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What Final Fantasy opinion are you defending like this?

2y 6mon ago by lemmy.world/u/helloharu in finalfantasy

Any FF that uses real-time combat is not a real FF game. The series died with X.

Are those two separate, unrelated statements? XII and XIII both had turn based combat.

Yknow what, I can get behind this. Only FF I've played through since X was XIV.

FF7 is laughably overrated.

The best Final Fantasy game is the one Final Fantasy game I played as a kid.

Not for me, I was already on my 5th FF game and well into my 20's when 9 came out and that one is by far my favorite.

It matured the 3Dish visual style to a point it's still perfectly playable today (while 7 just looks awful and klunky now) and I enjoyed the gameplay and story above all others.

Every time I try to play 8, I abandon it after a few hours. The story and characters just don't do it for me at all. And not that they just don't do it for me, most of them annoyed the shit out of me. Only game worse in that regard is X.

It's literally my least favorite of the mainline games that I've played.

This is just true

FF7 is immensely overrated.

Final Fantasy 8 is clearly the best.

The junctioning system is super fun!

It is totally not impossible to find General Caroway under that arch to continue the dialogue to progress the game. I definitely wasn't stuck that way for years!

I don't know if 8 is the best. It is really good, but I think 9 and 12 are up there too.

12 is pretty good for reals, but fight me!

I press x a bunch.

I press Square a bunch.

It really is good. I should play it again. Even got the remaster on PC.

Yeah that's the one I like to play. I fucked up thinking I preferred the talent board from original PS2 version and used a mod to get it back. Then I realized the zodiac thing is so much better and started all over. I've never gotten the chance to finish the game though and don't even have a PC now.

IIRC I finished it back in the PS2 days. I haven't managed to play through the Zodiac version yet and am currently playing Octopath Traveler, which I want to finish before starting to play another JRPG.

I don't mind the job boards of either version, both is absolutely fine with me.

The games are soundtrack simulators. Nobuo Uetmastu is heart and soul of the series. The rest is just packaging for it.

Jobs and materia are fun to play around with though.

Soken is good, idk about this other guy though.

It really is a core part of the vibes and tone of the series. Even the ones with no story to speak of and/or bad old turn-based gameplay had the good music, design, etc.

Well that certainly is a hot take.

All Final Fantasy games have bad writing and cringe inducing dialogues. Which was fine when the games had no voice audio, but I just can’t stand it in the modern FF with voice overs. Square Enix really needs to hire competent writers that aren’t solely influenced by manga.

FF9 had better characters and story than FF7

FF8 was underrated and deserved better

100%

My problems with IX are slow combat. My problems with VII are everything else.

The real combat is handling the hours of screen swirls and camera flying uselessly around the battlefield along the way. Otherwise, it would be a fantastic game.

agreed; this doesn't mean i hate 7 though (it's only of my favourites); i just think the emotional depth and growth of the ff9 cast - both antagonists and protagonists - is that good.

plus freya is probably the best character in ff history

Final Fantasy 2 (actual 2 not the one with Cecil) is way underrated. Its got a dialogue system like Morrowind, skills that get better as you use them, a fantastic villian, and great story beats. Its also the first game to have Cid. Also also people love FF for the mix of fantasy and tech and 2 is the first game to really embrace that theme. 1 has a one off robot and the airship, but 2 really shows the empire abusing technology to retain power.

SPOILERS SPOILERS [people love 6 because the world gets messed up, but 2 did it first with the empire destroying several cities] END OF SPOILERS

And you have talking beavers and I think thats great.

The music is also great! I think people hate it because they try and min-max the combat and not just enjoy it for what it is.

I enjoyed it more after I played SaGa, felt like an earlier version of that idea, really underrated, the only people that really have genuine hate are probably japanese since it was quite bugged at release, but westerners played the mobile or psp ports of it that are fixed, it's a good game.

I had to scroll a bit but I found a fellow cultured fellow. I have FF2 on multiple platforms and not only do I agree with everything you said, but it makes me very sad that its system never got to be developed further in FF games. I love replaying it because I can focus on different play styles each time. Beyond some moments of grinding (like getting certain spells to drop or leveling select spells) the game/story is short and sweet. Also, one of the things I love so very, very much about FF2 (and 3 for this reason): so many enemies in one battle. I love prioritizing enemies or just AOEing, sometimes unloading just to survive or being very methodical so to conserve spells/MPs (depending on the version). Lastly, I love how good support is: control, buffing, debuffing - it's all solid. If I hated anything, I'd say that some versions has odd status healing/preventing.

The last good Final Fantasy game was 9.

That is a hot take because X is great.

Ever since they changed to square enix, they started sucking,

Emet-Selch isn't hot. Y'all just have shitty taste in men.

Romanticising his pain over losing Amaurot and those he loved. You know, even though he played a part in sacrificing Amaurot and its citizens, and the untold damage he’d done since with his machinations, never mind part played in the Seven and further attempted Calamities/Rejoinings. But yeah, knock-off Captain Ardyn Sparrow is hot.

Lightning Returns is a great game.

I mean, it should have been called Second Strike for one thing.

FFXIII was best on its own and should not have been a trilogy, but agreed.

Nostalgia creates some massive rose-tinted glasses.

I've used to love FFVIII as a teenager and decided to buy it again for the Switch last year, but I legit couldn't progress more than a ten-minute-interval without either cringeing at the characters or being angry about them in some way. Why are they all so edgy? Why are their decisions always so incredibly stupid? I eventually realized that the characters are basically what a 12 year old would consider to be cool adults when in reality they're absolutely immature in every aspect.

I really really tried to complete at least one playthrough again in the hopes that it would eventually get better, but snapped when the oh-so-mighty martial arts character, who had been showing off his melee skills in every effing cutscene, flat-out forgot that he has been fighting literal demons with his bare hands for the entire effing game only to realize AFTER a multiple day long imprisonment that he could just slap the guards around without having to get a weapon first. FFS how do you forget such a thing for longer than a week?!

I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it's THE best FF game to date and they're usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn't play it "back in the day" just couldn't understand what was so great about it. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won't try to ruin anyone's fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.

I feel the same way. Loved it as a teen. Possibly because the characters were just like teenagers.

It's pretty cringe as a 38 year old trying to play through them again. And I definitely am not going to play for the gameplay. Even as a teen, I only played these for the stories because the combat is boring as fuck.

And yet... Nostalgia hits like crazy. And, uh, Chrono Trigger still holds up, unlike most Final Fantasies.

Edit: Final Fantasy 7's remake is still kinda cringe with the dialogue and made for teens, but the gameplay is so different and there is also a cool twist going on with the story that it's actually more fun than the original to me, and I loved it when it was new.

Chrono Trigger is an absolute classic ♥ even today it's still one of my favorite SNES games, along with Secret of Mana, Lufia, Terranigma and A Link to the Past. I still replay some of these every other year.

I guess the same kinda applies to FFVII because everyone I know who had played the game when it initially released still thinks it's THE best FF game to date and they're usually very very vocal about that opinion, and everyone who didn't play it "back in the day" just couldn't understand what was so great about it. I'm in the latter group BTW. I'm all for letting people enjoy what they want and I won't try to ruin anyone's fun with a game they like, but I am convinced that a huge portion of that hype is nothing more than nostalgia.

As someone who was around then, it's hard to explain just how revolutionary the game was at the time to someone who wasn't there to witness it first hand.

Though, FFVII is my favorite of the FFs, so there's that too.

I feel similar about Ocarina of Time. Still one of my favorite Zelda games, and absolutely revolutionary for the time it was published in, but horribly outdated compared to basically everything that exists today. Since almost every 3D game today has stuff like Z-targeting and companion NPCs giving in-game hints and context-sensitive buttons and the like, there is nothing new and baffling about that game to someone who is already used to these gimmicks and concepts being the bare minimum standard.

To be fair Squall was handled badly here, I think legends of localization had a piece about it. Localization wasn't great back then, it was actually even worse, we just didn't have original voiced dialogues to confirm discrepancies.

ATB is the worst turn based system in any game.

My people.

It really is the worst of both worlds.

I'll accept ATB as a compromise and an attempt to jazz up a basic turn based system, a product of its time. I think X2 had a fun take on it with attack chains and different abilities having different casting/cool down times to consider. My ideal is deep turn based combat I need to take my time thinking about.

The worst for me are the action games, personally. I play Devil May Cry and like it, but that's not what I want the flagship JRPG series to be. There are lots of places to get great action games, I don't need Final Fantasy to chase trends.

I haven't seen anything done with ATB a simple dynamic turn order wouldn't do better. Not only do I strongly dislike any kind of time pressure, you also get rid of the wait time between turns.

Maybe X2 does something a simple dynamic turn order could not, I honestly don't know. I got the game for free when buying X and only played it for like 10 minutes. After coming out of X thinking it had the best battle system out of any FF yet, I quit X2 after the first battle just for going back to ATB. That being said, I'd rather go back and try X2 again instead of playing XVI. I completely agree on action gameplay in FF being worse.

It's not turn based

I have two. First, I'm in the VIII > VII camp. To be fair, I played FF8 before playing FF7 (though I've been playing FF since V), so the downgrade in visuals really hurt. I also don't get what's the deal with the Squall hate. Sure, he's a bit whiney at the beginning, but you can really feel his growth. Same with his relationship with Rinoa (that's her name, right?). I could see those two falling with each other in a more believable way than other jrpg ships.

Second one, V is better than VI. Sure, VI has higher production value, and arguably a better story, but the class system in 5 was top jrpg system in the snes era. I also felt more closely attached to the small cast of V rather than with the gigantic cast of VI (I honestly cried in the aftermath of Galuf vs Exdeath). Again, V was my first FF, so that may be nostalgia talking. Though I recently replayed with a patch that improves the class system, and it was a banger of a game. Plus, Battle on the Big Bridge.

Feel free to fight me.

FF7 was Square Enix's peak.

SquareSoft* Please don't involve Enix in this. The FF franchise died because of them.

This is the truth.

FF12 had the most incomprehensible story in all the main lines.

I like to refer to it as “the Star Wars one”. I could never keep all the Judges straight, the static in all of the voice actor recordings was horrible, and the main cast felt pointless. They were just an audience to the political intrigue and I couldn’t care less. Legitimately couldn’t tell you what the plot is about. Fran’s buttocks carried me through to finishing it.

The first FF was the best game in the series. It was your party from start to finish. You could replay with different class make-ups. They didn't close off parts of the map as you progressed through the story and dump in characters or take them away as events unfolded. And, you could level 4 black belts to 50 and one shot Chaos with crazy 24 hit combos.

The only one with a truly open world and map. Fight me.

VIII > VII

I don't know if I'd quite go that far, but VIII is hella underrated.

100%!

I haven't played all of them, but I am still obsessed with VIII. I don't think I have played an RPG more than that game. Closest is probably Baldur's Gate 3, but I have a long way to go still. I could never bring myself to play a game more than once, if I finished it at all, and that was the first RPG as a kid, and as an adult, I had the patience to sit and play all the way through and then some.

FF7 remake’s battle system sucks. Some spells whiff so often they’re basically useless (aero against Eligor anyone?), punisher mode is so much better than operator mode there’s no real point in having the latter except for the fact that punisher’s walk speed is awful, the roll’s terrible range and lack of I-frames make it borderline pointless, items shouldn’t use ATB gauge, and guard break is a stupid mechanic that just stretches out fights while making making them less fun.

every Final Fantasy is the best one

Six was the last good one

FFX-2 wasn’t good.

Is this an unpopular opinion?

Final Fantasy X2 had one of the best battle systems in RPGs. Conversely, its story wasn't great, but I would maintain that most Final Fantasy games have equally terrible writing, just with with more melodrama.

FF fans love the battle system for X-2. My controversial opinion is that it's the worst. I hate navigating the dress sphere grid in battle, it's too fast paced, there's too many enemies that can 1HKO.

When Squaresoft became Square Enix, the company died and took Final Fantasy with it and the first game they launched was a creepy fan service character assassination of a story.

I honestly found it degrading going from vibrant story criticizing religion and tradition to playing harem dress up in skimpy clothes with three teenage girls in a story that honestly feels like it doesn't go anywhere. It's just creepy things happening with weird unlikeable overly sexualized characters and if you complete all the to-do list you get the ending you want in the most contrived way possible.

Oh yeah Yuna gets with Tidus because she asks the fayth. The whole Vegnagun thing and all the half naked people and guys with greasy haircuts and people horny for the main chacters are irrelevant.

That was the first Squeenix entry?!

Yeah. Final Fantasy X was Squaresoft and Final Fantasy X-2 was Square Enix. You can see the whole difference in design from the two companies.

FFX-2 was Square as well. It was developed by a Square team and released by Square in Japan, not SquareEnix. In fact, it was the last Square Final Fantasy game to be released. This is all easily verifiable on Wikipedia, as well.

The truth is that this was the direction they wanted to take the X universe, even had the same Director and everything.

Oh wow, i always thought the merger/spirits within failure was the cause of the crappyfication of the final fantasy x game and all the terrible ones after it. I guess something else then.

Well, now I'm starting to get it.

I LOVE FF X hated X2

Preach, they haven't been the same since.

Cold take, I know, but I think FFVIIR is a falsely advertised sequel.

agreed, it was a clever bait-and-switch-with-an-out

"no, remake doesn't stand for REMAKE ... it stands for RE-MAKE the story, completely, like .. history is being REMADE! it's time travel baby!"

they knew what they were doing; literally EVERYONE was expecting a close remake of the original game for modern consoles, instead we got a FINE and VERY COOL SEQUEL, but nothing close to the REMAKE they led people to believe.

What do you mean by falsely advertised?

  • Spoilers

Major story changes and can only take place after the original has already happened. It's a retread, but a sequel nonetheless. They explicitly said in interviews and such that it would be a faithful remake (despite additions).

  • :::

Oh I know it's a sequel. I just didn't know what you meant by the rest.

Personally I was pleasantly surprised it was a sequel and I'm glad it wasn't advertised as so. As I started realising that the little changes weren't just because of them taking creative liberty on the source material but instead something more and still in-universe to the original, the cogs in my head couldn't stop turning as I was trying to figure out what was actually happening. I liked that feeling as I was playing.

I enjoyed the game more because it was a sequel and because they didn't tell us before hand and now that the cat is out of the bag and I'm already hooked in, I am sooo excited for the next games in the series.

I found it to be pretty anti-consumer, but no beef if you enjoyed that.

Anyway, here's hoping it ages well like MGS2.

FF9 was the worst of the PS1 games. Fight me.

I thought this was the most common opinion

I think the majority of fans would put VII at the top and VIII at the bottom of the 3.

Aside from that, IX has a lot more stans than VIII. And I'd be willing to bet both VII and VIII have more haters.

Agreed most discord I've encountered never takes a shot at 9. It seems like it did nothing anybody could hate.

Playing it on original hardware with 15-second+ load times for every single battle was brutal. And then there's the ATB logjam because of the in-battle loads.

Between that and how happy the game was to throw Game Overs at you early on, I think this was the first game I ever hate-played.

Every boss having valuable stealable items with low chance was brutal too. The fact that you could just keep trying forever instead of a one time calculation just begged you to keep trying. Most weren't hard, just time consuming.

I had a look at the other comments and not seem anyone calling out FF9 specifically, other than to say it was better. I hated it for every second of it I played (well into disc 4).

I hated 8 at first as well but it grew on me and now it's a favourite of mine. 9 just never clicked.

Because this thread is for unpopular opinions specifically

Fight me.

Alright, Aldi parking lot. No kicking!

I'd personally would put 7 at the bottom and the top spot for me would be a toss up between 8 and 9.

Aldi it is, I can pick myself up some cheese while I'm there.

I love 7, like really love it but even I can admit it's overrated. 8 is solid though, underrated in my opinion.

Alright, could use some milk too.

7 never clicked for me at all. Never had the patience to play through it. 8 definitely was severly underrated, but I think I'm seeing a lot more appreciation for it lately.

Can we stop by M&S as well? They do some nice cookies.

Yeah, 8 is definitely getting more love and appreciation these days. 7 did a lot of cool things, but it also did a lot of terrible things. I've played the first 20 hours of 7 many, many times but never actually completed it more than a few times. 8 always brings me back.

M&S

Had to google what that is, isn't that a clothing cchai? I doubt they have cookies.

I never completed 7,, I don't think I ever made it through the first disc. My sister played through it. 8 and 9 I simply loved to play. And even nowadays, while I don't have the old games anymore, I like to watch content for 8 and 9, but I can't stand watching 7 at all. As I said, it never clicked for me, I can't stand it.

They do have a clothing range, but they also have a slightly upmarket store and have some particularly nice biscuits. My favourites are the Dark Chocolate and Lime jaffa cakes, which I know aren't technically biscuits but all the same they're delicious.

I think it's completely fair to say that the writing got a lot better in 8 and 9 than 7 had. 7 was janky all over the place, which I guess is part of its charm but 8 definitely felt a bit more grown up. Though for me, 9 was quite forgettable in that regard, but perhaps that's because it has been a couple of decades since I last actually tried it.

What I like about 9 is that it starts of as just a whimiscal adventure. And they severly cut back on the edgy writing, that's a huge plus in my book too.

Also, I just love the character design, Vivi (the black mage) in particular.

I'd say it was my least favorite rather than the worst, but agreed. For one thing, the ATB is super slow. It also would have been nice to have a little build customization like Materia/GF. It's neat to have set jobs for more character flavor, but maybe a little choice would have been nice. Also the final boss was silly.

I liked the original ending of FF7 a lot more before the lore was expanded by other entries. I thought that in order to save the planet Holy literally killed every human in the world and it was just Red XIII and a bunch of animals running around in the post apocalyptic ruins.

FF8 is overrated (though not bad, just overrated) amongst fans of the series, FF9 was better.

Hot take, most hate ff8

Honestly, if you go to any online FF community, it's always people banging on about how underrated it is, I rarely actually see people hating on it

I honestly think that FF8 being underrated is just a meme at this point

I’ve taken part in various online FF communities since around the release of FF8, and it certainly hasn’t always been this way. There was a lot of dislike for it for some time, it’s only been the more recent years where it’s getting some love again.

I will fight you for calling the most underrated FF overrated.

U wan sum fuk?

FFX is the best one.

Not a controversial opinion.

FF8 is the best, exploitable stats mechanics were really fun and even realising enemies scale up their stats to match up with your broken build, so all your leveling was working against you. It was refreshing.

6 is the best one and all PS1 games in the series are over-rated.

The 'Squall is Dead' theory is canon for me and I don't give shit what the developers say. That theory makes the story infinitely better.

Also, VI is better than VII.

I don't get it. It seems like a very unsatisfying ending that way.

Ffix is the best one. So fuck off

False. Five.

I want to fight you right now but it’s not worth it. It’s not like you said 7

  • Final Fantasy II was a great game.
  • Final Fantasy XII is my favourite.
  • HEAVENSWARD was the worst XIV expansion and made me quit. Only came back after Stormblood was basically over, but enjoyed it in comparison.
  • Final Fantasy XIII is the best one in that failed trilogy and my second favourite mainline game.
  • Final Fantasy IV is boring and worst mainline game.
  • Final Fantasy VII-R sucks and shouldn't exist.
  • Zenos did nothing wrong and should come back.

Great list but what

Zenos did nothing wrong and should come back.

I just don't understand how you got through A Realm Reborn.

Heavensward is only considered good nowadays because most people only played the story and didn't interact with all the crap you had at endgame back then.

I gave FFXIII some flak back in the day, but I really did like it. Heck, it has one of my favorite casts. I'm a Snow enjoyer. However, it all went to hell when they made two sequels (with very different setting/theme tone) and decided to keep reusing the lore that people complained about in other games.

Also, I salute you for your courage at saying anything remotely negative about VIIR.

You’re out here to make enemies.

Meteion deserves just ss much blame for what happened, if not more, than Hermes. I hate how easily everyone (in the game and in the fandom) just forgave her galaxy/universe scale genocide.

This I can absolutely get behind.

“It’s not her fault, she was depressed.”

How about no.

FF3 (DS) had the best class: Bard. Those who know, know...

I played it and I don't know. Explain?

While bard is jack of all trades master of none, he’s extremely good at everything and toward the end, if you get all his special gear, his damage is better than most damage dealers - overall. It’s just how his songs work that makes him stupid good. And thinking out your song order is fun too. Just great and no bard will ever FF3 DS bard

Mobius Final Fantasy existed.

8 was better than 7

And 9 was the best of them all.

X and X-II are shit and started the ruin of the FF series.

8 I never got into because of the annoying protagonist.

🥰

FFXIV's combat is face numbingly boring.

Also VIII was better than VII.

FF peaked with Mystic Quest, every other game is a pale imitation.

I think people pretend to like XII because it was their first contact with a MMOlike, there's no way someone actually loves that party.

The game improves greatly when Fran is the party leader.

Tifa deserved it.

Aeris

Final Fantasy 6 sucks.

Come at me.

Come on, man.

Not your cup of tea? Sure.

Overrated? Depends on how you define overrated, but that could be argued. I personally disagree.

Flawed? Absolutely.

Sucks? Objectively wrong.

Final Fantasy 2 is what everyone calls Final Fantasy 4. Final Fantasy 3 is supposedly 6. I’ll be deadnaming both of those fuckers until I die.

The ones that didn’t release in America… didn’t release in America for a reason. I had no issues with the series jump from 1, 2, 3 to 7.

Also Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is dope.

3 & 5 were pretty good entries in the series IMO

2 definitely was the weakest one though, don't think I ever went back to it

Final fantasy 2 + 3 are some of the best RPGs of all time. Definitely in my top 3 SNES games.

If you mean the modern or Japanese 2&3 that’s your fault for playing games that don’t exist.

The 2nd thing, I'm glad 2 doesn't exist to you. But really you're missing out with 3