FFXIII?

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FFI:  (Origins) Played a third of this, it couldn't keep my attention any longer.
FFII:  (Origins) Played about half of this, got a save currently.  Stopped playing to work on Revisited.
FFIII:  What is FFIII?  the numbers get confusing.  Don't think I played this one.
FFIV:  Pretty awesome.  Too short.  Awesome characters and gameplay.  Meh story.
FFV:  I love FFV.  The job/classes are awesome in a proto-tactics sort of way.
FFVI:  Only played half...yes it is blasphemous, but that's how it is.
FFVII:  Will be placed in my casket with me when I'm dead.
FFVIII:  Good game.  Not the best...very easy...some innovation here, but could have been better.
FFIX:  I still love IX.  The last great FF for me.  Still think it had the best ending in the series (minus necron).
FFX:  The beginning of the end for me.  Liked it, but will never love it.
FFXI:  Never played.
FFXII:  What I played was good, I just wasn't prepared to do the same thing for 120 hours in a row. 65 was plenty.
FFXIII:  Had brief access to PS3, time was better spent on COD than on XIII, however pretty it was.
FFT:  Awesome, up there with IX and V for me.
FFX-2:  The story was crap, and the fact they gave X a longer life is crap.  But this wasn't a bad game.
Dirge:  I loved Dirge.  It kept the blasphemy to a minimum and I liked the weapon system.
Ehrgeiz:  I know it doesn't really count, but I think they should have made a proper game out of the Dungeon diving game. 

For me it is:

1- VII
2- IX
3- Tactics
4- VIII
5- V

And the others fall below these.  I know VI lovers will raid my town with torches and pitchforks, but oh well.  X made me feel dirty, especially Wakka.  XII felt like a group of manicans in a ball of different, but not actually different side-quests.  FFI is there because there needs to be a FFI.  FFII had a bit of depth.  Idk wtf FFIII is.  FFIV was the first really great FF I think.  FFV was a little less emotionally touching, but had all the parts of a great game.  FFVI, tried it plenty of times, just never kept my attention for the whole game.  VII is more worthy of worship than many of this world's gods.  VIII was good, but fails compared to VII or IX.  IX is great, feels a little pointless at various points, but brings everything together well.  FFX WAS a good game...I just don't like it very much.  FFXI, bastards.  FFXII, like vanilla ice cream.  FFXIII, why..., and Tactics had a kickass story and great gameplay if you like the Strategy thing.  I did play with gameshark a lot, and it was a lot of fun being able to use any character/class/monster, so maybe this is skewed.
 
Played XI for about 5.5yrs and loved it! It has an absolutely insane amount of stuff you can do but the end game stuff relies on lifeless egomaniacle friendships so I was always a lower high end player. I would still play it but im married with three kids lol and my wife hates me playing it. Some  stuff has been unlocked in the game that makes certain storyline completion alot easier which was a blessing and made it alot more fun. Very very very very very time consuming game lol.

First single player version I played was XII and I really enjoyed it but it was easy to beat and didnt take me very long. I have like maybe a 70% complete save. Just needed to collect every item that kind of thing.

Played X but never finished it, and I have just recently taken up VII and VIII

XIII looked stunning and that was about it for me it was way to simple and not very much fun. I did enjoy finishing it though.
 
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In order of my best to worst:

I have not played XI or seen anything of it other than soundtrack.

VII - In my opinion the greatest game of all time, although it is not perfect and that's why I am at Qhimm's, to correct it.  What more can you say about this game that hasn't already been said?  It has a top notch soundtrack, it was revolutionary in its day, it has an excellent story, great gameplay and characters.

X - A great game.  Get's a lot of stick for the story but I thought it was well done, had good characterisation and an excellent ending.  I was hooked from beginning to end.  Lots of stuff to do, sidequests, minigames, puzzles.  The last good FF game. **** you Enix.

VIII - Loved the story (some slight problems but overall was good), loved the characters, loved the gameplay, loved the card game and other miniquests.  Had imho, the greatest game soundtrack of all time.

IX - Decent story but I don't think it is up there with the top 3 in that dept.  Had some solid gameplay, art and music.  An excellent addition.  Unique among my favourite 4.

VI - Classic game, although totally overrated in terms of story.  Solid gameplay and revolutionary at the time for RPG.

I-V - Not played them half way and so I cannot judge but I am going to shove them above the the below because I hate the ones below.

X-2 - Solid gameplay but crippled by the most moronic fan service, story, voice acting and characterisation in FF history. "Hiya Booyyyyyyyyyyys"

XII - After X-2 disaster I thought "Well it can't get any worse than that and that was a sequel." I was wrong.  It did because this useless game arrived where all I did was press X with 2 gambits installed for 90% of the game.  The story was the most pseudo self indulgent piece of twaddle I have ever seen for a game.  No more deep than my bathtub.   The character development was not there and nor was a game I could care about.  I would dearly love to place this as the worst FF game but I can't because the turd to follow was even worse.

XIII - I never played it  because I wasn't foolish enough to buy it after reading tons of reviews,watching many walk-through pieces on Youtube and seeing others on it (I got fooled by X-2 and XII but not a 3rd time).  What is clear is this game at least has a story but it is contrived nonsense that even requires a manual for exposition.  It has had the heart and soul of RPG ripped out of it to pander to the FPS generation.  The gameplay is basic and mostly uninvolving.  The balance is all wrong as graphics are now all the design team care about.  We got this because people accepted XII.

------------ and I will go into scores:

On my travels through thousands of reviews, I did find one major problem which I think needs addressing.

A lot of the time, people who gave games 5,6 or 7 (average to decent scores) actually did not enjoy the game. I think sites give too much freedom for people to pick and choose how they score a game and this interferes with accuracy.

Now, to be fair, it isn't just those scores that suffer. People who give most games 1 or 2 out of 10 are also being unfair, and usually so are the ones giving games 10.

In order that people can make a more educated decision on a game, I think this is how it should be structured:


Story (if game is story inclined, if not, like mario, score option is not allowed). (out of 10).

Gameplay (out of 10).

Graphics [relative to the time period] (out of 5).

Music (out of 5).

and Longevity (out of 5).

and then an average calculated. The user is not allowed to just slap a number on it.
--------------

So, if we take an example being my preference on the FF games, I would go with:

FF6-
Story: 4
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 4

Score 26/35

FFVII-
Story: 10
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 4
Music: 5
Longevity: 5

Score 34/35

FFVIII-
Story: 8
Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5

Score 32/35

FFIX-
Story: 6
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5

Score 31/35

FFX-
Story: 9
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 5
Longevity: 5

Score 34/35

FFX-2
Story: 2
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 5
Music: 2
Longevity: 2

Score 19/35

FFXII-
Story: 3
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 5
Music: 3
Longevity: 1

Score 17/35

FFXIII-
Story: 5
Gameplay: 2
Graphics: 5
Music: 3
Longevity: 1

Score 16/35

Mario Bros 3
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5

Score 24/25

Mario 64-
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5

Score 24/25

A lot of that is of course relative.
 
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FF1: Played and Finished countless times, DoS Version though. Didn't finish the NES though I'm beta testing FF:Rebalanced mod right now and it's pretty good challenge with alot of changes.
FF2: Played the DoS version, clocked 10 or 11 hours then i just stopped playing.
FF3: Started playing the DS version didn't get to far, finished the NES version on an Emulator though. Played it for 3 days straight loved it.
FF4: Played until about an hour or 2 before the last fight and stopped playing it.
FF5: Made it to the Fire Crystal and then I stopped playing, but one of my favorites.
FF6: Played until World of Destruction on Anthology, then my memory card was corrupted haven't touched it since.
FF7: Finished with all sidequests etc. On PS1/PC w/o Mods, and with mods.
FF8: Like FF3 I played it straight not playing anything else determined to finish it.
FF9: Made it to Disc 3 but then I started playing FF6 then memory card was corrupted.
FF10: Loved it, Great game another one of my favorites.
FF11: Never played it. Never saw an interest either.
FF12: Played it, liked it, but lost my copy so never touched it or bought another copy. Still have my save files though.
FF13: Played it and finished it, I liked it but I didn't consider it a true final fantasy game.

Dissidia: LOVED IT TO BITS clocked 60-70 hours.
Dissidia 012: Love it also but I haven't had the time to play it.
Crisis Core: Loved it 20 times more then Dissdia. 94 hours and 32 minutes. Missions all complete game beat twice.
Tactics: Never played it.
 
If anyone has questions about XI I am happy to answer from my experiences, I would love an opportunity to blab about it for a bit  :-P
 
Mario Bros 3
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5

Score 24/25

Mario 64-
Gameplay: 10
Graphics: 5
Music: 4
Longevity: 5

Score 24/25
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The hell?
 
;D  I added it as a comparison...  mario doesnt have a story so that's how I rated em.  I am still not happy with my system (since mario 64 is greater than 3, but my system is more to how it was at the time....) but that's not a priority since at moment im dying with this damn menu.,
 
XIII - I never played it  because I wasn't foolish enough to buy it after reading tons of reviews,watching many walk-through pieces on Youtube and seeing others on it (I got fooled by X-2 and XII but not a 3rd time).  What is clear is this game at least has a story but it is contrived nonsense that even requires a manual for exposition.  It has had the heart and soul of RPG ripped out of it to pander to the FPS generation.  The gameplay is basic and mostly uninvolving.  The balance is all wrong as graphics are now all the design team care about.  We got this because people accepted XII.
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I'm surprised you haven't played it.  I'd recommend you at least rent it to try it and forge your own first hand playing opinion of it.  It is, by and large, a huge improvement over X-2 and XII and is a good game.  Definitely not PSX-era FF-good but a good game nonethless if you accept it for what it is (an interactive novel with battles).  Whether it fits into the standard RPG mold or not doesn't detract me from having a good time with it and that's all that matters to me. 

Wouldn't play it a second time though as the replay value is somewhat lacking in my eyes.  That's one of its flaws to me.  But then again most games these days have very low replay value to me, RPG or otherwise.
 
el oh el "EVIL" nah FFXI isnt evil WoW is evil. You would be very surprised at how good FFXI is, it has all the hallmarks of previous FF's albeit in a different structure but hey that's not anything new from one FF to another. I will wager that I could find a comparison to any feature of any FF you pick sir! :lol:
 
Haha, I'm sure you could find a comparison, and I don't doubt that XI is a great game.  It is just that after investing God knows how much of my life into Runescape (classic mind you, not the garbage they play nowadays) between ages 12 and 16, I have deemed all MMOs Evil.  They are like a drug addiction, whereas traditional RPGs are more like a blow-up doll.  Both are probably a waste of money in order to somehow fulfill an unsatisfied life, but at least with the doll, you own it forever; with the MMO (drug addiction) you gotta continue paying for it at regular intervals.

And if you do want to make an attempt at a worthy comparison, I challenge you to tell me what is comparable to the Materia System of VII!  Because this remains my favorite system to date, and things such as Junction System (VIII) and Job Classes, do not qualify as adequate comparisons. Ha!
 
Wouldn't the Esper system be almost the same as the Materia system?
 
VI is an area that I have little experience with.  So maybe.  Is it?

I mean, I enjoy playing with Support, Independent, and Command Materia the most.  Deathblow+Added Cut effectively creates a 3x-cut; 6 Quadra Magics paired with 6 Comet2 with an MpTurbo paired with Comet2 with W-Magic and you got 80 high powered comets flying at the enemy with 1 turn; 8 Counter=Mimes for epic Limit Miming.  This is a very small sample of why I love materia.
 
The materia answer will have to wait until I play through VII as "my" understanding of it is zero unless you want to waste I imagine pages of post explaining it to me back and forth. The junctioning I will take a crack at.....

So from my limited play of VIII my experience is that junctioning  allows you to attach magic to boost certain stats and allow you to boost defensive and/or offensive abilities. Furthermore, correct me if im wrong here, but some junctions allow you a chance to inflict the status of the said magic junctioned either as a status ailment or added damage?

One example that comes to mind straight away is the alignment of day and weather.... sounds cosmic I know but I kid you not ;D Vana'diel has days based on the elements and the same for weather. I.E. if it were Firesday with single Fire weather then your damage output from Fire based magic will be increased by a percentage. In the case of double Fire weather it is increased further again. Equally if the magic you are casting is of the status ailment inflicting type and is fire based then it effects chance to land and duration, which helps in the case of sticking it to higher level mobs. Obviously thats not "junctioning" but using the properties of the environment in a "junctioning" like fashion to boost your magic ability.

For the most part though the comparison comes in the form of equipment. Adding first to what I just wrote are elemental staves as this is a good example, these directly add a pre-set and consistent 10-25% damage bonus to magic damage and chance to land ailments and duration. It is interesting that you mentioned "job classes" as I have to delve into this area to explain further. Staves in the case of the job "Summoner" directly effect the amount of MP used by the summon per "tick". "Tick" refers to MP used every 3 seconds by the summon to remain summoned.

Again "job classes" are important to this explanation. I will use the example of "Thief" as its what I played most. As you level a job you also level its inherent stats the same as for example Squalls inherent stats. In FFXI the stats are capped based on what job you are playing at the time I.E. Thief is geared towards high Agility, Dexterity, Evasion and Dagger skill. There is a whole classing system that determines what level a jobs abilities cap at but as an example:

Thief: (these are just random numbers im using)
DEX-250
AGI-250
EVA-320       
Dagger Skill-300
All other stats-150-200

In the case of FFVIII and Sqaull he takes magic and junctions it to boots his inherent stats thereby increasing his damage and/or defensive ability. In the case of me and my Thief I use certain pieces of equipment to increase my stats with the same goal in mind, to increase mostly my evasion and dagger skill was my flavour. I was all about hitting and not being hit.

So you see they compare very closely they are just doing it in different ways, VIII uses magic junctions in the place of equips whereas XI is simply the reverse. With each job in XI you are simply aiming to acquire equips that boost the stats that are desirable to that job, equally in VIII you are junctioning to suit a desired task you choose a char to do.

On a final note some equips in XI will inflict status ailments or elemental damage when you are hit, The latter elemental is always el oh el but the status ailment gear is great but alot of its geared around mages in an attempt to offer some added defensive ability as they are fairly squishy jobs. And I 100% whole heartedly agree that MMORPGS eat your soul hence I dont play it any more 5yrs was enough got pretty bad there for a while but I dont regret it.
 
[Offtopic]
Yes MMOs are evil. I don't believe (most) game developers have evil intentions, and most MMO players probably have some sort of life. But personally I detest the ide behind MMOs.

Even if a MMO is free it's still kinda evil. Yes, it becomes like a drug I believe. There is always something to do, or rather, the illusion of something different to do. In reality the players do the same thing over and over again. That's exactly what creates the addiction. Doing the same thing again and again. Making you pay for it is beyond evil.

All games are like this, but at least with normal games it ends at some point.

Yes, the materia system is the best system. It's genius. May have been based on FF6 but still better.
 
you gotta be kidding me
is this shit never gonna end
also, the comments on that site are even worse than youtube comments
 
lol, the comments jeez.  Are we the only true FF fans left?  "I need XIII Versus DAMMIT!! NOW!"  it is just sickening.  I'm going back to my corner to play with materia.
 
While it's here I might as well post some stuff about XIII-2:

Returning characters:
Lightning
Serah
Snow (Gone missing, Serah finds his necklace)
Hope (Seen in latest trailer, saves Serah and Noel from a monster)
Vanille (Voice actress confirmed her return)
Fang and Sazh are to return, but there's been nothing shown yet.

Random battles return, as do towns and NPCs. Some battles can be seen on the map like in the original.

Reaction commands appear in the battles, similar to KH2.

There is a time travel system which will unlock multiple endings. Depending on your choices, your ending changes.

A gameplay element called the Mog Clock has been added, where the player must attack monsters on the field before the time's up to get the upper hand in the ensuing battle. When the player attacks a monster, the screen lights up and the scene switches to a battlefield, marking the start of a battle. NPCs (such as the remnant PSICOM operatives) will fight monsters that appear in the field to weaken them before a fight. Though the player still controls one out of a three-member party, some monsters can be used as party members. Players can customize a monster's stats via leveling up and even equip them with accessories to further boost their powers. As a bonus, the weather or Climate Type in an area will affect battles, and at times, guest characters will join the party.
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A new dungeon exploration system has been added called Unstable Rifts. As the player guides the character through the platforms, they'll have to grab crystals with floor tiles disappearing behind them along the path. In the E3 2011 demo, solving the puzzle in the Rift weakens the boss Paradox Alpha, also known as Atlas.
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Another new gameplay element is the Historia Crux feature, the time travel system in the game that can be accessed through the use of gates throughout areas on the field. The gates are activated by finding special Artefacts in hidden treasure chests using Mog, and by resetting the gates, Noel and Serah can redo their adventures. Using Historia Crux, the player will be able to choose the location or era to travel to. There will be a "gate matrix," where players will select their next location based on the game's AF (After the Fall of Cocoon) timeline. Players will also be able to access the save and main menus through gates.
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Played pretty much all the FF games there are, except some of the never tactics editions, the FF7 spin-offs(because of how the mess with the original storyline and art-style), 11(P2P mmo's don't sit well with me) and the Crystal Chronicals series, and Legends/Saga or whatever name they go by these days.

If I had to rate them:
FF1-3 - Great by the standards of its time - shait by todays standards, all rank pretty much the same in my eyes.
FF4 - The first FF game to have a story and character development worth talking about. A good game.
FF5 - Took a step backwards in terms of story and character development, but was a good game all the same.
FF6 - Great game. I'd probably rank this is high as 7, if it wasn't for the poorer graphics, and sometimes
messy exploration elements.
FF7 - The best game in the series. Was groundbreaking in its time. Good, in many ways, even by todays standard,
if we ignore poor translation, dated graphics and dated sound.
FF8 - Very good, but took a step back in terms of story and characters, and contrived combat/magic system. Kept everything else that was good though, and improved on sound and graphics.
FF9 - Very good. Took a step up from FF8 in terms of story and characters, but I felt it tried to hard to play on nostalgia of fanbase, by it's return to nes/snes era style, which never really sat well with me to begin with. Magic system slighly annoying, and the encounter rates unbearable.
FF10 - Great. Sound and graphics, top notch. Story and character development was great too, even if I disliked much of the cast. The combat/magic system was great, the only one a really enjoyed since FF7. Took a great step back in terms of mini-games/additional gameplay elements, and in terms of exploration though.
FF12 - Good. It was a good rpg, it just wasn't a good FF game. Difuse, and unengaging story. Next to no character progression. Bland soundtrack. Great graphics though, and the gameplay was ok.

FF tactics - Great game. Although, as a strategy rpg, I think it falls short compared to Vandal Hearts in all departments except for the class system. It also has some major balancing issue.

Personally, I though FF13 was ok.
It ranks the same way FF12 did to me - namely, ok as a game, but shait as FF-game.
If they'd put another name on the cover, I'd probably go "Well, this is ok". The cover however, says Final Fantasy, and that raises the bar. Unfortunately, it raised the bar above the quality of the game.

Loved the graphics, and thought the story was ok. The characters, although I didn't much like any of them, where believable in a sense, which I though was a breath of fresh air considering how often characters in Jrpgs, IMO are often completely out of touch with how real people would act given their scenarios. So a small pluss for the writing, which is a step forward compared to the non-existent character development in FF12.
Finally, the soundtrack was ok.

That's all the positive I can say for the game really.

As for the negative:

Gameplay-wise it was shit.
The linearity destroyed any sense of grand avdenture that FF games have always tried to give off.
Combined with the lack of minigames/extra scenarios(like the FF7 bike scenario, snow board, submarine etc),
npc interaction, and town/world-map exploration, any time spendt on the non-battle portion of the game was rendered extremely boring, and made into a vacous process that served no other purpose but giving us a pretty "loading screen" on the way to the next battle.

Now, if the story was more than "just ok", and the battle system was completely awesome, then I might not have cared all that much. That isn't the case however.

The battle system was very pretty to look at, but the fact that you only control one character at the time, makes the game feel extremely restrictive and limited in terms of strategical aspects as compared to the earlier FF games.
The AI contolled partners aspect, further pulls it down. If I wanted to program A.I's and have a computer do my gaming for me, I wouldn't be gaming in the first place - I'd be in robot engineering.

The last grudge is how short the game is, and how due to its linearity and combat centered nature, it has less to no replay value. Rather than paying todays prices for a game(and rpg no less), that only lasts for 10-20 hours, of which there is no point in going through several times, I'd rather buy something else altogether.

But all in all, even with this gripe - just for the graphics, the soundtrack, and the story, I'm still temped to say that the game warrants a single playthrough. Even more so, if it wasn't named Final Fantasy.
However, it is a FF game, and by that note, a poor one at that.

The thing that provokes me the most though, is how "easy"(it might take a long time, but it's far from impossible) it would be to make the game much better.
Add some towns and npc interaction. Add something similar to a world map, with some exploration elements.
Putt in some mini-games or additional gameplay elements to break up the pace and liven up the gameplay formula.
Get Nobuo to work on the soundtrack.

Had they done that, I'd probably rate the game that much higher. They didn't, and that in my mind, lowers my opinion of the game, and the creators that much more.

Now, with Xenoblade, and The Last Story(arguably one of the best Jrpg since FF10, and IMO better than most, even counted psx/ps2 era), it just struck me how much square-enix has screwed over the franchise.
As much as I want a FF7 remake - I wouldn't want one made by these jokers.
 
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