what is your favorite Final Fantasy game and why ?

[Rackhir]

VII was my first and still by far the favorite. So I subscribe to the "imprinting" theory.

I loved the mechanics and especially the Limit Breaks. It was such an elegant mechanic and finally gave a good in game reason why the characters in anime and sentai shows never just haul off and use the "mega attack that always beats the bad guy" at the begining. It was because they had to charge up their limit break meter first.

I liked the customizability, flexibility and combinations that the materia system had. It didn't bother me that it meant every character could do the same things, because that's what the limit breaks were for.

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

Ah, your story so different from mine
Loved blitzball, did every optional quest and found every weapon and its activation including winning 100 blitzball games in a row for wakka's super ball.

Amen to that. Blitzball was pretty easy once you got the hang of it (hint to others: Manual control of the ball-holder, and Tidus' Jecht Shot, are the keys to victory ), though I didn't have to win quite as many games to earn Wakka's ultimate weapon.

One of the things that always irked me about "limit breaks" in 7 and 9 was that you had to use them as soon as you acheived them, which could make stocking up for a boss battle tricky. 8's take on LBs really stunk, in that unless you had a specific spell (1st aquired towards the end of disc 2 if I recal right), you're character had to near-death, and even then it wasn't a guarentee you'd get the Limit Break option. 10 was nice in that you had options that played to the character's strengths based on how you set them up, and that you could keep the LBs in reserve for boss fights (which helped quite a bit on some of the later battles, especially Yuna's Ultimate Summons).

Vigilance,
I just couldn't get past the silliness-factor of the first couple hours, much less the whole "cos-play" method of Jobs; I didn't mind it for FFV, but the execution of FFX-2 just didn't sit well. Guess I agree with DonTadow on this one, but I'm glad somebody out there liked it, and if nothing else, it's getting another kid to play RPGs instead of FPSs.

 

[John Crichton]

You can count me in on the Blitzball lovers circle. Played it for hours and had lots of fun with it. And yep, Tidus + Jecht Shot was key but by that point I had other scorers and didn't always need Tidus to make goals. I even liked the "coaches only" version in X-2.

I haven't actually finished X-2 but I will over the Christmas break for sure.

As for the "imprinting" theory - it may be true in my case. My first FF experience was with II (Japan IV) and I really enjoyed it. More than III (Japan VI). VII was such a different experience that it's hard to lump it in with the 16-bit games. I've played V but I didn't play it long enough to get a solid feel. One of these days I'll try it again

I got to Disc 3 on VIII and gave up because I wasn't having fun. Game was plodding along, the combat system was bleh and I really disliked not being able to feel powerful by leveling up for a few hours like in just about every other RPG. That's fun sometimes and the scaling battles of VIII were just annoying at the time. The most fun I had was actually with the card mini-game.

Never played IX.

I had pretty much given up on the series after VIII annoyed me so much. I didn't pay attention to all the hype surrounding X. I figured it would be too much like VIII. For some reason, probably because I needed something to play on my PS2 I picked it up. It quickly drew me in and I ended up really liking it. I took a break for over 10 months on the road to beating it but that was okay. I just read a walkthrough up to the point were I was at to get the story back and I was all set.

I liked it so much that I got all the weapons and did almost all the side quests (gave up on the monster one because I wanted to see the ending). When they announced FF-X2 I was on board from the start. I had no problem with the focus on girl-power and the cheeze factor. C'mon - everything is better with cheeze, right?

FF-X2: I did miss the sphere-grid system from X but I ended up not minding and eventually warming up to the Dress Sphere system. The story took a little while to get pumping but I was so pleased to get a real sequel to a FF game that I really didn't care. I've missed some items along the way and botched some of the chapters but I'll probably end up playing it again as it was pretty much designed for multiple play-throughs.

The end of combat banter of FFX/X-2 was great. The fighting (especially in X-2) was smooth and fast which was really what kept me playing initially. I can't stand games anymore where the combat takes forever.

So the short of it is that I'm back on the FF wagon. I enjoyed FF XI for what it was. Played it free for a few months then gave it up - got a free HD out of it. All good.

I'm looking forward to the re-releases of IV & VI on the GBA to play the old games again. I still have them for the SNES but that would mean hooking up *another* game system to my already cluttered media center. I imagine they would hold up well...

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Old school: Final Fantasy. No numbers. The original, baby. The first game I owned for the NES. I bought it before I got the NES for Christmas, I was so hyped by the game concept. And it's still my favorite out of them all.

Oh, yeah.

No other game has ever had me scared of random encounters. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT EVILMAN JUST CAST NUKE!?!? I DON"T EVEN HAVE NUKE YET!?!?"

Dang, that was fun.

FFT was pretty good, too, but I never finished it.

Brad

 

[DonTadow]

Oh, yeah.

No other game has ever had me scared of random encounters. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT EVILMAN JUST CAST NUKE!?!? I DON"T EVEN HAVE NUKE YET!?!?"

Dang, that was fun.

FFT was pretty good, too, but I never finished it.

Brad

wow, Final Fantasy I does get overlooked a lot (even by me). I had played Ultima before that, but nothing captured the feeling of when I picked up that controller at the NES Gaming tournament (the one where they had the qualifiers for that world competition that ended in "the Wizard movie). I was playing random games and there were few people playing this Final Fantasy thing. So I started playing it and was hooked. Here I was, starting off the adventure and right away Im fighting this evil guy Garland with my band of warriors. I played it over and over again and the thing kept resetting but I didn't care, I was having a blast. I talked my mom into paying 75 bucks for the game and was hooked. I spent hours on that th

It was much harder to talk her into buying me Final Fantasy 2 (IV), because I took the first copy to school to "trade" with a guy for madden before I had even beat FF2. The guy ended up duping me, breaking in my locker and stealing both games. My parents were furious, but somehow I got another copy. Ironically, the guy ended up being my best friend for the next 7 years... of course at the end of that 7 years he stole my girlfriend, knocked her up and married her... man I should have seen that one coming. I'm still more p'd off that he stole my Final Fantasy game.