Im proud to call myself one of the 1%

[Mefuki]

2.5% of people say FFXIII is their favourite FF? I assume they've never played the other games or...any other RPG for that matter...

Oh well, at least they agreed that II was the worst. That's something.

[Petitssk]

Spoiler: show

?

Yes, now that was amazing.

[shaggnix]

I find it amusing that 122 people still confused FFII with FFIV, despite it being noted next to the titles.

[Firedemon]

FFIV > all

[Fwahm]

2.5% of people say FFXIII is their favourite FF? I assume they've never played the other games or...any other RPG for that matter...

Oh well, at least they agreed that II was the worst. That's something.

While FFXIII isn't exactly a top tier RPG, it doesn't deserve the hate it gets.

The battle system is possibly the best in the series, the story is fairly good (its biggest problems is the usage of plot dumps by Barthandelas, but it's not a fatal flaw), and it's got a great mythos. The linearity is a bit annoying, but I feel that gets overblown a LOT.

FFXIII is solidly midtier for the FF series, IMO.

[Damane]

While FFXIII isn't exactly a top tier RPG, it doesn't deserve the hate it gets.

The battle system is possibly the best in the series, the story is fairly good (its biggest problems is the usage of plot dumps by Barthandelas, but it's not a fatal flaw), and it's got a great mythos. The linearity is a bit annoying, but I feel that gets overblown a LOT.

FFXIII is solidly midtier for the FF series, IMO.

while compared to other rpgs ff13 is solid but compared to other previous FF titles it hits the bottom and is crap.

[Foldypaws]

To date, ff7 was he grittiest, dirtiest, rawest ff game in existance. Every other ff game after and before were more innocent, pg-13, toned down.

Say what? FFIV *opens* with the main character slaughtering innocents in a cutscene, and then as the first mission handed to the player, you slaughter a young child's mother and then destroy her village.

That's not even an NPC doing it, that's *the player characters* doing that.

FFVI has the villain poison an entire castle full of people who, yes, all die in front of you. (FFVI also has guns, though not used by the PCs). The entire world of ruin is a raw,wrecked world full of apocalypse cultists, ruined towns, and piles of orphans.

[Taint]

IV > VI > XI > XIV > VII for me.

90s RPGs in general were pretty damn awesome.

[Melena]

Say what? FFIV *opens* with the main character slaughtering innocents in a cutscene, and then as the first mission handed to the player, you slaughter a young child's mother and then destroy her village.

That's not even an NPC doing it, that's *the player characters* doing that.

FFVI has the villain poison an entire castle full of people who, yes, all die in front of you. (FFVI also has guns, though not used by the PCs). The entire world of ruin is a raw,wrecked world full of apocalypse cultists, ruined towns, and piles of orphans.

Don't forget the attempted suicide as well. 6 was emotionally brutal.

[KetSC]

Yeah, if anything I say FF7 is probably the lightest of all FF games (maybe FF14 is the lightest FF considering it has the unstoppable player character that makes the entire story and conflicts of FF14 pointless). It's either FF7 or FF14 that is the most lightest story.

I say the only dark point of FF7 is probably the Avalanche members that got killed.
At the end of Crisis Core and Advent Children, Zack and Aerith spirits were shown to be in the Lifestream and they seem happy. Red XIII's dad died and Cloud's mom died. Marlene's dad did die but she is living happily with the FF7 team. It's true Sephiroth killed a bunch of people but every FF have had "a bunch of people get killed". In terms of notable characters, there were those that I mentioned. I can't think of anything else "dark" and "gritty" about FF7 besides those things but that really isn't much.

Aerith got killed but Galuf got killed in FF5 too. At the end of Crisis Core, Zack reaches out for Angeal's hand and gets pulled by Angeal (happy ending and a cool scene). Advent Children, their spirits seem to be in the Lifestream (Aerith and Zack). Overall, FF7 isn't really dark or gritty.

Games after FF7 (and the ones people haven't mentioned already):
FF8 - It's really messed up that Squall didn't know anything and killed the future version of Rinoa and/or sent her in an infinite time loop to repeat FF8's events over and over again. Really dark story.

Spoiler: show

Yes, it's been said that Ultimecia is not the future version of Rinoa. Still though, there were lots of hints at this throughout most of FF8.

Lots of movies and stuff get edited and changed to something other than what the director originally wanted when it gets released. Might be the same with FF8 too.

Also it is said sorceress have to transfer their power to be able to die (which is why Ultimecia did it at the end of FF8) but it's not said what happens if they aren't able to transfer it. So while sorceresses may have normal life spans, they might able to live long if they can't transfer their powers for some reason, and Rinoa could potentially live long enough to become Ultimecia.

So here is how FF8 potentially ends and starts over again:

Spoiler: show

1. At the end of FF8, Ultimecia is defeated and she goes back in time and transfer her powers to Edea. Edea receives power from an unknown Sorceress (Ultimecia) back in time (before the start of FF8).
2. Rinoa still lives on as a Sorceress at the end of FF8 (after they defeated Ultimecia).
3. For some reason, Rinoa can't transfer her powers away to someone (because of this she doesn't die of aging) and outlive Squall and everyone else.
4. While a sorceress doesn't have to use GFs to use magic, they can (Ultimecia did it). For whatever reason, Rinoa keeps using GFs to amplify her power (maybe in the future, she needs it for whatever reason).
5. Due to continous use of GFs, Rinoa loses some of her memories and forgets Squall and her encounter with Ultimecia.
6. Rinoa lives long enough to become Ultimecia again (she forgets her past encounter with Ultimecia, or her future self, and Rinoa unknowingly starts the same events of FF8 all over again by becoming Ultimecia). (Maybe in her future, without everyone, she gets persecuted by SeeD, maybe SeeD becomes corrupt, etc.)
7. Rinoa (now as Ultimecia) try to travel back in time (exact events of FFVIII) to stop this.
8. FF8 happens and Rinoa as Ultimecia fails. The events of FFVIII keep repeating.

The events of FF8 repeat over and over (Edea > Rinoa > Ultimecia > Edea).

What is odd is how this time loop first started is never explained. Edea apparently received it from Ultimecia before the events of FF8 and again after FF8 (so it seems when you start FF8, you were already starting in the time loop just from the beginning). Of course Edea could have potentially received from someone else other than Ultimecia but since at the end of FF8, she transfered it to Edea, that means whoever originally transferred her powers to Edea can no longer transfer it to Edea (so the events may end up different than originally).

And while it's true that Sorceress may not have long life spans, it's interesting that Ultimecia had to use time travel to transfer it away to Edea at the end of FF8 (it is said that only a few can receive the power of a sorceress, so that means the candidates are limited).

Rinoa (or Ultmecia) doesn't know time travel at that point.

In the future (for whatever reason), Rinoa can't transfer it (maybe there are no future candidates in the future for some reason and she is the last sorceress remaining), and she can only transfer it ultimately after she becomes Ultimecia and near the end of FF8 when she has the power of time travel (and only after Squall and team defeat her).

And overall, that is why Rinoa is very likely Ultimecia (and that's why FF8 potentially has the darkest ending). I've seen people argue similarities between Rinoa and Ultimecia before but in the above, I also try to come up with a timeline of how FF8 starts and repeats itself (and it seems to fit without any issues).

There's a lot of stuff that isn't explained much in FF8, so there's a lot of potential ways to try to guess what happened. For the most part though, it does sound very likely that is exactly what happened (everything I said above fits within the lore of the game).

Here are the rest of the FFs (who got killed and what bad stuff happened in the game):

Spoiler: show

FF9 - Tons of people got killed. Black Mages, Garnet's mom, etc.
FF10 - People were shown getting killed by Sin all the time.
FF11 - It's an MMO and an ongoing RPG. It's true lots of the major NPCs stay alive but there's really no point in killing them. Even if FF11 had the best story ever, you have to admit that not many people play FF11 (even at its prime at 500k subs, FF11 is probably the least played off all FF games even though it does make the most money). So keeping major NPCs alive so you can do more things with them (like allowing them to be used in Trust or adding more stories involving those NPCs) makes more sense than killing them just to try to make the game "dark". Can't kill off NPCs or else we won't have much to work with.

But aside from that, tons of people still get killed all the time (and said in back stories, etc) in FF11.

FF12 - Four characters died during the story. Reddas, Drace, Vossler, Gabrath. Two characters before the game are Vaan's brother and Ashe's husband.
FF13 - Hope's mom died. Cid died. Yaag Rosch died. Jihl Nabaat died. Lots of other people got killed too.
FF14 - Aside from a few things, it is mostly light game (the player character is way too strong and kind of makes the story pointless).
FF5 - Exdeath was brutal. Tons of towns got destroyed . People were pulled up into a black hole and got brutally killed (Bartz's village included). Galuf died too of course.
FF4 and FF6, people already mentioned already.

I'm not really counting the non-stories (like FF1 and FF3) but for the most part, FF7 seems to be the most light story. Not that having dark stories really makes things better (outside of the hipster thing to like these days) but overall it does seem FF7 is the most light (hardly dark or gritty).

FF8 might be the darkest (it's the only FF that has a really screwed up ending while the rest of FF games are mostly happy endings). Other than that, I would say FF Tactics is really dark (the way the murders are described) and the ending is kind of bittersweet (it's true things are peaceful at the end but tons of people died including potentially all the playable characters). Since FF Tactics is in the same universe as FF12, I'd count FF Tactics.

As for the discussion of FF games - For RPG gameplay, I consider two factors:
1. Is the "character sheet" part of the game good - Is it fun to think of builds, try to customize your character, theory craft, etc?
2. Is the world exploration or combat fun?
If no to both, then the gameplay sucks.

FF1-6 weren't the greatest games. They were decent RPGs at its time but definitely not great. FF1-6 also had the worse gameplay.

If you could have an FF6 remake, would you keep the gameplay exactly the same (world map exploration, battle system, customization), etc?

If the answer is no (you don't want the gameplay to be the same, instead you want the gameplay to change or be remade), then you have admitted the gameplay was horrible (well not necessarily but the point is, I am trying to make is the gameplay isn't great).

All the FFs could use some tuning in gameplay to make it better but judging the game how they were when released and what people ultimately all ended up playing, FF1-6 had the worse gameplay and the worse customization and the worse world exploration (only thing FF6 had was randomly running into Death Gaze which actually shocked me but aside from that, there really weren't much going for gameplay or customization).

And don't let the game with the most jobs (FF5) fool you. FF5 was mostly terrible. I clocked about 60 hours on it and did everything in that game.

Problems with FF5:

Spoiler: show

1. Jobs are barely any different from each other. FF Tactics did this right with all the powerful and variety of abilities. FF5 had like one or two abilities, a few spells, and for the most part, the jobs are kind of all similar to one another.

2. Another huge problem with FF5 is that you are encouraged (especially if you like to min/max in games) to rotate between every single job and grind them all the way to the max. I like in FF Tactics, I can mostly stick with one or two jobs (after learning some ablities or traits on other classes but besides that, I can stick with a specific job I want on a character).

FF5 has not much customization what-so-ever. Once you max out every job, you simply switch to the Bare or Mime class (Since both have access to all traits of every job you leveled up at once, and they gain higher stat for each job you mastered). I mean even if you ignored that and stuck with one job, most of the jobs in FF5 are really shallow anyway (they all play mostly the same and have mostly the same abilities).

As for the stories of FF1-6, FF4 and FF6 were really the only ones with actual stories (FF5 barely had any dialogue).

Spoiler: show

FF1, FF2, FF3, and FF5 has the most generic gameplay, mostly no dialogue at all, and mostly no customization. FF4 and FF6 is a slight step above the rest but still mostly generic too.

FF4 and FF6 weren't the only games I played back then, I played Lufia and other games too. Chrono Trigger was decent at best; I like Chrono Cross better. All those games are games that I wouldn't really replay.

Most of the RPGs during those times were really simple. It wasn't that they are the most generic RPGs but they were just the most generic and simple games overall of any genre at those times.

Spoiler: show

Those games (along with FFXIV ARR for MMOs) might be impressive if you never played a game before (those games were your first games you played) but if you take them objectively (comparing them to every other type of media or game, even back then), they were really nothing special.

Same with Chrono Trigger too (yeah the time travel, multiple endings, and double/triple techs; 3 gimmicks hardly makes it that much different from other games at the time).

That's why I really don't get all the like for FF1-6. FF1-6 seems like either nostalgia (those were your first games) or if you are being a hipster (you never played the game before but say you like it simply to say "you were there back in the day").

They were good fun back then but it wasn't "the greatest thing ever" when I was playing them. Fun and a time waster but nothing more than that.
They're probably okay if you were playing them for the first time when you were a kid but aside from that, fairly typical stuff.

FF6 isn't even that unique. Most of the characters aren't interesting (they're mostly just random dudes that join your party). Celes and Locke, I do like both. Outside of the "it's the cool hipster thing to like FF6 nowadays", the story isn't unique or well presented. Also FF6 had one of the worse forced mini games of all time, the feeding Cid mini game.

FF4 and FF6 (though this is the case for all SNES games) were ahead in graphics at the time. Though this is the case for all the latest games.
So one of these:
1. You liked the game because it was your first (or one of your first).
2. Hipster bandwagon (you actually never played the game before, and you only say you like it to sound cool to others).
3. You were impressed with the graphics and music at the time.

Outside of those three reasons, FF1-6 were the most generic and most simple games. Decent games but not great.

Spoiler: show

Again, my question to help prove this is if you wanted a remake of FF1-6, would you keep the gameplay, world map, quests, etc all exactly the same? If you answered no (instead, you want it changed), then you admitted the gameplay wasn't good.

Story and presentation is a bit more complicated to judge but honestly, outside of like two things in each game (Rydia coming out of no where in FF4 to save you twice, and Locke and Celes scenes in FF6), the stories were just standard stuff.

As for one with the best gameplay? FF10-2 hands down.
It had the character sheet part right. There were lots of customization (garmet grids can give you off skills even if you weren't on a specific job). The battle system was well done too (if you set the speed to active and on the fastest, it's fairly fast paced and fluid).

Here's my current best to worse list (overall) for FF games:
1. FFXI (Seekers of Adoulin era) (SoA has the best and most varied content and progression of any MMO, even beats WoW) and FFXIII series. I like that Vanille is like Vash from Trigun and Caius is a sexy poet. Gameplay for the most part was generic but the times when the game is good (against certain bosses), it's one of the most fun I had in any RPG gameplay wise (juggling all three paradigm roles, etc). Also XIII-2 had one of the best explorations and I appreciated the Fragment skills you can get (like Anti-grav jump).
2. FFX-2 (best gameplay and character customization) + FFXII.
3. FFXIV 1.23. FFXIV 1.23 is up here because of its battle system. Take note, Matsui was actually the one who worked on 1.2's battle system. Matsui wasn't switched back to FFXI until 2012.

1.23 (the battle system) was basically a double team of Matsui and Tanaka (which interesting enough, is what also brought us one of the greatest game ever, FFXI's Seeker of Adoulin which was also a double team effort by Matsui and Tanaka, before Tanaka left. 1.23 combat was 1.0's combat without all the tediousness and with tons of more interesting mechanics.

The main thing to note about 1.23s battle system compared to ARR is there is no global cool down (instead you juggle multiple abilities and manage your resources based on that).

Spoiler: show

In WoW, a GCD works because there's actually more than one viable rotation for each class and the GCD is really short (1.5 is min and with haste, it gets down to 1 second). However ARR is really simplified (only one viable rotation per job really and it's really simple) and the GCD is 2.5 (and 2.3 with lots of spell/skill speed).

So 1.23's battle system, while not the best, was neat and somewhat a mix of WoW and FFXI's combat which was really cool. I'd actually say FFXIV 1.23s combat system is more closer to WoW's combat system than FFXIV ARR.

Spoiler: show

Again ARR's gameplay is simplistic and everything has long cooldowns. In WoW, there are more than one viable rotations for a lot of classes, and there are lots of utility spells, and you have to actually manage resources (you have to pay attention what abilities you use). In FFXIV 1.23, it was fairly simple (at that point) but it was really close to what WoW combat is (you have to manage lots of abilities and manage resources + there were a bit more utility abilities for each class). FFXIV ARR removes all aspect of having to pay attention to resources or ability usage (simplistic rotations, barely any utility spells, etc).

So overall, FFXIV 1.23 is up here just because it has one of the more unique battle systems of any RPG (it was sort of a mix of FFXI and WoW's battle system). WoW (IMO) has one of the best (if not the best) gameplay of any non-action RPG so that's why FFXIV 1.23 is up here. It's not the exact same thing but 1.23's battle system is actually a lot more closer to WoW's battle system than ARR.
4. FFX (Monster Arena is best end game), FFVII (overall well presented story and materia system is fairly well done).
5. FFVIII (good gameplay and exploration with finding and collecting GFs but the world felt small for some reason and story didn't seem like they were as much going on as other FFs). FFIX (good exploration and decent presentation of story).
6. FFVI (probably the best of the NES/SNES era but not the greatest).
7. FFIV.
8. FFV.
9. FFXIV 1.0. I love Tanaka but the combat system and a lot of stuff was horrible in the 1.0. Lot of concepts were neat but lots of stuff just didn't work well for a modern MMO.
10. FFI and FFII. The only good thing about FF1 is that Masamune is equippable by all characters but aside from that, generic. That is also why I am putting it together with FFII.
11. FFXIV ARR.

One thing from FFXI (job changing) and one thing from WoW (movement is fluid and the game is responsive), and the rest of the game is a generic walking simulator (with no story or RPG elements).

Spoiler: show

Story wise, the player character is just too strong and makes almost all conflicts in the game irrelevant (also there's barely any focus on any other character besides the PC).The game has 2 weeks of content and generic MMO updates (3 unimaginative dungeons that are mostly copy and paste, 1 primal, 4 10 minute boss battles). The tri-monthly updates barely add anything to the game.

ARR is the easiest FF game of all time too

Spoiler: show

(you never have to pay attention to how you use your abilities or what other players are doing; plus all the fights are really scripted too; there's no theory crafting or strategy involved for any raids besides "don't stand in bad stuff" - T9 for example is simply the boss having 5 different versions of "don't stand in bad stuff" which isn't very impressive at all). It might be impressive if you never played any other MMO before with those types of mechanics but it is a snoozefest otherwise (just a walking simulator with no RPG aspects at all + all the jobs are basically the same).

Nearly every single boss with mechanics is simply a "move in a certain way" or "don't stand in bad stuff" mechanic. You don't have to pay attention to the way you use your abilities (they are fairly simple), you don't have to pay attention to what other players are doing (besides "stand in Sacred Soil", there's really no other ability that you have to watch out for from other players unlike WoW or even FFXI where there are dozens). All the jobs play the same and basically have the exact same utility.

Even the world first guild leader of T5 and T9 says
"Endgame is still somewhat shallow" in 2.3. It's still exactly the same in 2.4 and it looks like it's going to be the same in Heavensward.

Here's Siegecrafter Blackfuse from WoW MoP for comparison. There are plenty of more bosses in WoW that are like that (except more creative and less copy and paste). The important thing to note that WoW does have a lot of "don't stand in bad stuff" and "move in a certain way" mechanics "but" there are also actual RPG mechanics and actual utiltiies and abilities and other stuff in the game. ARR lacks all of this so that is why I call ARR a walking simulator (there's not much else in that game besides moving in a certain way).

(Also again, ARR barely has a story if any too. It's a walking simulator at best with like 10 minutes of actual story in the game. The parts with story is simply "Primal is summoned - Bringer of the Light comes in and easily saves the day" - Rinse and repeat.)

I do greatly respect and appreciate Yoshida and I know he is playing it really safe and doing things in a timely and organized matter (trying to make SE the monies), so I don't mean to be negative to him or the ARR team. Despite that though, those are my thoughts on ARR (gameplay, story, RPG mechanics, etc). It's not bad if you want a game with social aspects but ignoring that and just focusing on the game itself, it's not something I'd recommend.

Also my best to worse list is also the same even if I were playing the game in ASCII art with no music (reading text only for story). That's why ARR is the at the bottom of the list. ARR has good graphics, nice sound, also instant chat but aside from those things, don't know why anyone would play it over WoW.

Spoiler: show

ARR can get better in the future but currently I'd say it is one of the worse FF games (not to be negative towards Yoshida though, I know he is playing it safe and he did well with rebuilding FFXIV from scratch with ARR but these are just my thoughts on ARR after playing all of 2.3 and a bit of 2.4).

[Ophannus]

The Rinoa=Ultemecia story is complete BS. They even called Tetsuya Nomura up like 4 years ago and laid it out for him and he basically laughed and said no way. I don't think he would be trying to cover anyone's ass for a game that came out more than 17 years ago. While it would have made a cool story, there are holes in it which people never address, like why is her hair, sccent, height, face different? She doesn't recognize Squall or Rinoa. The whole "Squall is dead" thing is stupid. He was hit with an Icicle? big deal. He gets hit with Ultimas and Megaflares too later in the game, he's a magically enhanced, guardian infused warrior. Who's to say Edea didn't want to interrogate SeeD to put a stop to their sedition so maybe as he fell, maybe she casted float on him to recover his body and curaga him so she could throw him in jail and interrogate them about their motives/where they came from. Sakaguchi said himself its not his style to have dark endings and since he wrote the plots for ff1-10, its unlikely the R=U or Squall is dead, theories to be true. People are just filling in plot holes with conjecture, and while I agree, it would have been cool if R=U, it's behind the scope pf what salaguchi was going for, which is the power/theme of love.

[Ophannus]

Maybe it was the Snes graphics but murdering innocents in ff4 and watching their sprites blink asay didnt hit me the same way as watching Proud Clod step on Heidegger, walking through blood smeared hallways, actually seeing Sephiroth slash black cloaked men, women, and children, knocking them into the Whirlwind Maze, everyone in Sector 7 getting crushed by the plate and hearing screams as Shinra listens to Opera. Ff4 and ff6 had less visual deaths but the way the deaths were implied, Baron soldiers run up to Mysidian Npc, Mysidian Npc gets knocked back 2 sauares and blinks away, is alot less heart wrenching than everyone on that Juno ship bleeding out, bodies laying on crates or bodies crumpled over stairway bannisters like used towels. Even the midgar zolom impaled on the tree was pretty macabre.

I will give the implied suicide to you, because that shit went over my head when i was younger but i'm so glad they put that in. I think what stymied he macabre aspects of ff4 though is when npcs die they just blink and vanish. If their sprites were dead looking, it would look less "meh". And the poisoned village thing was also pretty brutal i remember. Oh and ff7 had implied suicide too, Dyne took a plunge.

[Darkmagi]

I feel sorry for you if FFXIII is your favorite FF. Also seeker's of adoulin had horrible content progression, the entire expansion was very poorly planned out. Delve was fun until you capped on items and for the easy gil of carrying people on wins who sucked too much.(see: most people)

[Kanriel]

while compared to other rpgs ff13 is solid but compared to other previous FF titles it hits the bottom and is crap.

Sorry, I wholeheartedly disagree. I'm not sure I'd overall rank it the best, but I think it absolutely has the best battle system in the game. I think aside from a few fights you can purely spam attack and heal as necessary and win pretty much every FF fight ever. But you at least need to setup and switch paradigms to make that work in FFXIII, and in some cases you simply won't win if not for switching paradigms correctly at the right time (like turtles on pulse).

8 had a silly draw system, X had some of the most bland, generic and boring characters and dumb storyline (I'm going to do my pilgrimage...*learns pilgrimage is crap*...I am still going to do my pilgrimage...because...pilgrimage...). Auron was great, Kimahri had his moments, but Tidus/Yuna/Rikku/Wakka were all Hope-tier characters, and Lulu got with Wakka? You kidding me? I also don't think FFX was really any less linear than FFXIII.

As for me, I'm really incapable of choosing between IX, XII and XIII. I think IX has the best full package, but I love XII's story/character/party play (at the time I couldn't really handle Dragon age because their system paled in comparison) and love XIII's battle system and characters. VII used to be ranked right up there but I think that's faded simply in time. And IX might be the out and out top for me but I can't stand random encounters anymore so I think I unfairly hold that against it.

As for XI, it's been the FF I've spent the most of my life playing by far, but I'm not sure how much that can be attributed simply to it being an MMO and that being the nature of MMO's. I wonder if I'd still be playing XII if there was more to that story (it's near fatal flaw for me)...

[Celebrindor]

everyone in Sector 7 getting crushed by the plate and hearing screams as Shinra listens to Opera.

Totally forgot how twisted Shinra exec was. He was a calm-mannered badass, not like your usually maniacal enemy. And of course the fascination (at least mine) with Sephiroth was his gracefulness. I just am not a fan of the antihero, and I think Cloud was the turning point of the series and we started getting Cloud, Squall, Zidane, Vaan...that's why so many of us love our FF1-6. We want our Cecils, our FuSoYa, our Edgars and Sabins. Not the reluctant teenage hero.

[notorious bum]

FF7 was the most gritty and mature FF (I still haven't finished FF4, but the above post about the detail of horribleness covers that), there's not much that comes close, besides FFT, maybe. FF8-13 would be typical anime-level complexity and enjoyability, with FF9 being the most memorable, for me. I played FF8 twice, mainly because I beat it too fast the first time (I beat FFX and FF12 by "accident" too lol), but only the visuals and the music stuck with me. Oh, and Triple Triad is still one of the best RPG minigame concepts ever.

FFXI will always stay with me as the last of a dying breed of MMO, with the focus being on the journey, not the end-game penis competition (with unfair degrees of enjoyability, based on the job you chose. I chose taru BLM as my first choice, so my experience was of being loved by all JPN parties at NA release lol). The community was also more mature, overall, for a good portion of the game's lifespan, that makes it a very unique atmosphere of being able to share the story, quests, and growth with folks along the same wavelength.

[dasva]

I disagree with judging the type of game something was (ie was it mature gritty etc) by the graphics of the time....

[Spira]

The Rinoa=Ultemecia story is complete BS. They even called Tetsuya Nomura up like 4 years ago and laid it out for him and he basically laughed and said no way. I don't think he would be trying to cover anyone's ass for a game that came out more than 17 years ago. While it would have made a cool story, there are holes in it which people never address, like why is her hair, sccent, height, face different? She doesn't recognize Squall or Rinoa. The whole "Squall is dead" thing is stupid. He was hit with an Icicle? big deal. He gets hit with Ultimas and Megaflares too later in the game, he's a magically enhanced, guardian infused warrior. Who's to say Edea didn't want to interrogate SeeD to put a stop to their sedition so maybe as he fell, maybe she casted float on him to recover his body and curaga him so she could throw him in jail and interrogate them about their motives/where they came from. Sakaguchi said himself its not his style to have dark endings and since he wrote the plots for ff1-10, its unlikely the R=U or Squall is dead, theories to be true. People are just filling in plot holes with conjecture, and while I agree, it would have been cool if R=U, it's behind the scope pf what salaguchi was going for, which is the power/theme of love.

actually, i believe they asked sakaguchi, who obviously said no.. but he also didn't write the story. the R=U story actually fits perfectly for a number of reasons.. and i think its mainly because Rinoa was designed as a character to be the antithesis of Ultimecia. They were meant to have comparable traits.

in any case, i've said this elsewhere before but i'll say it again, R=U even if it were true, could never ever be officially verified. why? because its too radical (at least it was for its time) and it absolutely kills any sense of success in the game at all. So you saved the world? nope, you just perpetuated the cycle. Thats the same feeling we get cheated out of at the end of FFXIII-2.. and i can tell you it sucks. but at the very least XIII-2 was designed to continue into Lightning Returns. so the trilogy does end happy..and so did FFX/X2. VIII didn't have the luxury of that and didn't want to risk forever ending on a bad note..

so no one can ever prove the writers intention of whether R=U is correct. you can merely subscribe to the theory or not.. and understand the story from that point of view. and that's literature for you.

[Celebrindor]

Thats the same feeling we get cheated out of at the end of FFXIII-2.. and i can tell you it sucks. but at the very least XIII-2 was designed to continue into Lightning Returns. so the trilogy does end happy..and so did FFX/X2. VIII didn't have the luxury of that and didn't want to risk forever ending on a bad note..

I do have to say that I was really impressed the first time I played FFX that they dared end the game where the main char was just lost like that, no option around it, and in the end faced it. As I stated above, some of us just like our main heroes with a set, not some androgenous teenager who doesn't really want to do anything but pine over a love he can't have and try and wield a sword too big for him. The only redeeming quality of Tidus was that in the end he faced his fate for the greater good.

X-2, while gameplay was incredibly enjoyable (in particular the % completed tracker) felt like a way to placate those who were sad there wasn't a lovey-dovey ending to FFX.

[Byrthnoth]

Spoiler: show

God damn was I ever disappointed to get to Zanarkand and find that Yuna couldn't even die properly.