Final Fantasy

As promised, here's my thoughts on the FF series as a whole. Just the main games, mind you:

FF1
I didn't care for it much, honestly. Even back when it first came out, the game wasn't all that interesting. Sure, there weren't many other RPG options at the time (pretty much Dragon Warrior, which wasn't much better), but that doesn't necessarily make the first FF a great game. It was very grind heavy, and what little plot there was was convoluted in some bizarre time travel story that made absolutely no sense. Sooooo.... It wasn't all that great.

FF2
Actually I only played it in recent years, and only for a brief time. I can't really comment on it much. It had more of a story than the first game. I didn't see anything remarkable about the gameplay, but again I didn't get very far.

FF3
Back to having less story, huh? Well, the game system was decent. Job changing was cool, but the problem I had was that you were expected to do this constantly, like every other fight it seemed you were supposed to change jobs, and every time you did your new job would be gimped til after a few battles. Plus it always made me laugh that they gave you the option of using a shield when everyone could dual wield. Let's see, do I want +10 to my defense, or would I rather double my attack power? Hm.
Overall it was ok.

FF4
This was the first FF I really played, and when I was younger I thought it was awesome. Now that I look back at it, though... what's up with the plot? It reads like some angst-ridden teen's fanfiction. Just look at the main character:

Cecil - Adopted son of the king of the most powerful nation in the world; captain of the Red Wings; master of a super-powerful fighting style nobody has used in many years; becomes a paragon of virtue through a ritual few people are able to pass; brother of the main villain of the game; half-Lunarian, a race of benevolent people from the moon who brought magic and technology to the humans.

Wow. This is seriously like something you'd see on fanfiction.net. The other characters aren't much better:

Kain - Cecil's best friend, captain of the dragoons, jealous of Cecil's relationship to Rosa.

Rydia - The most powerful AND the last remaining summoner.

Edward - Prince.

Edge - Prince AND a ninja.

Tellah - The great sage whom all magic users respect.

Palom and Porom - Genius child mages.

Yang - Grand master martial artist.

Cid - Engineering genius.

Fusoya - The most important Lunarian, master of all magic, Cecil's uncle.

Rosa - Probably the "least" important character, she's merely a noblewoman with a talent for white magic. Then again, she IS high and mighty Cecil's girlfriend.

Golbez - Cecil's evil older brother (but he's not really evil. He's just being controlled by the SURPRISE! Really evil guy).

Well... at least there was a plot. That puts it a step ahead of many FFs. Despite all that, the gameplay was more refined than any of the NES titles. And like I said, I did like the story before all these long years made me cynical. Overall it's pretty good. A damn slight better than many of the FFs, that's for sure.

FF5
I only played through this once in the PlayStation Anthology. It's a lot like 3, but at least in this one there's merit to sticking around with a job for a while. Once you master that job, you can use its gimmick ability on your next job. The story was ok, but nothing fascinating. It was a decent play through, but nothing I plan to play again any time soon.

FF6
Here we go. Now this was one of the best FFs ever, as far as I'm concerned. Kefka was a great antagonist. A lot of people claim he's not much of a villain, since his main selling point is that he's insane, but in my book he gets bonus points for starting as a relatively unremarkable man, messing with you throughout the entire game and elevating himself to an almost god-like status in the process to become the final boss.

This is rare in FFs: Usually the guy antagonizing you for most of the game is different the SURPRISE! final opponent, if there's such a guy at all. Otherwise (in the case of FF7 and FF10), they already start off with all that power. Kefka, on the other hand, gets his ass kicked once or twice over the course of the game.

Then the characters. They were all pretty unique, in terms of personality and ability. Nearly all of them had some sort of side quest to enhance their background.

I liked the way they did summons in this game: You can use an Esper once per fight, for a powerful effect. That's much better than treating them as normal spells, or God help you making them your main mode of attack (I'm looking at you, FF8)

FF7
Another excellent game. I could never decide whether I liked this of FF6 better. FF7 was the first game to break the formula that had been established in previous games. The story was good, and there was a lot going on to keep me entertained. The gameplay was fun and the characters were interesting. All in all, a really great game.

FF8
Ugh. I can't even say this is where the series starting going downhill. It wasn't downhill, it was a straight drop. I don't even know where to begin on this one. Your main character is an unlikable loser joined by five other unlikeable losers on a quest to... Um.... What were they doing again?

Gunblade. Seriously? "HAY GUISE! Guns are cool! Swords are cool! Let's put them together and make the ultimate weapon!!!!!1"

Well, this game revolved around getting summons (or Guardian Forces), getting magic (through either drawing or one of several other long, boring processes), and playing cards. Yep, playing cards. It's a bad sign when your emo angsty main character who just wants everyone to leave him alone is also this outgoing extrovert who loves to play cards. Fortunately, everyone else loves to play cards, too. EVERYONE. Including the woman you're fighting against for most of the game.

I could go into it more, but as I said before, just see Noah Antwiler's FF8 review instead, it'll explain everything. But don't watch it at work :X

FF9
The FF series attempts to go back to its roots. This one was a lot lighter in tone than the last two entries. There was a new card game, but luckily it had no bearing on the actual game whatsoever. The game tried to appeal to the nostalgia factor by having characters with big heads, but that really doesn't work as well in 3D as it does in 2D.

The characters themselves were... well... I found them to be completely uninteresting. Which is too bad, because the story and game play were both pretty good, but I just didn't like any of the 8 people you got to play as.

Speaking of game play, this was the one where you learned abilities by using certain weapons in combat. That was a pretty cool idea, but the down side is that you wound up carrying a lot of old weapons around just so you could learn abilities. Minor details, but... meh, I'm picky.

This game had the biggest SURPRISE! final boss of all of them: There was no clue Necron was ever coming. He just popped in out of nowhere and was like "Hey, I'm the last boss". At least with the other games it was usually more "He's not the final boss. This other guy is!" The game wasn't anything remarkable, but it wasn't bad, either.

FF10
Hmm... This one's about a whiny crybaby who isn't real. I prefer actual leveling to that sphere thing they had, but otherwise the game play was alright. I liked how you could change party members in combat to suit your situation, though it was weird that only three of them could swim.

I didn't care much for the fact that other than the abilities they had, all of the weapons were the same. You could use Brotherhood throughout the entire game if you wanted.

But by far the worst thing about FFX was those stupid sphere puzzles. Why? >.< >.< >.< These "puzzles" are so incredibly stupid. They're just tedious work that doesn't add to the enjoyment of the game in any way shape or form.

FFX is full of that tediousness, though. I thought Blitzball was kinda fun, until I found out just how many games you had to play for Wakka's final weapon. What the hell. And let's not forget "Dodge 200 lightning bolts without cheating!" I seriously only had the patience to get Auron's weapon, and even that was testing my limits.

And for a game that made such a huge deal about spheres, why was the world basically a straight line?

FF11
Well, what can I say about this? I've been playing it for many years, so obviously I like it. You probably do too, if you're reading this blog.

FF12
"FF11 Offline", as I like to call it. This game was just really boring. It wasn't 'bad' like FF8, but I couldn't be bothered to finish it. The game play was really repetitive, and you didn't really even have to play: Just set up your gambits right and you could have the game play itself for you while you went off and did something, well, fun.

The story wasn't even about your characters. It was about... um... I don't even know. Vaan was stupid, Ashe was a bitch I wanted to leave in the sewers, and Penelo had less character development than Umaro in FF6. Hunts were a pain in the ass, so I didn't do most of them. Collecting summons was a pain in the ass so I didn't bother with them.

Eventually I got to the final dungeon, looked back on all the stuff I didn't do, and asked "Why am I even playing this?" So I stopped.

FF13
It's probably not fair to talk about a game that isn't even out yet, but from what I've seen of FF13 so far, I'm not very hopeful. Actually, FF13 Versus (Is that what it's called? The alternate one with the gray-haired dude) looks more interesting to me than the main game. I really don't care if Shiva turns into a motorcycle.