Final Fantasy VII-XIII

[Guillermo]

FF12 didn't score well? That game was well received here and it is one of my favorite in the series easily. The game looked beautiful, the characters looked beautiful, and the monsters/espers looked beautiful.

Hmmm I don't know. X made sense to me and I enjoyed that one. I do agree with you about X-2 though. I bought it and played it simply because I'm a Final Fantasy fan. Meh I guess maybe I like Final Fantasy too much?

[Frogboy]

and yay, we're back to the classic debate of graphics vs storyline argument, thanks guillermo =)

i like both, but i can't stand a game without storyline, no matter how good the graphics are, though i have played games with "non-existent" storylines.

[GM-Ayu]

Sometimes when you try too hard at a plot twist, you simply fail at it. A few of the most well received FF are 6 and 7. They got straightforward villains. You know that Kefka is crazy off the bat, and he's clearly the main villain once Geshtal died. Sephiroth, he's just insane and you also chase him the moment you get out of Midgard, and no surprise he's the final boss. FF10 tries all these twists left and right that only ends up to confuse you, and FF12, you eventually get to the point where you can't tell 'sidequests' from the 'story-quests' anymore.

I enjoyed FF10 too and I don't always expect the story to be fabulous and deep, the gameplay kept me interested enough. However, to say that it's fabulous, no i wouldn't say that... FF10 is good, but since it's missing the plot aspect of the RPG, I wouldn't call it fabulous. FF12, I don't mind the much more 'serious' attempt at plot with the political atmosphere and all, but you do so many more 'irrelevant things' that I just don't know where the plot went half way through and stopped playing.

By "not well received" I don't mean FF12 to be stuck on the shelf at all times, but us older people certainly won't put it in the ranks of other square classics like some of the older FF, or Chrono Trigger, and so on. I'm sure they still sold a lot, but you're talking about a series with an extremely high bar to live up to. Relatively speaking, your series's sales went down compare to an older game within the same series, while the smaller companies sales are going up with their new series (like for NIS's Disgaea, or the not-that-small but formerly not well established in the RPG realm, the "Tales of ____" series), it's relatively "not well received."

[Sakurato]

/kindofontopic

if you want a game with a good story line and I mean GOOD! Also with awesome game play try xenogears ;D

[KohakuSan]

Yeah, Xenogears is awesome until you find out the 2nd disc is basically a story-telling disc and you don't do much until near the end of the game.
About the plot, yeah it's really good.

@back to topic
My favorite FF, from the ones you listed in the topic title, is FF8, I know 90% of the people like 7 and hate 8, but I'm the opposite, I can't believe someone finds 7 better than 8.
Both plots are not good and pretty "clich?". 8's battle system is different and better, in my opinion. 7th got pretty much everything the older FF had, nothing new or anything besides being the first FF in a 3D plataform.
I think that's the only reason so many players like it so much.
I'm not saying 8 is awesome and the best FF in that list, since I just played 7, 8 and 9 besides all the older ones, I really do think though is that 7 is terrible comparing to the others and I don't get why so many people worship it >_>

And omg I <3 "Tail of ____" series(mainly Phantasia) \o/

[GM-Ayu]

Just that FF8's plot is even more confusing and "trying too hard for a twist" than FF7... It was fabulous game until end of disc 2... then we pull off the worse brainwash excuse you can ever come up with, and it was all down hill from there to me.

I don't think FF8's system is really that well designed heh... monsters level up with you but the lack of correlation between your kind of level up and their kind of level up... yeah... As much as I know how normal attack dominates early FFs in the series, FF8 is one of the worse at it. Junction system's "dare use any spells? sacrifice your stats! Oh wait your normal attack which cost nothing is stronger than spells to begin with" is a terrible design failure for me...

Materia is old and not as gamebreaking as everyone claim to be. But sometimes old things linger around because it works.

[Kretzer]

I don't think FF8's system is really that well designed heh... monsters level up with you but the lack of correlation between your kind of level up and their kind of level up... yeah... As much as I know how normal attack dominates early FFs in the series, FF8 is one of the worse at it. Junction system's "dare use any spells? sacrifice your stats! Oh wait your normal attack which cost nothing is stronger than spells to begin with" is a terrible design failure for me...

If we're going to talk about RegularAttack/Magic Unbalance, you have FF7 there waiting for you.
I loved the game back when i had my PS1, but really. After the second half of Disc 2 all your attacks were 9999, and with the ability to multiply the Double Cut Materia and then further increase it to Quadruple Cut...Damn.
That made 98% of all Materia useless, the rest being Final Attack, Pheonix and Knights of the round[Looong ass summon Sequence], and of course, Double Cut.... Other usefull materia would be X-Item that glitched allowing you to Multiply all those Sexy MegaElixirs up to 99, making you even more of a raping machine D=

[Aaronock]

You forgot mime materia's brokeness...

Anyway, FF9 hasta be my fave of the newer generation of FF's...Zidane makes me laugh
Oldschool wise, I'd haveta pick FF6 but FF2 does hold a little spot in my heart for being able to be a sadist to your party to make them stronger=lol.

[Frogboy]

for those that don't know, aaronnub is talking about ff2 for the NES, not the SNES one that came out in the US =)

<3 ff2 as well.

also @ff8 i completed the no-level up challenge on gamefaqs and it is ridiculous how overpowered magic is to your stats, compared to how pathetic the magic actually is. in most game designs your attack power is related to level and stats, but nope, not in ff8, you could be level 1 with the best magic in the game junctioned to your stats and you'd easily do 9999 damage each hit against any and all monsters, including the final bosses >.< though i did enjoy the game anyway regardless (i like triple triad =D)

[Aegis]

Personally with the series, I'm waiting for the Big Bad to not have crazy hair. If it was some normal looking guy with brown or blond hair who had a sidekick with crazy hair, no one would believe him to be the bad guy. Also, white hair? Huge tip-off (looking at you, Seph and capt. metal thong).

Final Fantasy 6 on the SNES was my favorite. Why mention SNES? Because the remake on GBA, while cleaning up typos etc., did alter several characters personalities for the worse. FFIV, FFX and FFT also shine, but there's something about Kefka that just puts him a step up... oh yeah, he won, technically.