Happy 20th Anniversary, Final Fantasy!

[Hitoshura]

Quite frankly, I would have enjoyed Chrono Cross more if you didn't end up recruiting everyone in the world to your party.

Also, "DESTROY THE WORLD BECAUSE I WANT TO" just seems base and childish, like a Power Rangers villain or something.

They'd actually be the worst (in this context best) villains to encounter as a protagonist. It means they're beyond reason, and in the end its simply your life or theirs.

I personally enjoyed FF12 though, since the main "villains" weren't actually all that evil and actually quite justified in what they were trying to accomplish.

Yeah I rarely see anyone loving Chrono Cross, it's usually bashing because it was a failure of a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I really loved it for what it was. The ending was really fulfilling since you free Schala from whatever was left of Lavos.

[Murataki]

Yeah I rarely see anyone loving Chrono Cross, it's usually bashing because it was a failure of a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I really loved it for what it was. The ending was really fulfilling since you free Schala from whatever was left of Lavos.

Thing is...Chrono Cross never felt like much of a sequel. More than anything, it seemed to be a side-story designed to tie up loose ends from Trigger.

I did enjoy it though, especially since Lavos shows up again and he's one of my favorite antagonistic forces.

[Grey Jorildyn]

Final Fantasy VIII counted?

edit: FFVI > all

[Daimen-G]

Didn't really matter, since one set of combat rounds would end virtually any encounter if you junctioned it to STR.

By the time I got to Odin I had 255 STR already on 2/3 characters

[Hitoshura]

Yeah I rarely see anyone loving Chrono Cross, it's usually bashing because it was a failure of a sequel to Chrono Trigger. I really loved it for what it was. The ending was really fulfilling since you free Schala from whatever was left of Lavos.

Thing is...Chrono Cross never felt like much of a sequel. More than anything, it seemed to be a side-story designed to tie up loose ends from Trigger.

I did enjoy it though, especially since Lavos shows up again and he's one of my favorite antagonistic forces.

I enjoyed the whole corrupt Masumune thing, I loved that the ending to Chrono Trigger (the animated one) shows his Kingdom ablaze and the Masamune alone.. sort of insinuating how it went into the wrong hands.

I find it hilarious that someone that could defeat Lavos was overtaken by a bunch of rebels?

[Murataki]

I enjoyed the whole corrupt Masumune thing, I loved that the ending to Chrono Trigger (the animated one) shows his Kingdom ablaze and the Masamune alone.. sort of insinuating how it went into the wrong hands.

I find it hilarious that someone that could defeat Lavos was overtaken by a bunch of rebels?

Standard RPG fare. You can throw down with God himself, but a couple of random gate guards will prove insurmountable without an event to save the day.

[bungiefan]

Final Fantasy Adventure was Seiken Densetsu 1

Just because it was named Final Fantasy Adventure here doesnt put it in the FF franchise.

It is Seiken Densetsu... Secret of Mana 0.. hence part of the "Mana" franchise.

What IS missing are the Final Fantasy Legend titles for Game Boy.

They slapped the FF title on just about everything back then. However, the Japanese title was Final Fantasy Gaiden: Seiken Densetsu, indicating that it was a spinoff, which became its own series with the second game.

All the FF Legend Games were called SaGa in Japan, with no FF label, unlike the first SD, and the SaGa series continued with Romancing SaGa 1-3 on Super Famicom, then SaGa Frontier 1-2, Unlimited SaGa, and a remake of Romancing Saga on PS2. SaGa 1 was remade for WonderSwan Color, 2-3 presumably would have had the console not died, since they were remaking so many older RPGs for it such as Front Mission, Final Fantasy I-IV (though III wasn't completed before the platform died and they lost the original source code), and I think Hanjuku Hero was also remade.

[Not Kuno]

I don't like the spoilers and why is this in FFXI advanced? Moving to RPG forum.

[Exoduso]

FF9 <3

[Charismatic]

I don't like the spoilers and why is this in FFXI advanced? Moving to RPG forum.

As old as most of these games are... can things really still be considered spoilers? If you haven't played em by now, chances are you didn't care all that much in the first place, right?

[Not Kuno]

I don't like the spoilers and why is this in FFXI advanced? Moving to RPG forum.

As old as most of these games are... can things really still be considered spoilers? If you haven't played em by now, chances are you didn't care all that much in the first place, right?

Actually I never played any of the FFs and I'm going through them one at a time right now.

[Exoduso]

Kind of your fault isn't it?

[Imitarate]

Just sticking with those discussed...

FF6: I believe the reason this is so popular is because they explore the characters so thoroughly (see Chrono Cross below), without wasting too much time -- a lot of it occurs in the main course of the game, and thus delving deeper is optional in that you don't HAVE to do it, and that the characters are (sans Shadow) fleshed out without them. Kefka is one of my favorite villains ever BECAUSE he's a crazy guy who tries to destroy the world. He's not an elemental force of destruction, or a dark god of chaos, or a demon from beyond the universal 5th parallel. He's a psychopath, a twisted man, who gradually throughout the game gains more and more power. As the player, you experience his growth from the toadying assistant to the nigh-deific force, but everything he does is fueled by his own strength of will as affected by his deteriorating mental state.

I think what FFVI has is consistancy, and hence immersion. Everything is a part of the world. Unlike FF8's GFs (hay guyz thars sum GF lets throw pokeballs), the espers are an integral, important part of the game's setting.

Of course, the outdated engine can drive people away. The ATB system has not aged well in my opinion, and random encounter rates in those days were frankly preposterous. Final Fantasy has always had an absurd random encounter rate, but they never seemed as bad as in the SNES era (which seemed true of a lot of SNES rpgs).

FF7: FF7 has an actually good story. What we really need to revitalize it is twofold: as stated before, a graphical update, because the graphics did not age well -- they were done too quicky on the edge of the 3D polygon era, and as wonderful as it felt then, it doesn't age as well as a sprite based game simply because sprites make up for the lack of detail in expression, conversation, coloring -- FF7 depends much more on physical actions and expressions. Secondly, we need a new, properly done localization of the script. Even the first time, I remember being turned off by how poor the script localization was. They redid the scripts for 1-6 (all of which needed it), and they need to do it for 7 -- I think 8 was the first game where they really realized they needed to get a good, thorough localization. I won't comment on the fanboys, though I agree with the comment about Xkefkax etc.

FF8: Great story, HORRIBLE characters. The mechanics were decent, not great but decent. Drawing was either so obtuse it was useless or so twinkable it was broken, depending on how much effort you put into it. The GFs needed a LITTLE more effort put into their existance in the setting (why the hell was Cerberus rampaging around in Galbadia Garden?). And they needed to bring Squall to visit the Wonderful Wizard of Oz for a heart (along with a brain for Cloud and a spine for Tidus). And Rinoa was a dumb tart for falling for him. At least they mostly redeemed Squall, but after 3 disks of "....(what, me worry?)" the sudden drive to save the world because he got laid in outerspace just didn't quite go over. The overarcing story was excellent, though, and the best characters were the side ones -- the Disciplinary Committee, and Laguna's people (including ******'s mom). It's also the first one that really hit the nail on the head with the graphics; there's a little dating in the overworld, but the style feels smooth and the FMVs still look great. Also, Angela Aki did a MUCH better version of Eyes on Me at the Voices concert.

FFXII: If Ashe had been the main character, this would have replaced 4 as my favorite Final Fantasy. As it is, great system (which suffered a little from autoplay issues once you learned the Gambit system well), exceptional story, great immersion, all told through a character who barely participated in much of any of it. It was Ashe's story told through Vaan's perspective, and it needed to be through hers. Revenant Wing explores Vaan's character much better through the little cutscenes and battles simply because it's ABOUT Vaan.


Chrono Cross: The polar opposite of FF6 in character development; 44 characters is too damned many, especially when a great many of them are completely redundant and have almost no backstory. The main story focuses almost entirely on Surge, Kidd, and Lynx (and, to a slightly lesser degree, the Four Dudes and assorted associates, I don't remember the name). There are five tiers of character development: Main, Secondary, Some Quests, Almost Nothing, and Who Is This Person. Unfortunately, the scale is weighted far too much towards the latter part of that scale. They could cut the characters to 20 or so and have just as much diversity, and more time and space to spend on the ones they kept (as long as they keep onion boy and vine girl, Tossed Salad is the best Dual Move name ever).

The other issue with CC is that, though it's quite a good story, insofar as (to me) even the Deus Ex Machina didn't feel out of place, there are some plot holes you can drive a truck through, especially when you start dealing with associations between Chrono Trigger and the two realities of Cross. Often, the two-versions-of-one-character thing was perplexing and confusing, though it DID lead to Glenn with the double holy swords, which was pretty neat from a fanboy perspective. The system was so-so. Had some issues, but had some innovations too -- I liked field effects, and the role they played in battle strategy.

That's all I've got.