Ranking Final Fantasy Games Part 2
And here's the conclusion.
To be honest, after a bit of discussion, I struggle even more with this. I think I'll stand by the ordering of ranks 10-6 (the previous post), and I can justify VII's lower position for what comes up here. But what I initially had written as number 1 is now reconsidered!
This is the problem when your game franchise is just so frickin' good. A ton of them can all justifiably be placed in the no.1 spot.
But here's mine, based on a mix-bag of overall game quality, rose-tinted sentimentality, and musical bias, being a musician and all.
Top 5!
5: XI & XIV
These were the Massive Multiplyer Online's (MMO), XI being their first ever. Man, it turns out its still going, with about 40,000 monthly users or something. Gee, this was the peak of my happiness in life I think (at the tiem). Simpler times. I spent about 1 month of hours over a period of 6 months on this game.
XI was very damaging though to every other aspect of my life. This is the first and only time I got deeply addicted to something and even lost my girlfriend-at-the-time to it.
After 6 months, It was really getting outta hand even by my teenage standards, and I heroically vowed to end it. I went to one of the big city shopping areas in-world, with huge crowds of other online players, and I yelled out 'FREE GEAR', and just handed over all my high level stuff. I was stripped bare, and I quit out forever.
As for XIV, I also had a great time and it's certainly the better game. But, I never wanted to get myself addicted like with XI again - so I didn't. I still played a good few hundred hours over a lengthy time but I maintained an actual working adult life simultaneously and, keeping to real life, never made any human connections lol.
This game is massive, but never overwhelming. It perhaps lacks humour, but the story is well-balanced and despite its length, never feels overly heavy or burdensome. Of course, the fishing was exceptional and one of my favourite parts of the game XD
4: VI
I'm playing the Pixel Remaster right now. I'll just say that the passion involved in this remake is abundantly clear. It comes with all the features I mentioned in my previous post about all the Pixel Remasters, including the gorgeous concept art gallery:
It gives you options to revert back to the original music, graphical and text styles, access to the art gallery, you can turn on and off random battle encounters, you can speed it up, auto-battle, and generally customise it to how you want, with the full acknowledgement that people don't really have the patience for a turn-based system as it was all those years ago. But you can if you want. the option is there.
Also, you have access to the conceptual art of the world and monsters which is just amazing.
Best of all though, the music has been completely re-made, real singers included when it comes to the opera scenes! and just... exceptionally orchestrated throughout to the point you can just listen for hours without even playing the game itself. Absolutely wonderful.
Also, for such a pixelly game where you just blast through the text-based story, it's actually quite deep with a lot of melancholy, darkness and regret, but also humour and hope. It covers all grounds. You can't emotionally connect as much as you would with a modern game with voice acting and all, but still. Let your imagination free.
3: X
I was still in that very impressionable stage of life when X came about. This was the first one with voice acting, which was more often than not hilariously terrible but at the time I didn't really think about it other than that infamous laugh scene.
But this was, for the time, a HUGE game. Again, the heavy, heavy world building of fantasy zones just took me away like a really good book. And it was my first time really experiencing grinding to level up for hundreds of hours I suppose, just to beat the extreme high level monsters. The leveling up system is hard to improve upon, and I probably played the mini-game Blitzball more than the main game lol.
Beautiful blend of musical styles, and a fascinating story concept that starts off giving you the impression of a rather cliche time travel 1,000 years into the future and ends up, well... not being that but something more bizarre. Very cool!
2: IX
IX was pretty much the one I actually started on and was initially my choice for Number 1. No other game really sticks out more than IX from he PS1 era. It appealed to my sense of fantasy quite deeply, as it is indeed the most... phantasmagorical (very nerdy final fantasy music reference literally nobody will get) one of the whole series I reckon. While a lot of the games are based similarly around a kind of renaissance or medieval European period, the amount of colour and magic and sheer variation in humanoid figures blows me away in this installment.
If this was musical ranking, IX would absolutely be number 1, and I would bet if it came to a public vote, the result would be the same. This games music showed such a deep understanding of how the world should feel, you get easily transported there yourself. The quintessential features of all western period music is absolutely spot on, from flamenco to ragtime, classical to pop. Ahh, perfection.
The biggest reason this game appealed to me is that its has particularly thought-provoking, philosophical struggles that each character has to go through. The impact that had on a child version of me is hard to overstate.
So yeah, FFIX has always been my favourite, and that's not even needing to take into consideration gameplay mechanics, graphics, yadda yadda. I just loved it all.
1: Review Time
Ok I realise my word count is getting obtuse again. So I'll leave number 1 as a mystery, finishing off with a review I was always going to do. So which one is it? I missed out a few: Mobile games? FFX-2? FFXIII-3?? Tactics? Awakening?
... I think you know.
I'm currently diving into PS1 games I missed out on and revisiting the classics I played years ago. Final Fantasy IX is definitely high on my list of games to revisit. 😎
APE ESCAPE!!!
For my FFX and X-2 are the best in the story the last year Japan make a pool and say that FFX is the best too hahahaha. But really is a game for my really special, enjoyable and playing in the era of the ps2 in my console with some friends joy the story around! thanks for share!
I'm surprised you included x-2, I didn't get along with it at all, the whole arcade-y aesthetic and such. FFX though, I can easily re-consider it into no.1, but I'd probably have to play it again to be sure heh.
My friend got robbed years ago, and the thief stole the memory card with his 200-hour FFX save, but not the playstation lol...
Thanks for your answer, friend!
I can bring in another perspective on this as I'm also a fan of FFX-2.
As a game it is severely lacking. The dialogue is very genki girl. The tone is far too cartoonish especially compared to the previous game. Some of the costumes feel like unnecessary fan service. It can also feel disjointed since most Final Fantasy games are linear while this one was mission-based.
However I think they did that on purpose. The point of the game was for Yuna to live the life of a young woman that she was never supposed to live because of being a summoner living during the Age of Sin. Everything we're seeing in FFX-2 is a brand new era for the world so they're all trying to find their way. The music is a dramatic departure from traditional entries too. And so the story itself is about trying to tie up the loose ends of the past so that they can truly live in the new era. The final boss is from the ruined nation of Zanarkand and even physically looks like the man Yuna had to give up last game.
Anyway the reason I liked it was that it developed the history of the game more than FFX ever did. We learned more about what happened to Zanarkand, the true costs of the war and even how it might tie into FFVII which is what Kitase had revealed in an interview. Basically the Dressphere job class system is a precursor to FFVII's Materia and of course Shinra is an ancestor to the Shinra family that would eventually found the ShinRa Company.
Oh god I totally forgot about the whole dressphere thing - which I also disliked lol.
But man you have a profound memory or played comparatively recently. It's all a vague memory for me after only giving it a go through once. The way you put it does tend to make it feel more justifiable as a project - although it's often dismissed as more of a side-game or something, not often included in main-game lists.
I suppose I oughtta give it another shot one day, after the one day when I re-play X heh
O definitely. It was pretty much Square's experiment into doing sequels for their games which up until that point was an established one totally new world per entry. FFX-2 paved the way for the Compilation of FFVII and then the Fabula Nova Crystalis project. It might even be why FFXII turned out to be a game set in Ivalice from the Tactics series rather than its own separate world. And then of course getting its own sequel too.
When it comes to the dressphere job system I do agree. It's pretty hit or miss. I had a friend who gamed that system so hard though so using some of his strategies probably gave me better memories of it. Trigger Happy + Cat Nip + setting up for low health is incredible lol. Sadly doesn't work on International or the remake. I did appreciate how it sped things up dramatically. FFX was Square's attempt at a slower and more strategic combat system compared to the old ATB system and then FFX-2 was pretty much ATB on full throttle until we got the newer games like Lightning Returns and XV.
It's been a while since I played. I get really invested in a game's story and after that happens I tend to really remember them. Like I said, I'm a fan of FFX-2. I vaguely remember the systems in stuff like FFXII or the older games like FFIII. It's kinda like Genshin right now I can mostly remember when and how I got each of the characters.
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XI and XIV are divisive for me. I've never really been a fan of MMOs and the dialogue of XI was similar to XII's and more modern Final Fantasies which I felt was unnecessary. XIV is definitely an improvement on it but even with the better story, more interesting NPCs and updated engine I just couldn't help but get distracted by all the MMO stuff. I feel like you have to do so many fetch quests and side missions before you can get back to the actual story. That said XIV is one of the most popular MMOs right now and it's been going for several years.
We already talked about VI and IX so I'll just skip to X. FFX is my personal favorite. I loved the world, the characters, the story, the conspiracy, everything. I have to admit the updated graphics really helped with some of that haha. Also the game sounds better in its original Japanese where the infamous laughing scene makes more sense. The scene starts with Yuna noticing that Tidus is upset about something so she asks if he wants to scream but that won't really solve the fact that his dad's Sin. So instead she talks about the fake smiling and laughing stuff so what he's really doing when he's laughing like that is screaming. But the second time he does it it's implied that he's doing it for her benefit since it was revealed earlier that summoners will die at the end of their pilgrimage. It's a fairly depressing game with an underlying theme of fighting against fate.
Looking forward to seeing what your top pick is!
It's a lifestyle more than it is a game at this point. There are people on there who, when I joined ahd already been playing the better part of a decade, daily, for hours. They literally just log in and just chill out in their home with their group. Occasionally they'll go get some limited-time event or something and just count the minutes until the next expansion XD
It's wild. I could never tell if they had jobs or what.
This is true. When I think back to it I get a much stronger sense of... Melancholy, when compared to pretty much every other game. There's not much in the way of glory at any point in the game.
I always did wanna try the Japanese but at the time I was all anti-subtitle. Plus, If there's one voice the Japanese can't beat, it's Seymour's XD
Seymour's actually pretty good in both versions. I think his theme really helped sell his personality.
FFX was pretty much just a struggle against what you were told the whole time was inevitable. There was no other solution. Yuna was dead. And even the solution Tidus came up with at the end just traded his life for hers. It made a weighted statement about the value of life and the price of overturning the way the world worked. But in that way it made me really appreciate Tidus and he sounds just as whiny in Japanese as he does in English so that was a big accomplishment by Square haha
I think my favorite FF games is VI, I really like its plot and characters. I always hear wonderful things about FFX, so I will play it someday.
Well, Good taste, and good choice!