FFX was a great game. The story was good and I really liked the battle system. IX was pretty good too, but I put X above it.
Oh I totally agree since Famitsu gave Haze such high scores but the list is what readers voted for. My FF list would be 1)FF2(4 in JP) 2)FF3 (6 in JP) 3)FF XI 4)FF 8 and so on,
I spent most of my college days playing it since I had little else to do. Be prepared to spend A LOT of time on it. I've never played WoW, but apparently FFXI is more time-consuming than WoW. You'll also interact with Japanese players, and it really depends on your preference if you like that part of the game or not. I recommend it since I had lots of fun, but I'm just warning ya to be prepared.
Everyone has a different taste when it comes to FF games so I don't know if it's right for you. As for me it was worth it. I played it with a couple of irl friends and had a blast for 2 years. Lead the best guild on the server and took out pretty much everything in the game. So basically, I was like the Tinman of Clutchfans, beloved by most, hated by my enemies, but respected by all muhuhuh. Pros- Fun battle system Armor/weapons change visually when you equip different ones. Graphics are amazing. Music is great. Online play, unique experience every time you log on. A lot of french and Japanese players. Cons Grinding at times can be tedious Can't get much done without others help. Time consuming and addicting. A lot of french and Japanese players. Monthly fees Not newbie/casual friendly.
The story had a pretty nice set up throughout 2/3rds of it. Ignoring the cheesiest bits, the characters, setting, and plot were spot on. Then it all came crashing down. Every Final Fantasy from IV to present follows the same formula -- linear game until a point where the plot stops. Everything opens up. In IV, it worked because it was their first time. V was a grindfest while you mastered jobs and padded levels. BAD. VI was the entire second half of the game; you felt you always had a purpose to explore the world. Very, very good. VII was the world after assaulting Midgar. Rewarding -- the spoils were great, and you got some major plot information and characterization from the quests. Best of all, they were somewhat varied, so almost none of the quests required any major grinding. VIII's open world point was spread out. Once you got Ragnarok, you could do pretty much anything until you went into space. And once you returned from space, you could do pretty much anything until time compressed. And once time compressed, you really didn't do much of anything. It wasn't great, but I don't think it hurt the game either. IX gave you like 40 different airships. Each one allowed you to do all sorts of open world stuff. Its plot was pretty much linear, so all side questing was optional. But X... X's side quests were awful. They either took away from the plot (Yojimbo), required ridiculous amounts of repetitive tasks (i.e. GRINDING every ultimate weapon quest), or were unplayable due to random chance (blitzball). Grinding is absolutely inexcusable in any single player game. And after getting sick of it, I beat the game without a single "ultimate" weapon. I had no issues, and the final form of the final boss did not even hit me. And notice I went through all of this without even mentioning the terrible voice acting, the absurd ending, the hackneyed plot, or the existence of X-2. Japanese games as a whole have fallen off. One of Square's execs wondered whether or not Japanese developers have fallen out of touch with game buyers. The best games are all Western -- studios like Ubisoft, EA, Bethesda, Bioware, and Valve are releasing the most ambitious and best games out there. Europe is the #1 market for games, then America, leaving Japan a distant 3rd. And the only Japanese company still in the industry (Nintendo is in the industry in the same way PopCap is) to even attempt to address this is Capcom. Gaming has grown up, and JRPGs haven't. 私わ日本語お調査しました。Typing in Hiragana isn't easy, but you get the idea. I studied the language. I grew up to fascinated with Japan through video games, and it's really disappointing to me how far those games have fallen.
What you call grinding, I call having a degree of difficulty/challenge. Much as everyone seems to agree that FF7 was a great game, the one criticism I hear is that it was too easy, which I understand. You say FF5 was a grindfest, but 5 wasn't nearly as hard as the first one on NES. I enjoyed the job system greatly... kinda pre-FFT... and I enjoyed the game overall. At some point a number of years ago I tried to get through FF6, but just kinda lost interest in it. Lost interest in FF8 more than halfway through. Lost interest in FF9 about 15 hours in. And FFX? Best FF since 7. I loved almost everything about it. I thought the Yojimbo thing was hilarious/great, as were the ultimate weapon quests (except, perhaps, for the lightning-dodging... that was dumb). Sounds like we'll just have to agree to disagree. You seem to praise every game I dislike, and vice versa. The only common ground is FF7, as always...
Generally speaking, I don't think any of the FF were particularly tough (except maybe the very early ones). Of course, I like leveling up on my own, so even if grinding isn't required, I might be doing it anyway, making the game easier than intended. That, and I came off a stretch of playing a lot of SMT games, which are considerably more challenging that most JRPGs (strategy is more important that what level you're at). I actually would prefer more challenging JRPGs along those lines, putting a bit less emphasis on levels (or whatever) and more on strategy. As long as they're not "cheap" anyway... edit: Of course, I'm talking about the battles that take place through the main storyline. Optional bosses can be pretty challenging and require quite a bit of grinding.
Yeah those games can be tough if you do the side stuff. The weapons in VII were almost impossible for me, not counting the one you have to face though. Ozma in IX is pretty tough as well. Lastly, if any of yous guys have played the Euro version of X, there are dark aeons that are really difficult.
Oh, I think most of 'em were pretty mediocre, but you're right -- we're gonna have to agree to disagree. It's kind of like when I say Florida is the SEC team I hate the least. I never said I liked Florida, I just hate them slightly less than all the others. I liked 6 and 7. 8 was decent. I like 9's difficulty. For the record, my 10 favorite JRPGs (in no specific order) are FF Tactics, FF6, FF7, Earthbound, Mother 3, Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, and Pokemon Red/Blue. My 10 favorite games are (in no specific order) are Half-Life 2, Portal, Mario 3, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Ocarina, Majora's Mask, Okami, Metal Gear Solid, MGS3, and Civilization 2/4 (can't decide). That should give you some insight to what I look for in a game. And when I say grinding, I don't mean having to level in order to defeat enemies. That's okay because it's totally optional -- there are many ways to beat enemies, and grinding out levels is only one of them. I'm talking about quests where you must do the same thing over and over or complete a massive amount of mundane tasks. Like capturing every monster in the game. Or dodging lightning 200 times consecutively. Or killing hundreds of enemies in order to obtain 20 of an item that has a 3% drop rate. Having something drop as a random grand prize after hours of a ridiculous mini game. There's a major difference between working in order to combat difficulty and repeating the same easy, mundane tasks over and over again for long periods of time. I have the same problem with FFX through XII as I do with World of Warcraft. When WoW was released, there was a massive chunk where you had no quests, and the only efficient ways to level up were to either do unpopular instances or grind black dragon whelps. And when you finally DID get to the endgame raids, you had to be at EVERY one to have a CHANCE to get an equipment that MIGHT drop. If you used DKP, the people that had absolutely no life would always be ahead of you, leading to you being in a situation where you had to repeat the same raid over and over and never receive a reward for it. Losing over and over is fine, but to receive no reward once you win is ridiculous. I hate grinding. I hate it in any form in any game. There is absolutely no excuse for it. It's poor, lazy game design.
Sorry, I kind of misread your earlier post. I think I see your point, although I don't mind that kind of stuff too much if it is just for side quests. If I don't feel like doing them, then I don't (e.g., I liked Blitzball, but no way was I going to dodge 200 lightning bolts). Don't know if I'd call it lazy game-design though. Just some nice side-quests to satisfy the perfectionists. Ideally though, there would be other quests that wouldn't require so much grinding (e.g., searching for party members in FF6 I guess). Now that I think about it, we probably could use a little more of that in some games.
I find it hard to argue with a lot of your picks. I'd say that Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy 7 are the cream of the crop, and you list all of those in your top 10. FFT was definitely great as well. So we're on the same page in that respect. I guess ideally there shouldn't be a TON of what you call grinding, but I don't mind it being there when it's part of optional quests. You reference stuff like capturing every monster in the game... I doubt many people bothered doing that. It's not remotely necessary to enjoy the game as a whole. Plus, shallow as it may be, games like Diablo were designed more-or-less around the premise of "this game is a constant hunt for better items/armor/weapons/whatever." And for whatever reason, that works pretty well in some games. One game where that works really well is the King's Field series. There are more magic weapons, armor, and secret rooms in those games than you can shake a stick at. A lot of it most people will get, and they will still enjoy the game. But if you want to do/get EVERYTHING, they have an instance in every game where a seemingly random enemy (not a boss or anything) has like a 2% chance of dropping some awesome weapon. So if you want it, you pretty much have to kill that one enemy hundreds of times. Is that annoying? I guess, but it's completely optional. They just added it in there for the certifiably insane, OCD-completionists like me. So when I do finally get that weapon, I can wander around and go "hah! I bet only 10% of people who played this game ever got this weapon!" And that's kinda cool in its own way. Grinding is acceptable to me as long as the reward is worthwhile. And hey, I'm not nearly as crazy about that stuff as some other people I know. There are people that complain about how characters in FFX don't have enough personality in battle because they've completed the ENTIRE sphere grid for every character. I mean, really... I like the game and all, but how much time do you have to spend to do that? But for some people, that's just their schtick. Different strokes for different folks is all I can say.
I'm amazed that more of you aren't as pissed about FF VIII as I was. I mean, you have to formulate a sword that requires you to have a specific card, and specific items that you have to beat specific monsters multiple times for. And there is no way in hell you would figure this out without finding info. on the internet. And without this sword, defeating the final boss is impossible. And when you google how to beat her and find all of the stuff you need, the game has locked up all of the towns for no reason whatsoever. It's like the game designers wanted to piss you off.
I don't understand why people are complaining about sidequest stuff. It's not necessary. It should only be really aggravating for obsessive compulsives. I personally rarely do sidequests. If I do, it's because they are fun and intuitive. If I have to look at a guide to do something, I probably wont do it. Not true. I never needed to upgrade my weapon. In fact, I ended up stumbling into the last boss w/o unlocking all the menu commands and still beat her. I'm not even sure if I had the fight command or not to be honest. I just remember spamming a **** load of magic and barely beating the boss because it kept "blowing" away my magic.
I might be more pissed off about it if I hadn't simply lost interest before I even got to the final boss...
I think I've been there before. Except I didn't bother looking up what to do and just stopped playing. It wasn't hard to part with for some reason.
One thing to note is that Japanese gamers apparently love this type of grinding. If you thought FFX had some messed up tedious work, it doesn't even begin to compare to FFXII. And I think in the early FF games, this sort of grinding is kind of necessary. I mean, those cartridges don't exactly hold much data. So it's basically an artificial method of extending a game. Personally I loved FFX, mainly for the story and fairly nice "level up" system. But I also found it annoying that every single sidequest opened up at the end, and involves so much busywork. But it wasn't enough for me to dislike it thoroughly. I guess it just depends on what one feels is most important.
It seems you have not figure out the key to FF8 yet... JUNCTIONS. Junctions rule everything. With proper junctions, you don't need to cast magic(except maybe the occasional healing spells. Aura grant you limit break every turn. High junctions to vitality and spirit means bosses(yes, even the final boss) do little damage to you. Unfortunately, I haven't played the game for so long I can't remember where you should find the best spells and how to junction them. But if you have 300+ of some of the top ones like ultima, holy, meteor, triple, etc. You can literally steamroll everything.
