the money siphoned off for Spirits Within was originally meant for a PS2 version of IX. Think of the higher resolution backgrounds and cool extra content we’d have today, if only thinks were different. *sigh*
To be fair, Aki is based on Ming-Na Wen and Ming-Na Wen is incredibly sexy.
You didn’t get this info from this video, did you? If so, we can agree and how it shows how much Square fucked up by going Hollywood.
It least it had a [C]id!(They couldn’t even name him Cid! They had to go with Sid! Why?!)
Steve Buscemi and Alec Baldwin were in that movie? I saw that multiple times and realize I remember nothing about it.
While you’re not wrong, I think they’re talking games here.
My biggest memory of that movie is going with my girlfriend at the time, getting in a fight with her over something really dumb, and her leaving to “go to the bathroom” and just waiting outside for the movie to end. I never found out if she didn’t come back in because she didn’t want to sit next to me because of what we fought about or if she just thought the movie was dumb as hell. Both are equally likely choices.
I disagree. Final Fantasy II IS a bad game. That and III were frankly awful and it’s no surprise why they never came to the US until years later.
Gotta step in and defend FF III. That job system is pure-dopamine and one of the greatest concepts to be brought to the series. Not the best EXECUTION of the concept (That would be FFV) but FF III is an important and endlessly playable game. Story’s not great but Square waited one more game to show us that JRPGs could have really good stories.
When you think that 3 was developed on NES, it’s pretty amazing.
FF3 had me until the final dungeon. Grind up to Level 60 just to stand a chance? Forced to use specific and obscure jobs? No save points?? Screeew that.
The XIII trilogy are my favorite Final Fantasy games by a longshot, but I definitely understand why they aren’t the best overall. I think V or VI is the best in the series. Type-0 might be the weirdest for me considering how bold the ending is. XV might be the worst for me, just because that games plot is a mess
The best Final Fantasy game is V and it is not close. The worst is III (which actually came out the day I was born (and I’m of course talking about the NES one not VI)). Turns out a lousy job system utterly tanks a game and a great job system uplifts a game to the highest echelon of RPGs.Man, so nice to wrap up this argument once and for all, no more need for debate or controversy over which Final Fantasy is best and which is worse. You’re welcome, y’all!
The DS remake did a much better job with the III classes – in the original two of the classes are the most powerful and the only way to beat the game is two have two of each. The remake made these classes less obviously powerful to encourage variety. It still kept the terrible save system though.
The remake improves it but it’s still reeeeeeal bad.
Mainly because where the hell are the in-dungeon save points?
That for sure, but also how lousy its weirdly restrictive job system is and the poorly tuned random encounter numbers that make grinding dreadful. There is no reason to ever play this rough draft when the final draft exists.
I never got far enough to experience the job system. I went into an early dungeon only to find a surprise! barrier change boss at the end and I had no mages. So I died and was asked to traverse the entire dungeon all over again. Noooooope, fuck that. There is no excuse for keeping that massive design flaw in a remake.
I’ve never finished 5. And not because it’s boring or because I don’t like it…it’s just whenever I’m playing it something always comes up and I have to turn my attention elsewhere. It’s usually around when Galuf…leaves.I prefer straight-forward characters to the “job” system, but 5 was by far the best at it.
I’m not going to star because you didn’t say my favourite game, but I am going to reply to say I admire the attempt to end the debate once and for all, it’s very relatable.
Oh it’s not an attempt the debate is done, anyone you see arguing about it from now on is engaging in high-level roleplaying to relive the time before this question was answered.
Gambits didn’t cut out the middleman because the middleman is grind (which is time)—which is a feature to some of the audience as they age and time is more of a premium. Gambits replaced tedious gameplaying with—not gameplaying? Games are generally filled with repetitive tasks and feeling engaged with them is the trick for it to be repetitive but not boring. I guess what’s boring is something that can be debated, but the fact that gambits operate as a layer on top of the combat system means that it was always a workaround of gameplay issues and features of the combat system, it was never going to be enough to resolve things.
Setting up the gambits and figuring out your strategy was, for me, a really interesting andfun part of the game.
I see how it could be, and I know philosophically it was meant to create a single player online-like experience—Dragon Age (at least the first one) had it as well. It gives some granular detail to the AI-controlled companions in an action-rpg while you play one character, but I think it’s a bad fit for a built on the bones of turn-based system.I admit, I’m hung up on how time and grind are the things I don’t enjoy—so I remember FF8? The one in the high school where certain options weren’t available unless equipped. So way in the beginning, I would fight a tyrannous rex and couldn’t run away, but I could see beating him if I spent at least half an hour just deciding things. But is that fun? So for me, when gambits were introduced, my question is, what’s it trying to change? What issue is it solving? I think the kind of thing it does would be more fun with wider power choices personally.
I hated the DAO version of it, iirc. For me, what gambits did was allow me to automatize some tasks I didn’t find fun but that were overall important to the things I did find fun. So I could forget about healing and focus on the rest of the combat.
Gambits were boring and simple. They had no depth and were too literal. I prefer games where I actually have to put thought into things, and XII didn’t force me to think during either combat or gambit setup. I mean, what’s cooler: “Heal when at 30% health,” or “Equip Fire-Absorb, attack self with Fire.” I’ll take the latter every time, and XII didn’t offer that.
I really wish we’d gotten one more game with both 10 and 12 gameplay. I thought both were brilliant and best overall, combat wise.
But gambits make the grind easier, along with the FF feature in TZA. You spend less time fighting standard enemies so you can focus on the more puzzle-like bonus bosses.
https://tay.kinja.com/final-fantasy-xii-hunting-the-elite-six-without-playi-1797675217I literally beat the hardest hunts (up to the Dragon before Yziamat) without playing the game lol.
That’s just it, if the problem is grind then gambits is a solution for your involvement with grinding, not the grind itself. Not that there isn’t enjoyment to be had from programming effective gambits, but it feels to me like an answer to a different problem, or a half-solution to grind.
In The Zodiac Age I literally beat Super bosses without playing the game. I wrote about it here: https://tay.kinja.com/final-fantasy-xii-hunting-the-elite-six-without-playi-1797675217I ended up killing five of the six without touching the control before accidentially deleting my save. Basically, Gambits are a time saver as you can autoplay even the hardest bosses.
Oh no! Accidentally deleted saves are the worst…impressive commitment still! I don’t think I have that kind of engagement with the system. I just have to accept that most fans of the series don’t feel the same way about grind that I do. I would rather a game reduce it entirely or just regulate the curve than create a system to mitigate grind. Definitely my preference would result in the kind of changes that might lose fans entirely, but the amount of work required for the gambit system doesn’t seem like a lot less…
Ya, I was insane. I literally was preparing to fight the ultimate Superboss when I deleted it. Still have not had the heart to replay it though if this goes on I may yet do it.Also, if you didn’t play The Zodiac Age you may want to give it a try. The Gambit system is great and TZA comes with a 4x fast forward option so you can grind things pretty efficiently. I’d actually say its the most efficient mainline Final Fantasy game in existence today.
Gambits only replaced things if you wanted them to. They’re completely optional. If you want to complete the game without ever opening the gambit menu, you can.
My point is that gambits were not necessarily a good solution to things in the combat experience that clearly the designers also thought about changing. Not using the gambit system still leaves you with the original version of grind.
I think people who have a problem with the gambits are generally the type of gamer that takes the time to maximize gambits for every encounter to not have to play the game.But, an average gamer who probably just sets up the gambit system enough to get by and still has to input a lot of commands when necessary (like myself) FFXII is definitely the best FF game (follows by FFIX).
I’ve found I don’t like the grind like I used, found that gambits don’t address my main issues with grind, so quit largely quit them both. I generally still like rpgs, so sometimes I crack one open and see what my tolerance for the grind is, but as the lead complainer about gambits, no I didn’t turn maximize gambits. I think I could, but that’s not my problem with the design.
So I went into the game expecting to be super fancy with gambit setups, but I found no need to? I rarely change anyone’s default board.
I’ve always seen FF12 as a single-player MMO – when you’re playing online with other people, you aren’t expected to do all their actions for them, they do it themselves. And so FF12 lets you recreate that while still adding in the strategy of setting up the proper gambits for each character in each situation.Their choices for a realtime battle were either a) have only one character (which they did with Lightning Returns), b) make it not really realtime and give you the time to control everyone individually, or c) give the other characters a way to control their own actions. I think they found a good compromise.And honestly I heard the same criticisms of FF13, that they just made the game play itself. And I feel like it’s more fair there, but even that still had its own strategies in battle (the game isn’t without flaws but I did enjoy the battles).
Games are generally filled with repetitive tasks and feeling engaged with them is the trick for it to be repetitive but not boring.Death Stranding did that very well.
The Gambit system is one of the worst mechanics ever to grace a FF.
So what you are saying is just play Dark Souls.I know!
I really need to give FFXII another shot. I came away from it not liking the battle system but that might just be my preferences when it comes to battle systems. That being said, my favorite is VI with VII and X vying for second place.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see all of this (to me) newfound love for XII. I realized when playing X that I was getting kind of tired of the traditional “surprise” encounters leading to turn-based combat, so I was immediately hooked when I played XII (its aesthetics and story helped out quite a bit too). But at the time, everyone I talked to about it absolutely loathed the combat changes and seemed to either hate the rest of the game or never bother giving it a chance by extension, so I’m glad to see more people appreciating it lately.
Still think Tactics is the best game in the Final Fantasy franchise, but XII is probably my favorite “proper” Final Fantasy game.
Those first ten hours…
i just purchased the game and all xpacs for 35 bucks. its a slog in the beginning. Your comment makes me think it gets better?
FF13 has that problem too, however, for a single-player RPG, that’s no excuse and poor storytelling. Never buy into “It gets better” by any means.
FF14 has room because it’s an MMO designed to completely absorb your conscience into its world. The problem is I find the gameplay too slow, slower than WoW and that’s slow.
It gets so much better. Even if you ignore the mmo stuff and mostly just play as a single player game it can be one of the best FF games you’ve ever played. It has a ton of callbacks to earlier games, and does a lot of its own things with classic FF themes. The story from 1-50 is a very good, very normal kind of FF story, but it has pacing issues, excess filler, and some weird design ideas that the game never follows up on. After the end of the 50 questline you have the worst part of the game, the stuff leading up to Heavensward. That also has a very good story, but it is so muddled down with fetch quests, random diversions and just utter nonsense (not to mention the insane amount of side content, which is all very good, the game throws at you) that it is a pain in the ass. It is not that hard to just grit your teeth and plow through it though, and if you actually do like the story of the game (some people don’t care) it has some immensely important moments. Also the post ARR pre HW story teaches us one very important lesson. “Never trust or cross a lalafell”
Loosely puttered around with FFXIV from 2013-2016. Mostly to hang with friends abroad. Never finished the main story, but leveled up all my crafting classes, and continued buying expansions (stupidly). Joined the welcome back campaign with the intent to FINALLY muddle through the main story quests. THOSE are arduous. Worse, there are another 100+ checklist quests before the Heavensward content, that I’m trudging through. Long story short: it does feel magnificent to complete that campaign finally, but for my time? – would’ve spent the extra $18 on MogStation just to skip all the A Realm Reborn (ARR) stuff and jump right into Heavensward, as I’m told the narrative and questing is leagues above and beyond. At this point, I may as well truck on, but for you? – just sayin. Aside (and not so short): that boost only advances the main story. You will get all loot and perks with that completion, like the mount for finishing the campaign. You’ll still need to do any side quests – such as the blue ones – to unlock more gameplay, loot, etc. This boost does not add experience to your current class – those boosts cost somewhere around $25 a class. Anyone may feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this, just going off what I read in the Reddit forums.For my time, boosted to lvl 50 in Palace of the Dead (PotD). I was using a lvl 33 Black Mage (BLM), so it took about 15-20 hours over two weeks; don’t get a lot of time to hunker into a non-portable game like Animal Crossing. Then went about the campaign, picking up more xp from that. Currently at 54, and will likely be 60 by the time I hit the Heavensward stuffs. While food doesn’t do much for boosting XP in PotD (I didn’t observe it, anyway), make sure to constantly be chomping on something while running other quests – 3% xp boost is a godsend. Also (and good to know for later in your time with the game): ALL classes lower than your highest in combat, crafting, or gathering get an XP boost. So if I were to switch to my lower-leveled paladin, I would get a 100% xp boost up to the same level as my BLM. Google indicates that’s only for lvls 1-69, then a 50% boost from 70-80, BUT, ain’ that high yet, so can’t personally vouch for that.
That’s a bit of an infodump, but tried to minimize the jargon. Been helped A LOT by joining an active free company with really awesome people that don’t mind me asking stupid question about things that changed in the past 4-ish years. Would absolutely recommend doing the same (not to mention: free company stat buffs and perks)!
Loosely puttered around with FFXIV from 2013-2016. Mostly to hang with friends abroad. Never finished the main story, but leveled up all my crafting classes, and continued buying expansions (stupidly). Joined the welcome back campaign with the intent to FINALLY muddle through the main story quests. THOSE are arduous. Worse, there are another 100+ checklist quests before the Heavensward content, that I’m trudging through.Long story short: it does feel magnificent to complete that campaign finally, but for my time? – would’ve spent the extra $18 on MogStation just to skip all the A Realm Reborn (ARR) stuff and jump right into Heavensward, as I’m told the narrative and questing is leagues above and beyond. At this point, I may as well truck on, but for you? – just sayin.Aside (and not so short): that boost only advances the main story. You will get all loot and perks with that completion, like the mount for finishing the campaign. You’ll still need to do any side quests – such as the blue ones – to unlock more gameplay, loot, etc. This boost does not add experience to your current class – those boosts cost somewhere around $25 a class. Anyone may feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this, just going off what I read in the Reddit forums.For my time, boosted to lvl 50 in Palace of the Dead (PotD). I was using a lvl 33 Black Mage (BLM), so it took about 15-20 hours over two weeks; don’t get a lot of time to hunker into a non-portable game like Animal Crossing. Then went about the campaign, picking up more xp from that. Currently at 54, and will likely be 60 by the time I hit the Heavensward stuffs.While food doesn’t do much for boosting XP in PotD (I didn’t observe it, anyway), make sure to constantly be chomping on something while running other quests – 3% xp boost is a godsend. Also (and good to know for later in your time with the game): ALL classes lower than your highest in combat, crafting, or gathering get an XP boost. So if I were to switch to my lower-leveled paladin, I would get a 100% xp boost up to the same level as my BLM. Google indicates that’s only for lvls 1-69, then a 50% boost from 70-80, BUT, ain’ that high yet, so can’t personally vouch for that.
That’s a bit of an infodump, but tried to minimize the jargon. Been helped A LOT by joining an active free company with really awesome people that don’t mind me asking stupid question about things that changed in the past 4-ish years. Would absolutely recommend doing the same (not to mention: free company stat buffs and perks)!
Loosely puttered around with FFXIV from 2013-2016. Mostly to hang with friends abroad. Never finished the main story, but leveled up all my crafting classes, and continued buying expansions (stupidly). Joined the welcome back campaign with the intent to FINALLY muddle through the main story quests. THOSE are arduous. Worse, there are another 100+ checklist quests before the Heavensward content, that I’m trudging through.Long story short: it does feel magnificent to complete that campaign finally, but for my time? – would’ve spent the extra $18 on MogStation just to skip all the A Realm Reborn (ARR) stuff and jump right into Heavensward, as I’m told the narrative and questing is leagues above and beyond. At this point, I may as well truck on, but for you? – just sayin.Aside (and not so short): that boost only advances the main story. You will get all loot and perks with that completion, like the mount for finishing the campaign. You’ll still need to do any side quests – such as the blue ones – to unlock more gameplay, loot, etc. This boost does not add experience to your current class – those boosts cost somewhere around $25 a class. Anyone may feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on this, just going off what I read in the Reddit forums.For my time, boosted to lvl 50 in Palace of the Dead (PotD). I was using a lvl 33 Black Mage (BLM), so it took about 15-20 hours over two weeks; don’t get a lot of time to hunker into a non-portable game like Animal Crossing. Then went about the campaign, picking up more xp from that. Currently at 54, and will likely be 60 by the time I hit the Heavensward stuffs.While food doesn’t do much for boosting XP in PotD (I didn’t observe it, anyway), make sure to constantly be chomping on something while running other quests – 3% xp boost is a godsend. Also (and good to know for later in your time with the game): ALL classes lower than your highest in combat, crafting, or gathering get an XP boost. So if I were to switch to my lower-leveled paladin, I would get a 100% xp boost up to the same level as my BLM. Google indicates that’s only for lvls 1-69, then a 50% boost from 70-80, BUT, ain’ that high yet, so can’t personally vouch for that.
That’s a bit of an infodump, but tried to minimize the jargon. Been helped A LOT by joining an active free company with really awesome people that don’t mind me asking stupid question about things that changed in the past 4-ish years. Would absolutely recommend doing the same (not to mention: free company stat buffs and perks)!
TBH, I found the story somewhat boring until the end game of the lvl 1-50 part. The story of the first Xpac is awesome though.
I didn’t find the first ten hours that much of a slog as I was still soaking in the new stuff and learning the basics. The big slog was more like hours 10-30 as there’s a lot of dumb busywork until the plot picks up again.My advice would be to beeline the main plot at least until you both fight Ifrit and hit level 30 on your main class. Also don’t try to be all the things, just figure out which ones you like and go for them (one fighting class, one crafting and one gathering at most).
So, so much better.
A Realm Reborn is a slog.
Heavensward is a super serious but interesting JRPG experience.
Stormblood is what a fully realized ARR is and is a great FF.
Shadowbringers is one of the best FFs and best JRPGs ever.
Once you get into a group and start doing your ‘job’ is when it starts to be really rewarding. Whether you’re a tank, healer or damage dealer, just getting in sync with a group where everyone is doing their job and knows what to do is really fun—even if it’s just a PUG.
It gets much better. Reborn (2.0) has a bit of fat to it (that is awaiting trimming), because it had to wait for 3.0 (Heavensward). BTW, the moment you hit Heavensward, the game just feels night and day different.
They do plan on cutting down the ARR grind. This was intended to land in update 5,3, which given any non-pandemic year would have landed in July… but who know if/when it will arrive now.
I play XIV a lot, been off and on since the beta 3 of ARR. The story and presentation doesn’t hold a candle to any of the single player FF’s. It’s heavy on cliches, unconvincing voice acting and scripting, recycled player emotes and mechanical movement, and long drawn out scenes that often feel like the dev team does not know that there is a job out there called “editing”. Couple that with a slew of “pray tell, how art thee” Shakespearean nonsense.Transitions from cutscene into gameplay are clunky, considering how far games have gotten in the past couple of console gens. Maybe it’s a localization thing? That they have to whittle down the story so that it fits across all of the game’s supported regions? To each his/her own at this point, anyway.
There is an argument to be made that of course all FF’s share the “fantasy” tropes, but XIV to me never seems like they try that hard to convince me that the stuff happening means much. Which I find strange, because with any other game I like to kick back and watch cutscenes unfold.
I’ve been playing for about a month and am almost at level 50, the Main Scenario Quests definitely pick up after awhile. Once you leave your initial city and later meet the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, you start hanging around more and more characters that have some personality.
DEFINITELY!Although if you gave up and you want try again you should wait until the restructure the A Realm Reborn Main Quest a bit because that’s the biggest hurdle of the game. (a lot of main quests that came with patches that are boring and unskippable + A Realm Reborn only gets really interesting at its end)If you get to the end of it and start with the first Expansion “Heavensward” though? It gets reaaaaaaally good and even better with its current expansion Shadowbringers in my opinion.
Those first 40 hours…
Those first hundred hours…
Those first two hundred hours…
FFXIV is what FFXII should have been.
An online FF original conceived on PS2….it was called XI.
Twice as long as it needs to be?
Actually having a meaningful plot and having a combat system that isn’t just pure fructose
Visually uninspired?
“ctrl-f”
FFXIV
A Realm Reborn
XIV
“0 results”Not mentioning the Final Fantasy with the best story is a serious fucking failing my dude.
What a piece of garbage that game is. It’s the only mainline FF I’ve never finished. Ugh…
It is also a candidate for weirdest. No amount of scripted or mechanical strangeness can compete with a bored gamer with time on their hands. Such as, watching a cat boy in bondage gear doing a synchronized Idol group dance with an elf in a tuxedo.
I’m sure part of it is nostalgia, but VI really feels like a timeless masterpiece to me. The tech is old, but the opera scene is still sensational, the characters are still incredibly written, Ultros the awesome octopus is still hysterical and Kefka is still a perfect villain.
I recently replayed it and it holds up. It’s a great story and the fact the heroes lose at one point and the world gets destroyed is a pretty ballsy move.
I love as well that for the first half of the game you have a fairly generic evil emperor as the central antagonist, and then Kefka is like the comic relief henchman. But then Kefka gets gradually more dangerous and he ends up being like Starscream. But then Kefka ends up literally destroying the world and declares himself God. It’s unique as far as any game I can think of. Kefka isn’t terribly complex in terms of motives, but he’s understandable in a nightmarish way. So much of the game is about unity. The heroes are a true ensemble with no standard protagonist. The comedy octopus eventually gets a hilarious sidekick. The magical God like beings are a trio that keep themselves in balance. Even the Emperor only accomplishrd his goals by working with people. But then Kefka himself is the polar opposite to everyone. He not only spurs any kind of emotional connection, he actively despises the very idea of anyone believing in anything. He’s actually disgusted and furious that anyone sees any meaning to life on any level. He’s a mad toddler smashing his toys but gradually given the powers of a God to literally cripple entire continents with the flick of wrist. His simple motives are what make him such a fascinating, terrfiying and complex character. Plus he has that incredible 16 bit maniacal laugh.
OMG that laugh. I should make that my text message notification sound. That’s a great analysis you just wrote.
Thank you!
It remains astonishing to me how utterly phenomenal the entire soundtrack to FFVI was. They had the capacity of a SNES cartridge and yet managed to create an entire opera. An opera scene that easily still ranks as one of the best scenes in video game history. Kefka’s theme song as well is a masterpiece of being both hilarious and gradually unsettling the more evil he does throughout the story.
Might I recommend this?https://vgmdb.net/album/61
That was an expensive cart. I think it went for $85 when my mom got it for me in 1994. That is $148 bucks adjusted for inflation (and thats with inflation being ridiculously low over the past 30 years). Whenever I hear anyone complain about games being overpriced or expensive…..try buying new carts on SNES, anything with lots of MEGs. Or Carts on N64. It blows my mind that the standard price for a new game is only $60 bucks now. Adjusted for inflation that is equivalent to a $35 game in 1994.
That is the greatest idea I have ever heard ever… good bye power ranger watch sound, hello Kefka laugh
If Square truly wants to keep the FF franchise “feeling fresh” they should give FF6 the FF7R treatment. FF7R seems to hold up in terms of quality so if they can replicate that, I can hold faith the FF6 Remake would deliver as well.
I don’t see how that would be possible. The simplistic gameplay allowed you to swap character to character among an enormous cast. In modern games that have huge games, this doesn’t even happen. You need to appreciate the fact that FFVI’s story benefited from the format it was made for.
Yeah, they are driven by Terra in the first half, whether it is a need to protect her, help her, etc. And Celis in the second half, but yeah, of the core members….they all have solid arcs and drive the story. Id argue that Terra, Locke, Edgar, Celis, Sabin, and Setzer are your mains, they are the ones pushing the story. Everyone else is secondary to some degree but have arcs. Except for Umaro and GoGo (particularly GoGo).
> The heroes are a true ensemble with no standard protagonist. Yup! Which was a cool storytelling twist for the series. The game is about a group of randos, all impacted by the Empire in some way, who find themselves assembled to give the planet the only hope it has left.I love Kefka as a villain. I like him more than Sephiroth.
FFVI is the best. Mystic Quest is the worst. They’re all weird in some way.
There’s just something about the tone and atmosphere of VI that really gets to me. When the author here talks about a sense of loneliness it was the first thing I thought of. All of the characters seemed so lonely, sad and broken…but there was always this glimmer of optimism and hope…they felt like real people even to eleven year old me in the mid 90’s. There was just something different about it even back then.
VI is a masterpiece, and it should be the one getting the mega-budget remake instead of VII.
If I could give this statement billions of upvotes, I would. For whatever reason 6 is the red-headed stepchild. 7 simply was not a great entry story-wise. The whole story centers around a psychopath with an Oedipus Complex and the worst thing he does in the ENTIRE game is kills Aerith. Kefka at least did several truly vile, evil things throughout the game. The day they announce a full-HD remake of FF6 will be the 2nd happiest day of my life!
Hear hear!
Also, Squeenix should just drop the original version, mostly untouched, onto the Switch already.
VI is the most overrated game in the franchise and its online circle jerk is just as insufferable as VII’s.
This. If any FF deserved/deserves a remake, it is VI.
You are absolutely correct in everything.
VI is still the gold standard in what a FF game should be. Perfect, unique characters. Engaging villains. An enormous, free roam open world. Interesting side quests. Secrets galore. SECRET CHARACTERS!
A modern remake would be amazing, but the scope would be even more insane than the FFVII remake.
I still love FFVI, nostalgia-wise, but I refuse to replay it. I hate random battles combined with ATB battles (I can still endlessly replay FFX), and I don’t want to ruin my positive memories.
To me it’s easily the most overrated game in the franchise along with 7. As much as people want harp on about how terribly 7 has aged and how much of the love for it is based on nostalgia (it’s not-I played it in 2011 and while it’s aged poorly, I think as an emotional journey that’s more than the sum of its parts, it’s still thematically resonant to a modern audience) so much of VI is just so bland and forgettable outside of the World of Ruin portions of the game. It just failed to make any impression on me, mainly because it’s been spoiled to me by so much cultural osmosis. None of the characters were particularly memorable or left much of an impact on me. All the optional characters that you can potentially miss feel very one dimensional and poorly fleshed out. I don’t see what the hype is about the Esper system-I much prefer materia over it. It’s not even the best 16 bit JRPG Square has made-I think Chrono Trigger absolutely destroys VI in every way possible. Not only do I prefer VII over VI, but I even prefer IX and X over it as well. The online circlejerk of VI is just the most baffling thing to me. I got to the world of ruin where you rescue Terra and get the airship and had zero desire to keep playing.
I really want them to port this to switch so I finally finish it…..
I’ve been stumping for XII for at least a decade by this point. I don’t agree with all the detractors about how the Job system suddenly fixes the issues, but it’s objectively true that to fully min-max it, you have to pay extremely close attention to the characters’ stats and tune their weapons accordingly, which is why the arguably most powerful party involves Ashe with the Masamune, and Balthier playing melee.The Zodiac Spear bullshit was unspeakably stupid in the first version, and is such a bafflingly bad decision, I still shudder to think about it.
The best is Final Fantasy VI. It had a story far more compelling than XII (which I do still like). If you include spinoffs, maybe Final Fantasy Tactics.The worst… yeah, the first couple were pretty rough. It’s not really their fault, given the limitations they had to work with at the time. But I could never go back to them.Weirdest is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. I played that with friends, and managing that stupid magic bucket was… well, they’re not my friends anymore.
IV was my first, and will therefore always be my favorite. I can appreciate the After Years for what it is. The After Years were awful when Square insisted they be episodic and tried to make everybody pay for a new chapter.
The battle system is completely broken with the moon and the partnered-up abilities thing. And there are entire chapters that are absolutely skippable (Palom and Porom’s specifically). But that ending sequence on the moon was phenomenal. If you can stomach the rest of the game just to get there it was worth it.And also, 8 is fantastic for the soundtrack alone.
At some point, someone in this comment section needs to bring up Mystic Quest, and I’m up to the job.
I don’t hate Mystic Quest, although I wouldn’t blame people for putting it on their personal “Worst” list. It’s probably “Weirdest” to me. The whole idea of, “The USA doesn’t get us! Let’s make them a game-spanning tutorial!” is a weird idea, and the story is really low-stakes for a Final Fantasy, but they still saw fit to bless it with one of my favorite soundtracks in the series, and a sense of fun that you don’t often get in the Final Fantasy games.
One of my most embarrassing stories (that I for some reason have no problem retelling) involves mystic quest. I must have been 10 when I got it, probably for Christmas that year and a friend of mine ended up getting it later than I did. At some point got further than I did, I was so upset that I was stuck in the ice dungeon with the movable platforms only I didn’t know they could move.In tears, I begged my parents to let me call the Nintendo Power help line (or maybe it was Squaresoft?) to get the solution to the dungeon. They let me and I felt like such an enormous dipshit… not because I couldn’t solve the puzzle but because I didn’t even notice the mechanic.The game also has a bitchin soundtrack. Not my favorite, pretty high on the weird list, definitely not the worst, but easily has my most unique memory of the bunch.
Are you me? Because I think you’re me. Except my parents didn’t let me call the hotline so I just made file after file, getting to Falls Basin and trying every little thing (like clearing every battlefield, revisiting old dungeons, and getting higher in level) to see if anything would make those damn ice pillars melt. But nothing worked. It had to have been at least a year later when I discovered gameFAQs.com and looked up the solution. And I facepalmed so hard as I finally understood what the cutscene at the start of the area was trying to tell me…Also how did we NOT think to walk into an obstacle? Hahahahaha. It’s so easy to accidentally push the damn thing.
I’m listening to the Mystic Quest soundtrack as we speak, and it still shreds.
The saddest thing is that it was the only Final Fantasy Europe got until VII. The hilarious thing is that it’s goal (beginner friendly JRPG) was done WAY better by Super Mario RPG.
FFMQ was my first ever Final Fantasy and I will die on the hill defending it. It was a great intro to people who had never played an RPG before (me). Also you could jump! And how your weapons worked in the field was cool too.And yes, the soundtrack slaps.
I’d forgotten about that soundtrack!
I remember getting Mystic Quest hot on the heels of beating Final Fantasy IV. I seriously thought it was supposed to be a sequel and beat it in 3 days. I was nine, and hated the game for YEARS for letting me down. I didn’t forgive it until I was in my twenties and heard a kickass remix of the boss battle theme. It DOES have a rad OST.
Ha! That’s funny; I got FFMQ and FF4 simultaneously. I had no idea what was going on with the former so the latter actually eased me into harder and more complex RPGs. But it also spoiled me: “What do you mean I can’t retry if my entire party gets KO’d?!”
LOL! I would have been spoiled too—and ironically, I probably would have liked MQ more had I played it first as I was a giant Mario/Zelda junkie before FFIV! Then my aunt lent FFIV to us because she thought somehow that I—a 7 year old—would enjoy it. I think it took me a year or so to work my way through the game the first time because I got stuck on just about every boss due to my running away from random battles constantly!By the time MQ came around, I’d played and replayed FFIV so many times that its simplified battle system was child’s play and I just flew through it. I was having fun (I binged it over a three-day weekend), but it just went so fast and as a poor kid I could count on one, maybe two game purchases per year. I liked to get the most bang for my buck so I tended to spend money on games that would keep me busy for months at a time, and MQ definitely failed me in that department.
> I think it took me a year or so to work my way through the game the first time because I got stuck on just about every boss due to my running away from random battles constantly!HA! I did the SAME THING. And this somehow didn’t totally ruin me until the Tower of Zot and “Valvalis”. You just cannot beat her underleveled, and I resorted to using a Game Genie to keep Tellah alive for his lv-3 elemental spells, lol. This worked…until the crystal room in the Dwarf Castle. Without an empty spot in my party for Rydia the game freaked out and froze up upon starting the battle with Golbez, hahaha.
It took me an additional year of getting into more RPGs (not FFMQ) before I learned that running from every random battle is bad! Have you played FFIV DS? That game is designed to troll those of us who know the original expertly.
HA! I did the SAME THING. And this somehow didn’t totally ruin me until the Tower of Zot and “Valvalis”.
VALVALIS! Uuugh, she was the WORST. I was trapped in that tower for weeks before I lucked through her, and I was SO THRILLED to have Rosa back. I was in the middle of my girlie girl phase and was sick of running around with a bunch of old men! Dr. Lugae was another one who griefed me, followed by That Wall, which I beat by selling everything in my inventory, buying 99 Life potions, spamming them between Kain and Cecil, and doing some sort of war chant until it finally went down. I had Cure 2 at best, dude. I was not in a good way! It took me an additional year of getting into more RPGs (not FFMQ) before I learned that running from every random battle is bad!
I don’t like to admit this, but it took me a LOT longer. I ran into boss walls in both FFVI and Chrono Trigger (CT was even worse in that I could flat out avoid encounters). Usually I’d just play the fight over and over again until the RNG gods and my own insanity bore me through (in FFIV this usually relied on Kain having perfectly timed jumps. He’s my man.) In fact, I loved him so much that I gave my entire party in FFVI dragoon boots (AND used them to cheese bosses)!The game that cured me of my aversion to random battles was Dragon Quest VII, and that was just because that game is unforgivable and will greet any attempt to cheese a fight with a swift and merciless death.Have you played FFIV DS? That game is designed to troll those of us who know the original expertly.Ohhhhh yeah. I had wanted a remake of FFIV with better graphics since… Well, FFVI. I really loved their approach to the graphics. They managed to really capture the designs of the original sprites. I was impressed? I wouldn’t have minded for FFV and FFVI to have the same treatment.Buuuut… I didn’t like the new Goblez stuff (and… Cecilia). The gameplay was… Interesting? I broke the Augment system pretty quickly and just curb stomped Zeromus into oblivion. I remember the game being pretty challenging in the early parts though, which I liked? Still not used to Cecil (see-cil) being pronounced (sess-sul). …I did sink about 200 hours into it while hunting for Pink Tails, though…Ironically, I’m playing through the PSP version right now. About to descend into the Lunar Subterranean for probably the 200th time in my life to kick Zeromus’s butt once again.Oh. have you checked out Free Enterprise? I’ve been playing it for about a year and man, talk about messing with your expectations. I never thought I’d beat Zeromus with a level 25 Edward, but here I am.
Turn-based RPGs that use their weapons on the overworld are so few and far between. Wild Arms, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi are the only other series I can think of that do.
It’s a great way to add additional puzzles that change up the walk-battle-walk-battle loop. Lufia 2 and Golden Sun also have overworld weapons/skills I think.
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is a weird game, because the low difficulty is a design choice, not a bug. And it actually has a lot of good ideas; using weapons to interact with the world map, enemy portraits that change the more damage they take, etc. I actually think we’re seeing simplified RPG’s become a thing now, thanks to games like Undertale.
The problem though is that Mystic Quest simplifies it too much, to the point where there’s literally no challenge or consequence to failure. Did you die? You literally press a button and it starts you over from the beginning of the battle, no harm, no foul. Your companion is also always two levels higher than you and equipped with better weapons/spells, so it feels like you’re supporting them rather than the other way around. And most insulting, the default UI is a lifebar, not an HP counter.
C’mon Japan, I KNOW HOW TO COUNT. That’s just insulting.
I really enjoyed mystic quest. It was my first venture into the FF world, as I was a sega gamer prior to getting a snes that year. (Phantasy Star 3 is still among my favorite titles)MQ was essentially FF lite. You has a simplified story, with simplified actions, but enough to get a Person who didnt play many rpgs to enjoy the genre and want to dive in more. I can see people hating it if they were playing it now for the first time, but when it came out, it wasnt that bad. Same applies to games like lufia(still a favorite of mine as well)
Mystic Quest is awesome. The grappling hook alone sold me.
Mystic Quest was the first Final Fantasy game I played. I was 7 years old. I knew nothing about Final Fantasy, JRPGs, or anything like that. I had no idea what this game was, it was just on sale for $20. We were initially upset when we discovered it was a one player game as all of our games had to be multiplayer, or easy to swap when someone dies/completes a level (ie. Mario) or my brother and I would fight.However, I was also obsessed with greek mythology and this game scratched that itch and the turn action made it very easy for a kid to understand. It was formative in my sense of humour. I was watching my dad play and the old man is in a room and up until that point he either had advice to give or an item, but this time he just asked for 10p for a cup of coffee and flew off. My dad started laughing and I asked what was funny, we just got cheated, and he explained set ups and subverting expectations to me and it really clicked for me. I was even emotionally affected by Kaeli’s poisoning, even as a kid I had a thing for redheads.I loved this game and it’s 100% the reason I’m a Final Fantasy fan today. When I played Final Fantasy 8 after borrowing it from a friend, it scratched the same itch that Mystic Quest scratched for me when I was a child, but it wasn’t until much later did I learn that Mystic Quest was a Final Fantasy game. So many of the nerdy things I discovered in high school (Comic books, most video games, comic book movies) I grew out of, but the nerdy things I liked as a child I still have a deep affection, including Final Fantasy and JRPGs that have that old school Final Fantasy feeling. All because this game was $20. It’s one of the 5 most important games in my gaming development. I love it. This game is garbage.
Restricted to mainline games:Best: FFVIWorst: FFII, with XIII in second Weirdest: FFVIII, with FFX as the close second. Expanded to all things FF:Best: War of the LionsWorst: Spirits withinWeirdest: World of Final Fantasy
Best: IX. It’s the culmination of the PS1 era where Squaresoft was at its most creative high. It’s fun and whimsical in a way that Final Fantasy games apparently are no longer allowed to be since they’re now determined to solely be the fever-dream of a 13 year old edgelord.
Worst: All of modern day Final Fantasy. It’s astounding that with Dragon Quest, SE can knock it out of the park. But they clearly have no idea what to do with Final Fantasy. the series obsession with “realism” is just ridiculous, and you can probably blame that on Final Fantasy VII.
I declare this objectively correct
What do you mean by “realism”? FF takes pride on its Barbie-doll characters and excessive special effects to convey the “fantasy” feeling. You’re right though that FF is indeed going through an identity crisis, hell I suspected it just watching the FF15 trailer and noticing an inconsistency and quality-variance between the areas.
Best: VI, the ps1 era is limited by a ton of awful characters…o we all wanted to play with Zell? Cloud….cloud blows. He is a space cadet. 7 is a good game, but entirely over rated and clouded by nostalgia. 8 has great elements…and loses steam at the end (a common theme in ff games from 8 on…never finished 9 so im not sure).
Ddefinitely IX is a personal favorite. Just a beautiful, bittersweet love letter to it’s many predecessors, right as the franchise turned toward the future with X (and the way future with XI).
Agreed completely. And you are right with 7. I love that game, and most after it. But that’s when Square started chasing graphics over all else. Unfortunately, the modern product is all flash, no substance.
FF9 was a low point of the series. 10, 12, 13 and even 15 were far far superior.
FFXIV is surprisingly good as a single player game despite being an MMO. It’s certainly better than XIII, XIII’s sequels, and XV.
Obviously I’m just speaking personally, but I played FFIX after FFX (and I’d played FFVII when it was ported to PC and didn’t really love it), and I honestly can’t remember a thing about FFIX. I basically just soldiered through it with no strong positive feelings.
I agree with both of these. IX is so clearly the best in the series and the perfect culmination of everything that came before it. It pretty much has everything the series wanted to say about itself. It’s like the perfect season finale to a show you dearly love, that then gets picked up by Netflix and just goes on and on with a weaker imitation until you have no interest in the new episodes anymore.
IX had all the ingredients for it to become my favourite Final Fantasy but something about it just didn’t personally click for me. I think Disc 1 is as perfect as a Final Fantasy game can get, but from Disc 2 onwards is where some really egregious pacing and character issues start to occur. I think Zidane, Steiner, Vivi and Garnet are all decently developed, but the other half is just kind of swept under the rug and really poorly fleshed out. Freya is such a tragically wasted character. Her whole traumatic experience of watching her home and people be completely devastated just gets kind of awkwardly forgotten in Disc 2 and doesn’t get addressed at all later on. The game decides to focus on Zidane, Garnet and Vivi exclusively in Disc 2 at the expense of the other characters, and as a result Freya, Amaranth and Quina all feel very static and one dimensional as characters. Not mention just how much of a slog Disc 2 and 3 are compared to 1. The final boss of the game is terrible and just comes out of nowhere. He’s so bad that he completely knocked the wind out of my sails to the point that I still haven’t completed IX to this day. I wanted to love IX and on paper it should’ve been my favourite, but ultimately I feel like it suffers from a case of being the “Jack of All Trades” in the series where it does a lot of things really well but neither of them are particularly that exceptional or remarkable for them to be truly memorable to me.I still prefer it over VI, which along with VII, is easily the most overrated game in the franchise.
Wow, your comment is like you’re having a tantrum at extremely low volume.
IX is one of those games I play through every few years. A classic in every sense of the word.
Different strokes I guess. I personally find classic Final Fantasy (pre VII) and traditional JRPG settings like Dragon Quest extremely bland and forgettable. I’ll take the weird, existential, naval gazing anime surreal experience of modern FF any day of the week.
FFVI is a) great and b) a good analogy for politics these days, with authoritarian madman clowns being elected all over the globe.
Kefka is gonna build a monument to non-existence and he’s gonna make the Espers pay for it!
Mexico is paying for the wall as we speak.
Yes, Macron and Trudeau definitely epitomize madman authoritarian clowns.
Interesting how you see it that way, as FF12 had a more politic-driven plot.
thats unfair to Kefka. He is an authoritarian madman clown, but he isnt grossly incompetent. Or a crook.
Kefka at the very least had goals that he set out to accomplish. I also appreciate how Kefka was pretty up front about building a giant tower to vaporize people. He didn’t try to pitch it as something good, he just did it and spared the world any spin.
Dude it’s a good game but it can’t tell you shit about real world politics
I’m that weirdo (Hipster?) that has enjoyed Final Fantasy Tactics the most. It’s probably my favorite game of all time.
That’s a legit choice, I don’t think anyone could field a strong argument against someone choosing Tactics as their favourite.The people who choose XIII are deviants though.
You aren’t weird and you aren’t alone. Tactics is by far my favorite. Even the mobile port of War of the Lions is good. I did take the time to make Ramza a dark knight before realizing it mean the non-story battles would be insanely difficult due to them leveling with Ramza.
FFT is awesome. If you haven’t, go play Tactics Ogre, its even better.
With Square’s focus on remaking Final Fantasy VII as an entire series of games that’ll dominate its line-up for the foreseeable future, it’s starting to feel as though Final Fantasy XV will truly be the last of its line. If it’s not, though, the next generation of creators need only tap into that wild feeling to guide them forward again.The wonderful thing about Final Fantasy is that it can be so many things at once – from good, to weird, to ugly, and back again – and has a history almost as varied as Mario in terms of genre coverage.
What’s more, the fifth generation – arguably the series peak in terms of blockbuster status – gave rise to some of Final Fantasy’s most unique or experimental efforts, from SRPGs to dungeon crawlers to kart racers and fighting games. Culminating in the expectation bending Final Fantasy X and X-2 to usher in a new generation of hardware. To believe that Final Fantasy XV may represent the last gasp of experimentation because the franchise’s most popular installment is being remade as a multi-part ARPG seems to be missing the forest for the trees.My own Top Ten, in order:1. Final Fantasy VII2. Final Fantasy VI3. Final Fantasy VIII4. Final Fantasy XV5. World of Final Fantasy6. Ehrgeiz7. Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII8. Final Fantasy X-29. Final Fantasy IV10. Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo TalesWith very honorable mention to Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy X, Advent Children Complete, Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions, Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition, Final Fantasy Type-0, Chocobo Racing, Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. (Basically, slots 11 through 20 if we’re going that far.)
9?
Not a personal favorite, or it’d be my list, wouldn’t it?
Final Fantasy X2 makes your list, but Tactics doesnt?! This list is fake news.
Read harder.
“Honorable mention” isn’t on the list. X2 is on the list, and tactics is not. Im not the one struggling with reading comprehension.
(Basically, slots 11 through 20 if we’re going that far.)Apparently you are struggling, though.
Sorry, but if I’m going to go worst Final Fantasy, as bad as The After Years was, I’m still going All The Bravest. The After Years started as a mobile phone game experience (in 2008! That’s just 1 year after the iPhone) and at least tried a coherent narrative. All The Bravest was (and still is) a “Swipe 40 characters to attack” game featuring the chance to buy a chance at your favorite character and not really add much to the game. At least they learned their lesson and put out the far better Final Fantasy: Record Keeper, which has put together a decently deep battle system and somehow made it 5 years (5.5 in Japan) while adding new content each week. It’s just wrapping up its 5th anniversary and still going strong.
How do you write about the worst & weirdest FF games and leave out FF VII: Dirge of Cerberus, the 3rd person (with optional 1st person mode, for masochists) FF shooting game? Boy did I try to convince myself I liked that one.
You know? It’s not that bad! Even now. I’m not saying it’s great by any means, but there’s some merit there. And it’s nothing if not delightfully bizarre. But it’s ultimately just more of FF7’s particular brand of bizarre.
“It’s not that bad!” is definitely a fair description. As a follow up to FF VII, a quirky, shooter-rpg mish-mash was a real left-field choice….Now that I think of it, it makes way more sense as a follow up to FF VIII with the whole gun-mechanic that dominated that game.
As a twelve year old that was a blend of my two favorite things: shooters and final fantasy.
I’ll confess that while I wasn’t exactly emo as a teenager, I really loved Vincent. I loved his red capes, his metal claw, his steampunk gun and the fact he could transform into demonic monsters. He was easily my favorite character. When I recently replayed FFVII, I realized that Vincent is actually really boring. His whole hot topic vibe looks incredibly silly now and his entire character is just moody self-conscious coolness. I was far more drawn to a character like Red XIII, a lion/wolf with dramatically far more motive and personality than boring Vincent ever had.
I did play Dirge back in the day, and I remember it being silly even at the height of my young Vincent love. Looking back at it now, it’s hilarious that such a blatantly lame thing could ever exist and be allowed to sully the Final Fantasy name.
It’s really telling that Team Four Star relegated Vincent mostly to the background of FF7: Machinabridged, and based his performance off Richmond from IT Crowd, just to mock the goth cliches that Vincent himself represents.
I actually really liked the gameplay of DoC, was really impressed by the graphics at the time, and had no major qualms with the story (which I did not at all take seriously). People give it shit just because of the Gackt scene, which, well, mood. But as a third person shooter made by a developer of predominantly RPGs, it was, at the very least, interesting in its uniqueness.
That’s the game that served as the “true” sequel to FF7 if I remember correctly, taking place after Advent Children(shudder). Going through the summary of its plot…yeah, I see a rather lacking inspiration on it despite expanding Vincent as a character.
Vincent’s practically a cipher in that game. The villains and new characters ramble on and on about their motivations and back stories, and Vincent literally just stands quietly in the corner, forgotten for minutes on end.
I like Dirge of Cerberus quite a bit, and have played through it multiple times (it’s also one of the very few original PS2 games I still own) but you can’t judge it as a Final Fantasy game. It’s a PS2-era 3rd person shooter through and through that just so happens to take place in the FFVII universe. If you scrubbed all the Final Fantasy weirdness out of it, you’d still be left with a pretty decent 3rd person shooter (especially for the time).
I am the most diehard FF VII fan out there but I stopped Dirge early at the part where you have to escort a little boy and every time you beat a wave of enemies he would be like “Thanks” and after he said that for the third time I was done with the game. His voice acting and overall demeanor just destroyed it all. Petty I know
Of course you are, turbonerd.
Dirge of Cerberus was the worst game I’ve ever played, and effectively ended my enjoyment of FFVII.
Yuck. DoC is maybe the worst spin-off of all time.
I got into burning ps2 discs toward the end of its run (late apologies?), but for some reason I never gave that game a shot. I don’t know why not.
Theatrhythm is weirder and After Years is worse.
I’ve never heard of anyone playing FFII straight. It’s always the early-game grinding of beating yourself up and attack-cancel-attack-cancel fifty times to raise weapon and magic proficiency. Repeat that for several hours, then go steamroll the rest of the game.
I have a love for the tactical games in the series. War of the Lions has been ported several ties. Tactics Advanced is why I still have a Gameboy Advance sitting around.
I’m probably an outlier for saying this, but World Of Final Fantasy gets my vote for weirdest game in the series. FFV and XIV and XII are my personal favourites…my list of worsts, though, is pretty large.
I’ll never understand the love for the gambit system. For me, that attempt to cut down on busywork resulted in exponentially more busywork outside of the battles, and then a horrible feeling of disengagement and lack of control when in them. I think I got as far as Giruvegan before realising the game was actually making me miserable. Also Vaan sucks.
They are honestly all weird and I have never been able to follow or understand anything about it. I first tried to get into it back in the late 90’s when I was in elementary school. My best friend at the time was obsessed with Final Fantasy VII. I didnt get it. I JUST started playing Final Fantasy when Xbox Game pass added XV to it a few months ago and I still kind of dont get it.
In my mind, I always find people that say XII was the best to be strategy-haters. Personally, I simply cannot play XII. It just devolves into running up to an enemy than standing there for 10 seconds, then repeating that hundreds upon hundreds of times. I don’t know what this is, but it’s certainly not playing a game, and my mind just gets insanely bored.All the “issues” you pose with previous Final Fantasies have nothing to do with their systems and everything to do with implementation: You can have turn-based battles with enemies onscreen, and battles can be made to require far more than attack-heal. Divinity: Original Sin is a great example of all of these things. More people should be bemoaning XII for being the start of the end of turn-based for Final Fantasy, rather than some kind of peak design.tl;dr: The solution to a game that lacks strategical depth is not to remove strategy, it’s to improve it. People who like XII, I argue, simply dislike turn-based games.
And what about those mobile games? Honestly, you could probably fill a book on this topic.
From what I hear, All the Bravest is the only truly bad game. Record Keeper and Brave Exvius are well-liked.
I want to like FF Dimensions so much, but holy god the random encounter rate.
Yes, both RK and BE are good, well-made mobile games. The gacha elements can be execrable at times, but both have been around long enough that they give you plenty of gameplay and bonuses for free nowadays.
Well, I wasn’t actually implying that mobile automatically meant bad, I was thinking more along the lines of weirdest.
Record Keeper is typical gacha bullshit. I haven’t played Brave Exvius, because I assumed it was more typical gacha bullshit.
A really good, solid, well written book that’s an analysis and history of Final Fantasy would be amazing.
I believe After Years started as a shitty mobile game, so that slice of the pie is represented, appropriately, in the “worst” column.
Good point! I totally forgot that it started that way. Come to think of it, wasn’t there also a Japan-only FF7 Snowboarding game?
Isn’t FF XII also basically Star Wars?!(if you replace Chewbacca with a bunny with bewbs)
It sure is. The first draft of this article described Fran and Balthier as “Steampunk Han Solo and Chewbacca But They Fuck.”
Han and Chewy don’t fuck?
Someone’s been reading my slashfic.
Except if Star Wars sucked.So Star Wars post-1982.
Eh, not really. Other than a few of the characters loosely fitting the mold of Han, Chewie and Leia and the big bad being an evil empire (the same as half the FF games). The story has very little in common.
Pretty much. Vaan being nearly as whiny as A New Hope’s Luke, Ashe the Leia stereotype, Basche being kinda like the young Obi-Wan and Penelo I guess fills the role of the droids as Vaan’s companion albeit a heck of a lot cuter than C3PO.Also the gambit system coincidentally share many similarities to the Star Wars KOTOR gameplay mechanics.
Best spin off – Final Fantasy Tactics, amirite?
Final Fantasy XII is closer to what I consider the worst Final Fantasy than the best (I don’t think XII is the worst, as I dislike I, XIII, and XV a lot more than it), but I barely even consider XII to be a Final Fantasy game. I also wouldn’t count anything other than the mainline games, so Final Fantasy IV: The After Years feels a bit like cheating to me.
The absolute worst is Final Fantasy XIII-2…mobile games don’t count. I will defend pretty much anything else in the entire series.
12 is one of the worst in terms of gameplay, though one of the best in story/lore.
Even the zodiac age. Fuck those gambits.
Okay, I just need to know that I’m not crazy. Every time I read any article on the Internet regarding FFIV The After Years, it is always negative. For me, although it is for sure not the best FF game, it is one of my all time favorites. In fact I enjoyed FFIV After Years a lot more than a lot of the other games I played at the time of its release. Some of this may be that I also was a fan of the original FFIV during my childhood. I just can’t figure out why I enjoyed it so much but most of the rest of the world hates. it.
I’m sorry, where is All the Bravest? It’s a gatcha mobile game that’s even more mindless than the most mindless gatcha mobile game, the wait to revive your party members is Dungeon Keeper Mobile bad, getting anybody that’s not a generic is a crapshoot, and the money predatory gimmicks are out the wazoo.The worst part? It’s not even free to play! Yes, you actually had to spend money just to get the game in the first place!
God XII is so boring.Anyway, Best: VII, VI, and TacticsWorst: The entire Compilation of VII, Lightning Returns, After YearsWeirdest: Crystal Chronicles
Crystal Chronicles was the first Final Fantasy that I could actually sink a lot of time into. Being able to draw on a Moogle was pure joy.
What was wrong with Crisis Core?
XII TZA is definitely the best, Ivalice just beautiful.
You somehow managed to get the Best and Worst exactly flipped. Twelve is barely even an RPG, let alone a decent Final Fantasy. And the plot is just as bad as the gameplay! Four, meanwhile, manages to include everything that was ever great about the series (except possibly the Job system), into a plot that actually makes sense as a narrative. While The After Years may have added some unnecessary complexity with its bands and moon phases, it more than made up for it with actual continuity.If you don’t understand why The After Years is so great, or why Twelve is so terrible, then you don’t understand what Final Fantasy is all about. Seriously, it offends me that your article was even posted.
I’m ALMOST done with FFXII. I can go to the final dungeon but I’m addicted to these hunts and other sidequests. I’ve sunk 85 hours into this beast already! And after not liking it back in ~2010, I’m really enjoying it now, especially with the Zodiac Age updates. I’m also maybe okay with Vaan and Penelo now. They’re somewhat out of place POV characters, but they DO have development and the writing clearly shows that the grown-ups in the team respect them. Re: gameplay, I only wish you could have a deeper level of if-then-else with the gambits, but oh well.FFIV the After Years: the game I’d like to forget. What an uninspired chore. Also:> …his method of doing so is to wander through cramped, nondescript caves and dungeons, getting in endless random battles devoid of the variety and pep that makes classic turn-based fights irresistible.Cramped, nondescript, repeated caves and dungeons. Almost all of the original FF4 dungeons are reused, with the addition of the psycho random encounter rate. It feels like a lazy DLC where they just add new missions to the existing world.And don’t even get me started on how you can only keep Golbez if you’re lucky enough to bring the correct party to a specific boss battle. Ugh.
Seriously. 12 is amazing once you get a hold of the combat/gambit system. Really wish SE made one more game with an even more nuanced gambit system.
My favorite part of The After Years was doing the watery pass 3 times. I really think they nailed the theme of making you question your choices in life by that third solo trip with an underpowered Edward.
And watery pass was already the worst in the original!
I’m surprised the Crystal Chronicles series didn’t get the “weirdest” title. I love those games (especially the FF9 art style) but holy shit are they weird. Especially the first one with the fairy tale vibe, the way the world was set up, the whole year after year thing. Shaving and/or painting your moogle. The really bizarre races. The way the dungeon loot worked and the weird stuff you did to set up your village’s quests year after year.
I hate all of you because Tactics is clearly the best.
I have not played every single game in the franchise, but I’ve played every main-line entry since VI, and several of the spinoffs. Of those:Best: Final Fantasy VI. Still the best villain in JRPG history because he was both competent and evil. Truly evil. Not “Something bad happened to him and he went crazy so please feel bad for him,” I mean just straight up “I am poisoning people because I enjoy hearing them scream” evil. And did I mention competent? He was wildly successful – overthrew Gestahl, killed General Leo, took the power of the Statues for himself, reshaped the entire planet to his liking, and ruled as a God emperor. He smashed the entire party to pieces halfway through the game, forcing you to regather everyone from scratch. Plus the Opera, the overall soundtrack, the incredible spritework that remains more expressive today than anything in FFVII or VIII… fantastic. Just fantastic.Worst: VIII. Not only does the junction system encourage annoying-as-fuck grinding by just sucking spells out of every monster forever, but it actively breaks the game. In FFVIII, enemies level up as you do, but they don’t level up based on your junction. So you can just stay at a low level, junction your stats up, and steamroll everything because the enemies only scale to level. Toss in arguably the worst main series protagonist (arguably: Tidus gives him a run for his money), the cringey sidekicks (“I like trains!”), the same “all future no fantasy” aesthetic that crippled “The Spirits Within”… the whole thing was a mess. Weirdest: FFX-2. To be clear, I adore this game. The dress-sphere system was fantastic, and it had a great sense of humor, which the best FF’s do (another failing of VIII). But even for a Final Fantasy game, all of which have weird shit, FFX-2 had some weird shit. Go to Zanarkand, holy pilgrimage site from the first game, to help some random monkeys find their mates. Go to the High Plains and solve a Scooby Doo mystery. Sneak into your nemesis’ lair and give her a back massage. Get possessed by the ghost of a thousand-year-old dancer. Dress in a Moogle costume and hand out flyers for your own imposter’s concert. I can go on, and on, and on.
The stuff the EPIC game store does amazes me. Just like that the next free game is JUST CAUSE 4. WTF? Now I wish I hadn’t bought it recently but I did only pay 6 bucks for it on CDkeys lol.
All well and good, but his method of doing so is to wander through cramped, nondescript caves and dungeons, getting in endless random battles devoid of the variety and pep that makes classic turn-based fights irresistible.It’s literally the dungeons and random encounters/turn-based fights from Final Fantasy IV….
I did really enjoy FFXII, though it did start to feel a bit grindy at times, especially when you want to grind for good enough gear to take on some of the optional eidolons. The fast forward function in Zodiac is a great feature for it that remastered JRPGs should take advantage of more often.Final Fantasy II is a game I genuinely dislike. I played through it just so I can say I did. It’s both bad and weird. While it’s strange game mechanics were later refined in SaGa, and probably evolved into the much more compelling class system in later FF games, FFII was an unbalanced, clumsy start that only worked on paper. All this, along with the bland cast of characters, near-constant shuffling of the 4th party slot, it was just Final Fantasy I, but with extra steps.
Please Square, make a FF12 spinoff starring Balthier and Fran. maybe a prequel on how they met.
Went with the safe option naming After Years as the worst, but XII as the best??? Contrarianism has reached a new peak with this very cold take.
“The Best: Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age” yes. yes!
Definitely the best, my favorite game ever.
Did anyone mention Tactics yet? Because Tactics.
Because I have to, it’s “coiffed,” not “quaffed.”
Came here to see FF VI. Kind of surprised that XII is the pole position given that, like you stated, you don’t really play it.
I don’t really get it either. XII’s plot and execution are nothing special. I was assured by people FOR YEARS that it was genius, but I found it to be a pretty by the numbers game with by the numbers plot. If we’re grading for political intrigue, Tactics wins that battle hands down.
Hm.
Weirdest had to be Song Summoner. I have an old video iPod plugged into my alarm clock and I just checked, I still have that game on there. A tactics-style game you play with a click wheel, where you create characters from songs in your library. I just tried to play it for a couple minutes to remind me what it was about but the battery is so old it doesn’t really last long enough to get past the opening battle. Terrible. And weird.
But wait… the actual best and worst and weirdest are all the same game. Final Fantasy XIV.
I mean, honestly, get your house in order!
excruciatingly boring sci-fi water poloBoooooo! Blitzball is the greatest minigame of all time.
Brings a tear to my eye to see FFXII get this much love. Even though I’ve been on the train since the original release, and I recognized the characters in that version could have differentiated from each other a bit more combat-wise at a base level, I feel a bit vindicated haha.
FFXII? Really? Having played every stateside release of the Final Fantasy series since the original NES version before this one, XII is the one that broke me. I quit the franchise after I struggled halfway through and at no point did I give a shit about ANY of the bland characters or terrible, terrible story. I even returned to it a few years ago when it was re-released after seeing so many positive retrospectives and nope, still garbage.
Everyone knows Final Fantasy VI is the best in the series.
Can I defend blitzball for half a second? Cuz I feel like it gets unnecessarily pooped on. People keep calling it boring, but if you play one game and expect pulse-pounding action, you read the minigame wrong. Blitzball isn’t “how are you still holding your breath” soccer, it’s an RTS. You position your units, you use your abilities, you attack the enemy. The engagement doesn’t come from twitch gameplay, it’s through literal, actual suspense. Will this shot get through? Will this pass make it? Can I block the attacker in time? That’s what’s supposed to hold your attention. But hey, contradict me. I’d love to hear the discussion.
Thank you, I think I spent more time on Blitzball than I probably should have…- once you get into the team picks and meat of the game, it gets surprisingly deep and fun!
Blitzball is trash. You’re playing in a sphere, but for reasons that are completely unexplained you only move on a plane. In a sport, skill usually comes into play. There is no skill in Blitzball. It’s a bunch of math problems. Do the attackers have a higher number than the defender? That’s it. That’s every interaction in blitzball. It is also not a challenge. Get brother on your team, make him the center, give him the ball. Brother swims so fast that he can pull the rest of the team behind him, out run them, then just pass the ball to an unguarded forward for a free goal. Playing Blitzball is just as not fun as racing chocobos in 7 was.
I loved Blitzball. You’ll get no argument from me.
It’s much too easy to be strategically interesting.
VI not being best and VII not being worst is a travesty. The steampunk world’s of 7 and on just destroy any semblance of “fantasy” to me, and feel far to linear in nature comparatively to the nes and snes titles, ff14 not withstanding, 14 is an mmo that is a great deal of fun, albeit with a hurdle to get in and especially get to current endgame content.
Another truth about Final Fantasy is that it doesn’t matter which game you put in which slot, someone is going to rage over it.
I found XII to have one of the most boring stories in the series (ok, maybe except for the first few entries). It was a major step back from the likes of VI, VII, IX and even X. It started out with a lot of promise, and then just sort of fizzled into a fairly straightforward narrative. And, granted it’s been a while since I’ve played it, but I don’t recall there being much in the way of character arcs and growth.The gambit system was ok in its day, but I think that was also a function of me being younger with more free time on my hands. As someone with a family and career, I find it disrespectful of my time. I’d much rather a system with smart AI-driven characters who assist me – but don’t fully take over – a battle. As others mentioned, I think it was there to reduce the grinding, but there are other ways to solve that problem. Like… don’t require grinding. Hironobu’s last big RPG, The Last Story, really nailed that.
Final Fantasy XII is the BEST?!?! Are you F’ing crazy? this take is bad, and you should feel bad. This is the ranking of final fantasy in order of greatness:
1. Tactics
2. 7
3. 64. 95. 86. 47. Mystic8. XNot mentioned; all the ones not worth mentioning
The last good non-mmo FF game was 9. There, I said it.
As your name says, shut your mouth. Especially 12 TZA is a true masterpiece.
FFVI is the best Final Fantasy. I do love FFXII but it is the second best.
So another one of these people that think 12 is the best. ugh where do all these people come from. the game is good, but it’s a mess. it basically has two different directors, anything considered unique in this game is basically an accident.
So little love for Tactics it’s hard to believe. Outside of the MMO’s I’d have to say my top 3 would be Tactics, VII and IX.
Eh, Final Fantasy XII is about 1/2 a great game.The opening bits are fantastic, setting up a world filled with political intrigue, with complicated factions vying for control, nuanced characters, and likable villains. Unfortunately your quest then becomes a succession of “go talk to this old man!” quests, the intrigue being jettisoned for murky confusion, and the ending segments of the game being just terrible, with easily the worst final dungeon in the series.The gambit system is great, on paper, and it can be fun to put together just the right set of conditions to make your party a well oiled machine. There were some gaping issues though. You HAD to use the gambit system – doing all of it manually was just not an option. I’ve seen people claim they did not use gambits. I do not believe those people, simply because combat is SO MUCH of FFXII, if you didn’t use gambits to speed it up you would still be on your first playthrough of vanilla 12.There were gaping flaws in the gambit system, too. Try to make an effective stealing gambit. It’s impossible – there’s no way you can create an “if an enemy has something to steal, then steal” condition. So you have to create imperfect workarounds and make do by sheer volume of steals instead. How about something as basic as “hit an enemy weakness”? You need to have a slot for every single element you can use. It’s less elegant and more tedious, especially when you realize your caster hasn’t been using their shiny new magic upgrade because you neglected to update the gambits as well. I couldn’t help asking why didn’t they just add a robust AI? Maybe you could assign characters different roles and then they would heal, hit a monster’s weakness, buff or debuff, without needing me to go through and use the very imperfect gambits to set something up.Then I remembered they did exactly that system in Final Fantasy XIII, and everyone hated that game. Well, everyone but me – I nowconsider XIII’s combat to be the absolute high point of the series, even if it took me a few false starts to get into the game’s groove.
Hate to be pedantic, but you misspelled “Final Fantasy VI” multiple times in your “The Best” section.
I feel like FF needs to broken into subcategories for ranking:2D gen: 1-6 (best is 6)early 3D w Sakaguchi & Uematsu: 7-X/X-2 (best, 9)everything since basically: 12-15 (best, 12)MMOs: 11, 14 (best 14)All the other spin offs/non-mainline (best is tactics)
Your article lost me at FF12 being the best.One of the worst for sure, only under 3, 13, and 15. Better luck next time, my dude.
A brave, bold and totally correct choice for best.
Its true that Bathier and Fran are Han Solo and Chewbacca but FF12 to me is what I always think the Star Wars prequels could have been at their best: a story about fantasy political factions vying for control (with a convoluted senate power-grab subplot) that still manages to work in the characters as people with motivations. Also Jar Jar is Larsa and we all know it.
What crazy timing. I have been crushing my backlog and felt good enough to invest in a 50+ hour game that I ordered FF12 for Switch yesterday. Great write up Anothony.
I loved FFXII when it came out.
But the battle system has aged terribly. It really does play itself.
I know, opinions are subjective and all, but I’m having a hard time remembering the last time I came across an opinion this bad.Fortunately it’s an easy fix. Have your best and worst switch places, then delete “the After Years” from “Final Fantasy IV.”
I agree on the weirdest, but I disagree on both the others. I enjoyed the afteryears. Was living in japan when it was released in parts, was quite fond of the plot and gameplay, but not the price. FFXII stands as the only mainline ff game and one of only a small few overall ff games I couldnt finish due to boredom. Hated the plot, felt the music was sub par, didnt like the protagonist at all, got bored of the pointless questing, and thought the battle system played way too much like an mmorpg, which i dont find fun. Its near the bottom of my list next to chocobo farm or whatever that thing was called on gc.My favorite is probably 4, then 6, then X, then XV.
*CTRL-F “Legends” – No hits*
Really? It wasn’t even a Final Fantasy game. They just rebranded for North America to sell it. How is this not brought up?!
Excuse me. Your spelling of Final Fantasy V was EXTREMELY weird under Best Final Fantasy, and you kept referencing characters that weren’t in it and events that never happened, either.
FFVI was the best of the bunch, bar none.
The Best: 9The Worst: 13The Weirdest: 15
I feel like this article was written just to gush about FFXII: TZA.
soon as your best was not 6 or even 7, you lost me.
Oh, Thank God! I was expecting an article to crap all over Final Fantasy VIII but thankfully that’s not the case.
“…excruciatingly boring sci-fi water polo…”I loved Blitzball. I legit think it was a great minigame.(Pro-tip; recruit Brother to your team ASAP. Jumal in goal, Brother on midfield, Tidus in front and you absolutely dominate)
Tactics. that is all.
How is Mystic Quest not he worst?
I have never in my life seen or heard anyone call FF12 the best. It was a “meh” for me on release but I bought Zodiac Age anyway. While the game is more bearable with 4x speed and the job combos made for some fun theorycrafting, the story is still very bland and half of the main characters don’t even matter. I would maybe rate the original a 4 or 5 out of 10, with Zodiac Age being closer to a 6.5. Tactics is of course the only correct answer, though I would accept FF6, FF7, or FF10 as well. If we go off replayability, I’ve played FF7 five times, FF8 three, got to early 3rd disc in FF9 twice (hate that game), FF10 three times, FF10-2 twice, FF13 twice. FF13-2 is actually one of my favorites in the entire series as far as fun to play, ie the battle system is fantastic. Can’t wait to replay it one day. FF15 was great until the event with Leviathan, some things like the endless non-repeated banter of the character while driving was truly amazing, but I’m not picturing a time I would replay it(ever? any time soon?)
I completely disagree with FFXII as the best pick. I mean, they couldn’t even do anything they wanted since they had to shove in Vaan and Penelo at the last second to appeal to teenagers for example.My pick would either be VI or IX since both times the dev teams were used to their respective platforms, for both it was more towards the end of the respective platforms lifespan and to me it always seemed like the dev teams got to do the things they wanted for the most part. (sadly, IX’s dev team didn’t get to develop most of the game in Hawaii though) Both critics and fans liked them more than FFXII (although sadly IX wasn’t as popular in the beginning but got more recognition in the last few years imo) and especially IX’s goal was achieved imo: Making a celebration of classic Final Fantasy games while also feeling like a turning point of the franchise in some regards. (you could argue that the real turning point was VII but whatever)
Happy to see Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age get all the love. I recently got it for my (quarantined) birthday and it’s been a very enjoyable and addictive romp through this pandemic, although I am currently stuck getting my ass kicked in the Golmore Jungle. Guess I need to grind.
“led by a blonde-quaffed swordsman”I think you meant “coiffed”, unless you were implying Vaan was the source of another character’s alcoholism;-)
I love this article for the mention of FF2 which I do like but I figured out the beating yourself up mechanic on my own after a lot of WTF?!? and for whatever reason I got hooked on it. I have also really been enjoying romancing saga 2 tho so there is that.
IMO the best game is FFXI, by the way. Which no one is going to agree with, lol, but I have to say it.The addition of summonable NPCs has made most of the storyline soloable and honestly it is just such a touching world, I have never felt so connected with a game and I expect I never will again.