Whats your favorite Final Fantasy game. And why is it FF2?

[AxlRose4life]

It has it all! Its Epic! Its cool! Its unapologetic about it being a grindfest. Its a winner! (And in lots of ways, it was Elder Scrolls before Elder Scrolls, in the sense that you upgrade by stuff you do, except FF being turn based rather than action based)

My issues with FF1 (Well ok i can be somewhat sucker for the NES aesthethics of graphics). But only NES version.

But outside FF2. FF1, FF3-FF6 is just goofy and has the story interest out of a Benny Hill Theme parody. It just is not all that cool or exciting. With FF2 there is stuff that i legit do care about! So as a narrative, FF2 is the only old school FF game i think was legit cool!

If i wanted better narrative written FF stories, i would just go with the FF7-FF10. (Though FF9 being my favorite, since Zidane isnt as sullen as the mainline ones in that period).

But whats your view?

 

[mothcorrupteth]

Twenty-five years ago, I would have said FFVI. Now, I'd have to say FFVII. In 1997, I decided to get a PlayStation because I wanted to play The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Packed in with the system was the Squaresoft demo disc. My best friend had played what were at that time Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III on the SNES, and he encouraged me to try FFVII. At the time, my main jam was Star Wars, especially the old Expanded Universe. FFVII's narrative of a group of rebels fighting against a mega-corp was very similar and struck a chord. We rented it I don't know how many times before I finally bought a used copy at an Electronics Boutique in PA. I wasn't allowed to play games if I got any B's for the semester, and I'd gotten one the semester I bought it, but I snuck and played FFVII so much anyway.

I haven't played the "remake" and don't plan to. The original always takes me back to a time where movies were still made on analog film with natural lighting, strategy guides were more than just collector's items, the Internet was still new and relatively innocent, the idea that you could revive Aeris was relatively plausible because nobody had gone over the code yet with a fine-tooth comb, my childhood crush had agreed to be my first girlfriend, network TV was free out of the box, my home city didn't have an infrastructure problem, and nerds were nerds -- our hobbies weren't infiltrated yet by posers who saw Big Bang Theory and thought it was "cool" to pretend they always liked PBS when everybody knows only us gifted kids watched that stuff for personal enjoyment.

 

[AxlRose4life]

Twenty-five years ago, I would have said FFVI. Now, I'd have to say FFVII. In 1997, I decided to get a PlayStation because I wanted to play The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Packed in with the system was the Squaresoft demo disc. My best friend had played what were at that time Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III on the SNES, and he encouraged me to try FFVII. At the time, my main jam was Star Wars, especially the old Expanded Universe. FFVII's narrative of a group of rebels fighting against a mega-corp was very similar and struck a chord. We rented it I don't know how many times before I finally bought a used copy at an Electronics Boutique in PA. I wasn't allowed to play games if I got any B's for the semester, and I'd gotten one the semester I bought it, but I snuck and played FFVII so much anyway.

I haven't played the "remake" and don't plan to. The original always takes me back to a time where movies were still made on analog film with natural lighting, strategy guides were more than just collector's items, the Internet was still new and relatively innocent, the idea that you could revive Aeris was relatively plausible because nobody had gone over the code yet with a fine-tooth comb, my childhood crush had agreed to be my first girlfriend, network TV was free out of the box, my home city didn't have an infrastructure problem, and nerds were nerds -- our hobbies weren't infiltrated yet by posers who saw Big Bang Theory and thought it was "cool" to pretend they always liked PBS when everybody knows only us gifted kids watched that stuff for personal enjoyment.

How did it go? The Lost World Jurassic Park run. i always suck at the beginning dinosaur. But after Human Hunter it gets easier for me.

 

[mothcorrupteth]

How did it go? The Lost World Jurassic Park run. i always suck at the beginning dinosaur. But after Human Hunter it gets easier for me.

Well, the game, as you seem to know, was ridiculously hard due to things like poor hit detection and repetitive level design. Actually, the impression that the TV spots had left me with was that it was an open world where you were free to roam the entire island as a T-rex, but of course what I didn't know was that there was no way the PS1 would have been able to handle something like that. I was severely disappointed when the game was actually just a 2.5D platformer. The main thing I go back to, though, is the soundtrack. That was the first time I'd ever taken note of Michael Giacchino, and he rocked it from day one.

I'm actually on your side about FFII. I may not like it was much as the SNES and PS1 entries, but I'd definitely rather play FFII than XIII. I thought that what they were trying to do was inventive, and the bugs it resulted in weren't any more ridiculous than some of the other bugs that made it into more popular entries to the series.

 

[AxlRose4life]

Well, the game, as you seem to know, was ridiculously hard due to things like poor hit detection and repetitive level design. Actually, the impression that the TV spots had left me with was that it was an open world where you were free to roam the entire island as a T-rex, but of course what I didn't know was that there was no way the PS1 would have been able to handle something like that. I was severely disappointed when the game was actually just a 2.5D platformer. The main thing I go back to, though, is the soundtrack. That was the first time I'd ever taken note of Michael Giacchino, and he rocked it from day one.

I'm actually on your side about FFII. I may not like it was much as the SNES and PS1 entries, but I'd definitely rather play FFII than XIII. I thought that what they were trying to do was inventive, and the bugs it resulted in weren't any more ridiculous than some of the other bugs that made it into more popular entries to the series.

The platforming in Jurassic Park Lost World on PS1 was mostly impossible with the Chompy stages. And it has 9 long levels. But it gets more fun with Human Hunter and so forth. So i still like it but just aint a huge fan of Chompy.

True true. I think lot of people dislike FF2 due to the grinding. But it is super unapologetic about it too : D

 

[mothcorrupteth]

The platforming in Jurassic Park Lost World on PS1 was mostly impossible with the Chompy stages. And it has 9 long levels. But it gets more fun with Human Hunter and so forth. So i still like it but just aint a huge fan of Chompy.

True true. I think lot of people dislike FF2 due to the grinding. But it is super unapologetic about it too : D

I liked the cute factor about the Compy, and the brachiosaur "avoid being stepped on" stage. Otherwise, I agree; it's the second worst segment of the game behind those repetitive T-rex levels.

I like grinding. Grinding builds character. People act like it takes no skill to grind, but it does take a skill: patience, self-restraint. If you don't have the patience to grind, you won't have the patience to grind at a job or hold your finances in check long enough to save up for a car or a house. As a child psychologist, I think one of the biggest problems is that the commercialist creep of the hobby teaches kids all the wrong things like that. And I wish I could stay it started with the Square-Enix merger, but really, strategy guides in the 90's were the game companies destroying the social aspect of RPGs by offering you the maps for a fee (whereas in the 80's you would graph the maps yourself and share them with your friends IRL).