Favourite FF game in the series?

[auxili160]

Vincent is fantastic in FF7, but, like Sephiroth, his character was manhandled in future ff7 series releases (DoC especially, AC not so much, etc) as a means of amplifying what some fans really liked about them.
He definitely still looks cool, and he's great in ff7. I should have clarified.

And yeah, I forgot the story elements of Tidus. I said I played ffx 6 years ago, gimme a break.

About Rufus in AC, you can't help but like a guy in a wheelchair (even if temporarily). haha

And thanks for correcting me about Cait Sith. I still think it would've been better for Cait Sith to, as a character, actually be the cat. However, it's obvious that having him be controlled by Reeve was better for the story.
Maybe they could've made cait sith a character of his own, but controlled sometimes by Reeve. It'd be funny to hear him argue with himself (Reeve), but I don't blame Squeenix for not doing such a silly thing.
 I just feel like Cait Sith's goofiness is artificial since we know that Reeve is just faking it. (I could be wrong on the details, since it's been a while since I've played ff7, but I'm pretty sure this is how things went).

[obesebear]

From the way I understand it Cait Sith is a robot with artificial intelligence.  So it can act and move and speak on its own but if Reeve needs to take control of him he can.

[auxili160]

See, I'm certain that they didn't say that cait was an AI cat. They just said he's controlled by Reeve and that's it. We're left to believe that the cat is just a puppet for reeve.
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Cait_Sith_%28Final_Fantasy_VII%29

"ait Sith is a player character in Final Fantasy VII. He is a cat riding a giant stuffed toy Moogle, working as a fortune-teller in the Gold Saucer. He is really a puppet controlled from far away by Reeve, Shin-Ra's head of Urban Development. Even though Reeve works with the evil Shin-Ra, he develops a keen interest in saving the planet. He is useful to the party, as he knows all about the Shin-Ra's plans. Despite his playful and care free personna in the form of Cait Sith, Reeve is actually a sombre and serious man, though he does harbor a good heart with a natural worry for others."

[obesebear]

But when you play Dirge of Cerberus you see both Reeve and Cait Sith talking together and interacting.  Unless Reeve uses some kind of telepathy or telekinesis to control him, Cait Sith can clearly operate on his own.

[Tsetra]

The problem is that the spin-offs changed a lot of the canon. Indeed I think the original intent was that Cait Sith was remote controlled. As this was, to my knowledge, never explicitly stated I guess they figured they could make that whatever they wanted when it came time to make Dirge of Cerberus.

[auxili160]

Yeah, that must be the case, and I'm very glad they went that route. In FFVII, all cait sith was was a puppet, but it was never really explained. Cait Sith (the cat) was clearly a real living creature, or at least a realistic animatronic. But they just ended it leaving us to think Reeve was controlling Cait as a lifeless puppet, which sucked for Cait Sith as a character.

[Kuja]

IX easily, for multiple reasons:

Revived the old school style
Return of the four member party
best music hands down
plethora of interesting characters (ok, not quina)
Two white mages(because more heal=more fun)
Main villain found redemption in the end (I think this is the only game in the series where the main villain reforms before he dies)
hardest optional boss

Close 2nd would be VII and VI, followed by X and XII. After FFX-2, FFVIII is THE worst FF to ever be called FF.

[auxili160]

I've heard mixed opinions about VIII.

At least the battle and boss music are awesome (imo the best in the series). Haven't played past the 1 hour point, though. And that was a couple of years ago.

[DarthMarasmus]

 

That's right, I'm breaking out the old school...

My favorite is FF6.  I liked the development of Locke and company, the story was frakking awesome, and pairing the Genji Glove with the Offering on Sabin was just freaking sick!  8 attacks that dealt 9999 was well worth the effort of getting all that stuff.  Sadly, I didn't get a chance to finish it (I was playing it on an emulator when my old computer had a stroke).

[auxili160]

FF6 was alright, but I felt it was kinda dry in terms of the story.
It's not the game's fault, it's just stories back then in videogames were a lot flatter than they are today (or at least in the next generation - psx/n64). Also, I felt it hard to become immersed in the two-dimensional world. Walking around on the grids and being attacked by flashing enemies (their attacking animation) wasn't very captivating.
The music was pretty bleh too.

A very good game, but doesn't hold up, imo, to current ff standards (or at least the psx days of ff ). A lot of people like it likely due to them playing it before the psx came out, and I understand that.


Also, Terra was 100x more annoying than Aeris. Heck, a lot of ffvi is similar to ffvii. Aeris is basically Terra with a makeover, Edgar is a rebel leader like Barrett, the Imperials are like the Shinra, espers are like ancients/cetra, Magitek Knights are exactly like SOLDIERs (and to a lesser extent, there's a ninja in both games, Celes is similar to Tifa, Vincent is vengeful like Cyan, and Cid is similar to Setzer (Setzer's specials are also like Cait's limits)).

Kefka is even very similar to Sephiroth in that his character was a test subject for Mako... I mean, Esper magic.
Cid in ffvi is like Hojo in fvii, just MUCH less crazy.
Locke has the whole love dilemma between Celes and Terra, just like Cloud has with Tifa and Aeris.
Mog, while at first glance similar to Cait Sith, is actually very similar to RedXIII/Nanaki.


Now that I think of it, FF7's story went a lot deeper. It gets more involved with Shinra, while the Imperials in ffvi were largely unscathed because mostly everything is about Kefka (rightfully so, although General Leo played a part).
I could be wrong as FFVI's story is kind of hazy to me, and I haven't beaten the last boss yet (tends to happen when playing oldschool rpgs as you're pretty much done once you reach the final boss).

FFVI played a lot more in the present in regards to character stories. The characters weren't very 'deep' per say, but they were all acting in the moment which made them cool. In FFVII, however, every character has past dilemmas that are causing them to join Cloud in his quest. Shinra also had more of a personality while the Imperials felt more like infantry with an evil leader. I liked the whole magitek army thing, but the industrial tone of everything in ff6 kinda caused the story to lose it's lustre. Espers may be similar to mako energy, but Magitek feels more like coal while materia in ff7 feels like something supernatural.

I also thought the whole esper things was a certain amount of lame. What is that, a society of 20 or so creatures? It was cool that they played a role similar to that in ff8 - a role that is way larger than the role they played in ff7 (I still don't get this, lol) - but the whole esper dimension thing didn't flow with me.


FF6's magic system was neat, though. Kind of like a simplified junction system (that doesn't cause you to be overpowered like in ff8, lol). FF7's materia system allows everyone to be a master of all trades, largely due to enemy skill materia and the crazy things you could due thanks to support materia like 4xcut, w-summon, mime, counter, and so forth. Materia feels very empowering, and is clearly unbalanced (why equip LIFE materia that kills your str when you can simply use enemy skill materia and use angel whisper? Why use cure3 when you can use white wind?).
FF7's difficulty is obviously easy, so I guess there's no point in rambling about it in an already long post. lol

[DarthMarasmus]

Nah, isn't that the purpose of forums, to ramble on incessantly about things?

I don't think I disagree with you on any point (except I really didn't find Terra annoying, only Gau), mostly because I never thought about any of those things you said.  Now that I look at it, there is a lot of similarity between the characters in the 2 games. 

[auxili160]

Gau was kinda goofy.

Yeah, ff6 and ff7 are very similar. Of the two, I find ff7 has both a better atmosphere, a stronger theme (the relationships between sephiroth-cloud-hojo-jenova made for a better story than "Kefka is a mad man! See? Abusing Esper magic IS bad!") and more vibrant characters.

[auxili160]

Cait Sith after date scene "My real body's at Shinra. I'm controllin' this toy cat from here"

[SephirothClone]

FF7, FFT, FF9 and FFX were my favorites.

[guitar_dudester91]

I would have to say FFVII. I didn't care for the Junction system in FF8, but thats just me. I really thought the materia system was cool, and that if you leveled all the way up, you would have mastered it and such. The junction system also missed the summons, only leaving the character with 1 summon that they could turn into. But the storyline is very good in my opinion ( in both, FF8 definetely), just the gameplay that did it for me.

[auxili160]

The materia system was way too overpowered. They should have made some limitations, like certain characters can only equip certain amounts of, say, magic materia, while others can only equip, say, one command materia.

Another limitation they could've done instead is make materia have more effects. These effects could limit other types (or specific) materia that you can equip, and so forth.

At the end of the game, however, it is really cool being able to be a powerhouse that attacks 4 times, covers every enemy attack, counter attacks each time, and does 9999 damage every strike. Other FF games don't get anywhere close to this amount of action.

[freezingicekirby]

Other FF games don't get anywhere close to this amount of action.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing though? 

Personally, I always found it silly to be allowed to make your character go up to that much strength... where is the fun in it?  Although, it would be humorous to have a FFX party, where Tidus does 3420 dmg, Aaron does 4093 dmg, and Yuna waltz up to the enemy, taps the enemy with her staff like she always does, and do 14302 (that is, with the dmg limit removed, which is possible but I was never able to do  )

 

[auxili160]

Well it's not like FFVII is the only FF game out there. When it comes to strategy, FFXI blows everything out of the water. FFVII is a great action-oriented FF game. It doesn't have red mages with buffs and so forth, and there isn't much strategy, but nobody said FFVII has it ALL. And, you know what? FFVII SHOULD be action packed. It's the most cinematic of the games thanks to the elevation of our perception of the series thanks to Advent Children and so forth. Playing FFVII slow-paced like, say, FFV, would feel awkward. Why isn't Cloud attacking the enemy with his sword four times per turn? Why isn't Cid on a rampage? Why isn't Tifa kung-fu-ing everyone's arse?
Cast big guard and have a blast. That's what FFVII is about. Use White Wind when necessary.

[gjoerulv]

Well it's not like FFVII is the only FF game out there. When it comes to strategy, FFXI blows everything out of the water. FFVII is a great action-oriented FF game. It doesn't have red mages with buffs and so forth, and there isn't much strategy, but nobody said FFVII has it ALL. And, you know what? FFVII SHOULD be action packed. It's the most cinematic of the games thanks to the elevation of our perception of the series thanks to Advent Children and so forth. Playing FFVII slow-paced like, say, FFV, would feel awkward. Why isn't Cloud attacking the enemy with his sword four times per turn? Why isn't Cid on a rampage? Why isn't Tifa kung-fu-ing everyone's arse?
Cast big guard and have a blast. That's what FFVII is about. Use White Wind when necessary.

All FF have their strengths and weaknesses. You can't say, objectively, that FF6> is weaker 'cause of the technical stuff they pretty much were limited to at that time. We all know that any given kid playing 3d games wouldn't be impressed by a 2d game, regardless of how good the game actually is.

When it comes to FF7, imo the only thing canon is the original game. I haven't played crisis or dirge, but I've seen enough to know that they're pretty much just fan service. Well crisis core looks kinda good, but dirge and AC (especially AC) is pure fan service. Most of the characters had screen time for that very reason. The film is good for it's action and it's presentation, but beyond that I weren't impressed much.

[auxili160]

Well yeah, I never meant to say ff6 was bad cause it was 2d, I meant it just feel aged to me, which affects how much I enjoy it in the present day.

[guitar_dudester91]

I dont know..... The materia system sure beats the dress system......... And you did have stats improve or decrease depending on which materia you put on, as in your hp/mp would go up, or your magic/attack percentages would go up or down. The weapon and armour slots sometimes had specific abilties, and of course there were rings and ribbons and such. I'm not too sure I've played a better FF game.

[*:.Griever.:*]

FFX, the Sphere Grid (without taking advantage of it)...
= Magic

[auxili160]

I dunno guitar dudester, materia is way too abusable to be a good system. Sure, equipping Ultima reduces your base HP by 10%, but Hp+ materia increases your base HP by 50%, so who cares?

[guitar_dudester91]

Ya I see where that could be an issue. You can become super powerful, but thats not all bad, since it can be a little annoying when you have to take forever in the crater of northern cave just to get to sephy, and there are tons of random battles. I do have to say that I like the sphere grid, but the materia system is a lot of fun to.

[FM696]

FF7 - greatest game ever.