Personally, I think Silver is better, although a bit dated on the graphic side. Never saw the appeal of FF anyway, especially the later ones.

I sometimes used to watch a friend of mine playing them all, but after VII I said enough is enough. :D

Pretty much my entire knowledge of the series comes from Spoony's reviews, so I would say "yes", but that's second-hand knowledge from an unreliable comedy show :D My only personal experience was FF 7 on PC, and while I didn't hate it I didn't get what all the fuss was about either, the anime-ish art style always puts me off, there's way too many random encounters, and I just got tired of it and stopped playing before I even got to the oh-so-tragic famous death scene.

Not sure why people are praising 12 in here. It was the worst in the series until 13 came out.

X (perhaps X-2) was the last good Final Fantasy game, and, mechanically speaking, possibly the best of any of them. Storywise, 4 or 6 is best to me. 10's isn't too bad in the story department though.

As for "corridor", X was no more corridor than those prior. You can backtrack at almost any point (and there are reasons to), and once you get the airship, there's a lot to do spread. Now 13, that was truly a corridor experience until a tiny spread at the end.

12 is a POS, I'd rather hear Tidus and Yuna laugh arkwardly for hours, rather than play through that trash again.

12 gave us nothing of worth, no, not even Fran.


8 and 9 are among the best...apparently. Never played through them myself.
Only know bits and pieces from watching my cousins play back in the day. :)

Final Fantasy is a very strange series. They are only connected by name now putting Cid and an airship into every game and chocobos. That is about it.

FF 1-6 are awesome. But if you play 1-3 you just have to understand you are playing RPGs from the 1980's from the NES era so they are a lot of grinding and things that aren't typical these days. If you can get past that they are fun.

4-6 are great. For many players, these represent the high point of the series. Great characters, story lines the job system the Active Time Battle System all get introduced in these three and perfected.

FF 7, 8 and 10 are complete trash. I know 7 is the first RPG a lot of people played and it had the polygon graphics and a lot of people love it. I don't. This is the game that began the trash and garbage FF series you see today. 10 is outright atrocious. You are not wrong the writing is crap, the characters are all 100 percent completely stupid and the scenario is moronic.

FF 9 & 12. Both a great. FF 9 brings you back to the classic FF in terms of classes and setting and has some really iconic design. Vivi is a legend at this point. 12 has a great story IMO. It isn't the typical JRPG, the concept of two super powers engaged in a cold war and then hot war with smaller nations caught in the middle was great. It wasn't turned based as I prefer in party RPGs (I really hate PC AI doing one infinitely stupid thing after another), but the preset orders you could assign and being able to change to different party members on the fly along with the combo of weak and powerful enemies in all the areas you played are great. The special monsters to fight are great too. Plus the characters aren't all stupid teenagers that can't talk.

FF 13 is weird. I have not played much, and I never bothered to try 15. Seriously driving around in a car depressed all day to pull over to the side of the road to fight monsters with a sword was just too stupid for me.

It is a shame the series doesn't return to its roots, but SquareEnix has solved that as now they make the Bravely Default series, I am Setsuna, OctoPath Traveler and are keeping true with the Dragon Quest series. I highly recommend these games. I am playing BD2 right now, great classic RPG, I think OctoPath Traveler is better than BD2 but both are excellent. And Dragon Quest X is fantastic - not as good as 8 IMO, but still excellent.

If you don't like the top-down old RPG style and want new graphics check out DQ8, DQ10, FF9 and FF12.

But, yes, the FF series has mostly been garbage since FF7.

Good or bad depends on each person. Some people may love a generally hated game like FFII (me, hehe), while others may hate generally loved games, like FFIX. And some might enjoy parts of a game while hating others (like story vs voice acting).
With how Square changes their approach with each new game, there's likely at least some games that you'll find interesting.

And about FFX, maybe aside from the story (which is a slow burner, from what I remember), most of the game aged kinda bad. (but again, some people may enjoy this type of game, which is very unique in the franchise)

I do think starting with X was a choice.

Personally I would have started of with XII International Zodiac, IX, V, or VIIIR. (No particular order of preference, but V is easily the most lighthearted and least melodramatic of them.)

(But my personal bias actually says, "Or you know, play Secret of Mana.")

Well, maybe more people played the International Zodiac release which fixes a lot of problems FF12 vanilla had.

That's the version I played. (PS4 remaster). It's a terrible game. Story may be better than most, but the world is terrible, they did awful things to Ivalice (AKA, it's not the same Ivalice as FFT), but, the most important part: the mechanics/game play itself is just irredeemably bad. No combat at all is fun, and they all last way too long, the sidequests are the worst.

I successfully evaded the original PS2 release that was even worse, with its things such as "don't open any chests because it might make you unable to get important things later in the game".

A shame. Such a great game. My favorite soundtrack to an RPG ever and my favorite RPG ever. If they ever remade it again (I know and have the DS version, too) I hope they remake it with Level 5 and with Level 5 working with and doing the Studio Ghibli art style with the full orchestral soundtrack I am sure it would sell extremely well.

I prefer Japanese game design and it is great to see games that so few played in the West taking off finally or again. Monster Hunter, JRPGs (Legends of Heroes series, Trails series, Bravely Default, I am Setsuna, Octopath Traveler, Dragon Quest XI, Persona series). Strategy RPGs like Disgaea 6 is coming and Project Triangle Strategy demo was great and I hope it lives up to FF Tactics and Ogre series. Plus games like the Souls series, Nioh and Nier among many others. Finally something other than just FPS and poorly-designed open world games that have a lot of space, but no real thought or design put into the use of the space.

Now if I could only convince people too give shmups a chance and learn the genre.

Also, I like your TR avatar.

There *is*, however, one mandatory button mashing segment that you can't avoid (and which makes me significantly less interested in replaying the game than I would be otherwise).

Also, note that there's also a part where you have to hold a few buttons down simultaneously to progress. This shouldn't be an issue for most players, but some players, like those who only have one usable hand, may have trouble at that spot.

Just figure I'd warn you about a couple of accessibility issues with this game so that you know about them *before* you get the game.

Edit: Worth noting that many later Final Fantasy games have such accessibility issues of this sort, whether for mandatory content or for tasks that are critical in the post-game. (Final Fantasy X has some notorious minigames required to get the most powerful weapons in the game, which are basically required for post-game bosses (though I note that those bosses are also terribly designed, but that's another story).)

That "part III for the SNES" is really Final Fantasy 6.

Also, while FF6 is still a decent game (particularly after you get the second airship when the game finally opens up and the cutscenes stop being as bothersome), I do consider it to be the beginning of the decline in the series.

(FF7 took FF6, threw out the good things (it never opens up the way FF6 eventually does, for example), kept the bad things, and introduced some new bad things of its own.)

(Chrono Trigger does open up in a manner similar to FF6; on the other hand, the cutscenes aren't as long and drawn out, fortunately. It still has the accessibility issues I just mentioned.)

From a game mechanics perspective, FF10 has some issues.
* Physical attacks scale cubically with strength, while spells scale only quadratically. As a result, in the long run physical attacks end up stronger than spells. (And unlike FF6, spells don't have high enough constants to make them strong throughout the game.)
* The most powerful weapons ignore defense, but only for physical attacks. These end up being mandatory for post-game, and effectively make attack magic pointless. Plus one of their abilities, Break Damage Limit, is basically mandatory.
* The effects of Agility (or is it Speed? I don't remember the exact stat name) are not continuous. I think I may have read something about Agility being pointless past 170, even though the cap is 255. (Then again, I don't like having a stat that affects how often someone gets to act; said stat ends up being too powerful.)

Don't start with 8; that game is very strange mechanically, and the game isn't balanced; if you know the system, it's too easy, and if you don't, it can be too hard (especiaily if you take the time to gain a few extra levels, as the game has level scaling).

(FF2 isn't a good starting point either; while there's no level scaling (and no levels in the first place), the game isn't exactly well balanced, and the game even hides a rather important strategically significant mechanic, one that should not have been hidden, from the player.)

The job system was actually introduced in FF3, with FF5 refining it and adding the ability to learn and equip an ability from another job.

FF4 and FF6 don't use this system at all. (Also, I would argue that FF6 and FF9 have the worst ATB implementations, if you don't count the buggy implementation found in the WSC/GBA versions of FF4.)

Why are you recommending an MMORPG that's not even playable outside of Japan?

(Maybe you meant to recommend a different DQ game?)

Also, as a former long time Dragon Quest fan (didn't get DQ11 due to DRM), I'd say that DQ8 is my least favorite game in the series. No party customization, a skill point system with no respec, slower combat, and the fact that the main character must be male all contribute to this issue.

Dragon Quest 5, incidentally, is another entry in the series I don't like as much of the others (though it still isn't a bad game). Being more cutscene heavy than 4 or 6, the fact that the main character must be male (a step down from DQ3 and DQ4, which let you choose), the fact that the recruitment rate for monsters is too low, the reduced party size (3 characters instead of 4, though note that remakes fixed that one), and the poor handling of female characters (and the plot being too heteronormative for my tastes) all contribute to this game not being as good as its predecessor (although DQ4 does have the issue of no way to turn off AI control if you're playing the original). From a feminist perspective, DQ4 > DQ5, and there's no contest here. (Alena alone is better than the entire female cast of DQ5, with the possible exception of Debora, who wasn't even in the game until the DS remake.)


Again, you do realize that Dragon Quest X is a MMORPG that isn't playable outside of Japan? Are you sure this is the game you're thinking of and want to recommend?

Disagreed here... If you're into storytelling and more serious mature writting, go for XII.

IMHO, of all FFs, XII has one of the most "realistic" - "political" - stories of them all.

This was a pain to some in the original, though, indeed.

I remember watching a full walktrough (whole game) video guide step by step just to get to 3 chests inside a cave that had 1 time conditional spawn to get one specific item. haha
It was fun though. haha

Time for you to check out the SaGa series, if you haven't already.

(FF2, in a way, could be considered SaGa 0.)

Or I could just recommend Super Mario Brothers,

(I don't think it makes sense to recommend a game that isn't even in the same genre as what the topic is about.)

DQ8 never got a DS version.

(Maybe you're thinking of the 3DS remake?)

Just need some good cheap and easy ones to play. (It's a tertiary genre for me, so I am not willing to pay as much for such a game as I would, say, pay for a DRPG or a SaGa-like (how about a SaGa-like DRPG?).)