What did everyone think of the Final Fantasy games?

[DarkMyau]

I was wondering what all the other Phanatics thought of our arch enemy (lol) Final Fantasy?

Did you play any of them? What did you think of them? Do you own any of them?

My friends owned SEGA Master Systems and later Mega Drives (I miss SEGA as a console developer) so I bought them too. We would swap cartridges and thus got to play a lot more games than we would have.
So I never owned a Nintendo and to this day still have never owned a Nintendo. (I do own a 3DS) We used to rent a NES, so I played Mario and Mega Man, but never tried any NES or SNES Final Fantasy.

My first girlfriend bought me a PlayStation for Christmas one year and I was looking for a good roleplaying game.

I looked at Final Fantasy 7 and wondered if it would satisfy my Phantasy Star needs. I decide to give it a try. And loved it. The story is terrible and stops making any sense at all the second you leave Midgar. But the characters are fantastic and there a huge world to explore and sooooo many mini games!! I did think the Aries dying scene was cheesy as Phantasy Star had already done it...twice and I would gladly toss Aries off a cliff if it meant saving either Alys or Nei. I'd toss Cloud too. Always thought that was a stupid name for a main character...but that's just me.

I bought Final Fantasy 8 new and was disappointed in it. It had fantastic graphics, great music, but very little else, it was honestly a big empty world. I however just bought it on Steam and am really enjoying it, the music is fantastic and when you figure out the junction system it is a lot more fun than *spam GF*...*spam GF*...*spam GF* which perfectly describes my first play through. Squall also reminds me a bit too much of teenage me...yes, I was that uptight...ps Squall and Rinoa wouldn't have lasted a month: P

Only rented Final Fantasy 9, but loved the simpler graphics and better mini games. Only just bought it last year and played the heck out of it. Great game...even if the main character is a douche. What? He is.

I loved Final Fantasy 10 and rate it the best game of the series. A story that actually makes sense!!! Good characters. The best combat system I have ever seen. And loads to see and do. I even liked 10-2, it is just a pile of mini games really, but damn is it fun.

Never tried 11 so won’t comment on it.

Ahhh 12. I’ll be blunt. Good: Combat was pretty good and I loved the loot system. Gambits were pretty cool too. Bad: Ugggg it’s such a boring grind fest and its only mini game is more grinding!!! Its story makes zero sense! Why are Vaan and Penelo even on the quest? And Bathier and Fran???? What are they getting out of risking their lives? I have owned it a long time and have never finished it as it bores me to tears. PS I played and Beat Phantasy Star 3 just a month ago.

Never played 13. Don’t really want to either. Same with 13-2 and 13-3

I did buy Final Fantasy 14...but World of Warcraft: Final Fantasy edition was boring as hell with a terrible job system that was, grind levels...then do it again.....from lvl 1 each time!!! Bored me silly. And I played Phantasy Star 2 back in the day!

As for the older games, well I did rent a PS1 CD of Final Fantasy 6...it was nothing special. And a compilation CD of 2, 3, 4 and 5. Don't remember 2 or 3 (but am thinking about getting 3 on Steam) or 4 really. Seemed like Generic RPG 267 to me. I like 5 however and really enjoyed the job system.

[BenoitRen]

I tried the first Final Fantasy on an emulator a couple years back. It was boring and slow, so I quickly put it down.

Final Fantasy II I recently played the PSP enhanced port of. I rather liked it, but it would have helped a lot if the game or the manual would have told me how to access the map before I had finished the game. Because really, its large, empty world was my only problem with it as I searched for the next destination. The statistic progression system reminded me of SaGa (same director), which I like. Even Dawn of Souls was fun to me as a shorter but harder version of the game, complete with an Ultima spell that when equipped on Minwu did loads of damage.

Never played Final Fantasy III, but I intend to play its DS or PSP enhanced port.

Played and finished Final Fantasy IV on an emulator many years back. It was decent, but I don't want to play through it again. The only part I still like is when you're stranded in the desert with Rydia, because I like levelling characters (she starts at level 1) and seeing them learn new skills.

Final Fantasy V is my favourite Final Fantasy. I really liked the story, the characters, and the job system. Most say the story was boring and generic, but I was really into it. Played through it in an emulator many years back, and bought the Game Boy Advance port several years later, which I still didn't finish because I wanted to grind all the job levels to the maximum (which I was almost done with) and take out the optional bosses. Then I got distracted by another game.

Final Fantasy VI is my second favourite for pretty much the same reason as Final Fantasy V. Its Magicite system isn't unlocked until you're deep into the game, and it doesn't give you that many options. But the story and characters are very good. I have the Game Boy Advance port too, but haven't played through it yet. I'm a bit reluctant to, actually, because they did such a bad job in porting the music and sound effects.

Aside from those, I shortly played Final Fantasy X, X-2 and XII. I'll get back to them later.

[Murdock311]

I tried playing a few of them, including the supposedly best (FF 7). The only one I cared for was Mystic Quest. More than anything though they were waaay to linear, there was no experience building on your own terms or any real freedom. The monsters you fight and the spots you fight them at are pre-determined, which I hate. Of course there is a certain story you have to follow in Phantasy Star to unlock/reveal everything, but I never felt constrained like I did when trying FF.

[Paul Jensen]

I've played all of the FF games up to X, but the only ones I've played to completion are IV and VI.

FFIV was my first FF game, and I remember thinking it was pretty messy compared to the PS games I grew up on, but I still enjoyed it because there was so much detail in it, and also a decent amount of exploration, which is one thing I liked about the PS series. The music was great, too.

FFVI is the best of the FF games IMO. Aside from maybe FFIX, it's the last of the "fun" FFs with brave, adventurous characters before Square switched over to brooding pretty boy main characters with FFVII. I think the staff for FFVI knew that they'd never be able to make that kind of simple, whimsical FF game again, so they put everything they could into the game. The soundtrack is also the most well composed of any soundtrack I've heard, with each character having a memorable, distinct theme that gets interwoven into a beautiful medley during the finale. It's probably the last time I remember feeling any kind of emotions for the characters in a FF game.

FFI didn't impress me much back when it first came out -- PS1 was much better.

Real life started interfering with my video game habit around the time FFVII came out, so I didn't have as much time to put into it as I had with previous games in the series, but although I enjoyed it at first, I felt like it just got tedious after disc 1, so I just kind of quit playing it. The biggest problem I had with it was the lack of emphasis on weapons, armor, and accessories. I liked decking my characters out in cool armor and stuff in the earlier games, but IIRC FFVII changed the system to just a weapon, a piece of armor, and an accessory, which I didn't like too much.

[skymandr]

I never cared for the Square/Enix aesthetics, but FFVI is a very good story.

[Parma Ham]

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[BenoitRen]

FF2 is a buggy mess, but it makes me wish someone would develop a game using a variation or derivative of its mechanics that actually works.

The Final Fantasy Legend games you've played are the spiritual sequels to Final Fantasy II, created by Akitoshi Kawazu (one of the designers for FFII). They aren't even Final Fantasy games; they got named as such in the West for better sales. They're actually the start of the SaGa series.

[Kaihaku]

The first RPG I owned was the original Final Fantasy (the first I played, incidentally, was Ultima: Exodus). I didn't end up playing Phantasy Star until almost twenty years later. Eh, the first four Phantasy Star games were the better series but Final Fantasy had a good stretch there for awhile. I think it fell apart under the weight of it's own success and is just coasting on it's own brand momentum at this point.

It was unintentional but I've only finished the odd entries (1, 3, 5, 7, and 9) in the Final Fantasy series (though I came very close to finishing FF2Jap). My favorite Final Fantasy is actually V, partially because of the class system and partially because the narrative balanced silly/serious well (I'm also a fan of Dragon Quest which manages a similar balance).

[Doctor Hooves]

I’ve never actually played a Final Fantasy game. I don’t really have any consoles to play them on anything either. I’m willing to bet they’re quite decent, but don’t have any interest in playing them right now.

I was born in 2001, and I guess Final Fantasy just wasn’t in my age range. No joke, I’ve never heard ANYONE my age talk about it before. It seems highly popular on the internet though. Then again, most people my age probably haven’t played any Phantasy Star games.

So, no, never played a Final Fantasy game, at least not yet.