And with the coming release date. I choose Play-Asia to insure I get the game X-2 on one cart and forgo the Japan version from Amazon Japan. So what did others choose in this?
@ReaderRagfish 9 has excellent gameplay (excluding the stupid card game), it's arguably the most balanced of the series.
Story over gameplay is reserved for 10. Gameplay over story I'd really pick XIII but that's not on Switch. Story was dismal but the combat after the first 3 hours of so got really really good. One of the best in the series as far as ATB systems go.
7 is special and always will be, but it hasn't really aged well in either gameplay, (though Materia is awesome) and the story was always bad in the second half.
@Arbor Picking a starting point is hard. FF1-6 are NES & SNES games. So you know what you're getting with an SNES era RPG. Today those are mostly forgotten for the Playstation era games.
FF7....it hasn't aged well. It's special because the environment and characters are special, unique, memorable. The storytelling and scale, for it's day, was unprecedented. And for many in the West it was the first JRPG they played and it has a lot of nostalgia glasses. But today, if you never played it "in its day" it's going to look incredibly ugly, dated, the UI and game-play will feel dated (and not in a retro SNES way), and will have a lot of "old school" quirks (though the Switch version comes with some Bravely Default style cheats built in like disabling random encounters when you don't want them.) Everyone loves FF7 both due to nostalgia and due ot the world being truly unique. But the story goes WAY off the rails of comprehensibility after the half-way mark. It seems great up to then, then loses it in a big way. We're talking worse than Kingdom Hearts level nonsense.
FF8 - the forgotton one. It's cool in its own way. But it's suddenly missing on all platforms. And it was kind of bland in its day sitting between the revolutionary 7 and the refining 9. It's on PS3 and Vita....and that's the last release it had.
FF9 - Bias - my personal favorite. Looks much prettier than 7, it's a traditional fantasy world representing the kind of unique "Final Fantasy" that FF always represented up until 7. The feeling of crystals mattering returned in a very unique "J-western world." Great gameplay, never especially difficult, but always fun and balanced, and a great journey/adventure. I love that one. It's still dated, but you'll never forget the ride. And it never loses focus like 7's story.
FF10 - Controversial, the beginning of "linear FF", PS2 hardware showcase game. Weird story.... almost as incomprehensible as 7, but manages to save itself somewhat. It's flashier, more "modern" than the previous ones by far. It's very story driven in that "Playstation" sort of way, kind of on rails but still feels mostly FF. It's a good game, but following 7, 8, and 9, something seemed missing in the race for cinematic stories.
(11's an MMO)
FF12 is very "un-FF". Cool game, I haven't played through all of it yet. But it's more of a western RPG in some ways. Very open ended. More Fire Emblem type world that downplays the high fantasy stuff. It doesn't play like a typical FF in any way but it's good as its own thing.
FF13: The game that will make you REALLY appreciate FF10. Controversial doesn't cut it. It took the game and put it literally on rails until the last 1/3 or so. No random encounters, just walking down straight hallways to battle the next visible enemy. The producer openly stated they weren't really trying to make an RPG but a "new type of game" inspired more by shooters than RPGs. The story was a trainwreck of pure nonsense and made up proper nouns from start to finish, and contains two of the most annoying characters in FF history. All that said, the combat was some of the best in the entire series. It really was a great combat system, possible in part because of the linearity, where it wasn't about grinding and leveling but about smartly battling. Thus, it's all about gameplay, and the story, that was trying to recreate the mystique of 7 so desperately but fell on its face badly. Note that the two sequels in the 13 trilogy, XIII-2 and Lightening Returns are much better all around than the base game. They get forgotten because of backlash to the base game. Not on Switch though, it's only on PS3, X360, and X1. Not even PS4. It will never be on Switch since the Crystal Tools engine is a disaster that can't be ported to anything and was used only for that game and the first run of 14 MMO before they rewrote it in Unreal.
(FF 14 is an MMO)
FF 15: Hooo boy. Imagine... I mean...think of....I mean, if you take....oh screw it it's a mess. It's an action-RPG with emphasis on real time combat in a "Route 66" environment depeicting the US Southwest, that then branches into some fantasy environments, and it tries to cash in on an almost Monster Hunter like vibe, same as the last 1/3 of 13. Open questing in an open world to slay contract monsters. Weird, and not traditional FF at all. Kind of cool as its own thing though. Switch has the "Cliff notes" version from mobile. Which is actually more traditional-FF than the main PS4/X1/PC game. Slightly.
Final Fantasy IX is my favorite too!!! It is the more representative Final Fantasy I think. And with the new options like as high-speed is much more playable than before. You can do chocobo game easier than before.
Why was FFVIII skipped ? Am I missing something major here ?
3DS code : 0275-8197-3634
Nintendo ID : kryce313
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DRAGON QUEST 9 (3DS)
TOKYO MIRAGE SESSIONS FE (Wii U)
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@Kryce: I asked the same question not too long ago as I'm a series newcomer as well. To my knowledge there's no official reason as to why, but there's a theory that the master/source code for FFVIII has been lost.
@NEStalgia: Would starting with VI ruin VII for me? And are any of the main FF games before VI worth playing? No nostalgia here.
@King-X I hadn't read that IX was Sakaguchi's favorite. I'm glad to know I'm in good company...makes me want to race to Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey on X1/PS4 knowing he was the thinking behind what I liked most in FF.
@Kryce No idea, they've said nothing about it. It's weird they release everything EXCEPT 8. I'm not sure the theory they lost the source/master for it holds either.....that would have just made it PS4 exclusive for current gen, but PS4 can emulate the PS2 version as a Classics just fine. There's more to it than that, but I suppose that could be part of it. The masters of FFVII's backdrops were lost, that's why they can't re-render at higher res and are stuck with upscaling the jpegs. Maybe VIII got caught in the data loss even worse. But I'd think they'd have something for a missing entry in their flagship series. They were able to get it onto PS3 and Vita, so if it were lost, it was lost in the past 6 years or so, not back in the 90s. It may just be a lack of popularity overall. Other than Seifer in KH, Squall in KH and WoFF, and Quistis in WoFF....who mentions anything from 8 ever? And poor Rinoa is forgotten entirely. The freaking moogles get like 100 hours of play. Even if Dissidia NT Rinoa is just DLC. Nuck Foctis.
@Tyranexx It depends. There are those that insist VII is overrated and VI is the best. I mean you can't get a WORSE story than VII, so there's merit to it But mostly it's hipsterism reacting to the popularity of VII. They're both dated. One can argue SNES era JRPGs were the height of the genre though (as evidenced by DQXI including an SNES style mode on 3DS and Switch... )
But each is a stand alone adventure with it's own world and vibe and feel (and battle system), so I don't think one ruins the other unless you like one more than the other. IX ruins all others for me because it's just superior, and that's a fact. Science proves it.
Before VI, I'd say IV is the other one worth playing, possibly. It introduced a lot of recurring items in the FF series. And it has a good mobile (is it on Switch yet?) port that gives it "modern" graphics and conveniences, too. The SNES version was very easy though. Square/Nintendo decided the (insanely brutal, masochistic) Japanese version was too difficult for American Neanderthals and demanded a simplified version, so it's an easier game like WoFF (or easier.) The modernized port is based on the Japanese original so it returns to it's masochistic roots.
@ReaderRagfish It really hasn't. Compare gameplay to DQ and it's night and day. Except XIII. The worst FF story has the best gameplay, hands down. The unloved game is best.
But it's true, you play FF for the experience. (past IV, anyway.) And IX hits on all the right notes. To be fair though, back then in the PS2 era, gameplay was kind of almost seen as quaint and obsolete. Interactive experience was Sony's narrative and the gamers bought it.
Most classic JRPGs I've played are a bit... lacking on the gameplay front. It's one reason I love SMT so much: try to just brute force your way through one of those games by level grinding and it'll smack you back down. Hard. Those games require planning, strategizing, and patience to defeat a lot of the more difficult bosses.
Final Fantasy XII is pretty good gameplay-wise, though.
I only played the first 1/3 or so of XIII when it first came out, but there was a strange battle system that made me feel more like I was feeding it suggestions than actually engaging it and an excess of corridor-like environments that were boring. This is putting aside the well-documented plot, worldbuilding, and character problems.
I might try it again, though, considering it has been almost a decade since I first played it.
@Ralizah I know you, like everyone else, hates XIII but I always felt that despite a very very different battle system, XIII was much more "SMT-ish" in how you approached battles. There was no grinding because there were no random encounters. The game was difficulty pegged against the asssumption everyone was roughly the same level since there were finite enemies to attack in the game, no respawns. Granted, SMT adds the whole fusing/summoning/crafting aspect to planning and strategizing, but it was still a significantly more tactical battle system than most other FF, because it could assume you could not be over level X, even if you slayed every optional hidden monster. You had to just fight smarter. Less planning than SMT, but lots of tactics.
The first 1/3 is like you say, though. Just hit auto-attack all the time. By the time you get near the end of Coccoon the battle system really opens up. Brandelus is epic (and punishing.) the "tutorial" is too extended. They're getting you used to using the limits or whatever they call them. But it's kind of Xenoblade-esque. The auto attacks became auto, but you're not micromanaging the attacks, you're managing building up the limits and how to keep the charge going. Eventually regular attacks do, basically, zero meaningful damage. All damage has to come from extended chains during limits. It becomes crazy frenetic of managing it all fast enough to keep up with the active battle. Especially when the enemy can nearly ohko you and you're managing healing. It gets good. I still say it's the worst FF, but has the best combat of any FF. XIII-2 goes a lot more traditional with random encounters again. Lightening Returns uses something entirely different for battle that's sort of an action/turn based hybrid.
@NEStalgia: VII's story is that bad, huh? Other than one major thing that I've had spoiled for me as the internet assumes everyone has played the game at this point (What I'll call the equivalent of "Dumbledore dies" in the Potterverse), I know very little about it.
Good to know about IV at any rate; I've read that the first three usually aren't worth bothering with unless you really want some classic 8-bit RPGs but have read mixed things about IV and V. I figured for simplicity's sake that I'd try to focus on VI and above (barring the MMOs) for now.
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Topic: Final Fantasy VII, IX, X, X-2 and XII - Now with 80% more FF VIII
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