Even a five year old could understand THAT.

[Loony BoB]

With the criticism FFXIII has come in for recently due to people finding the storyline confusing and complicated, which FF game do you think had the clearest storyline? Just talking the main series, here.

Feel free to discuss the storylines of the various games (mark spoilers with the game name - eg [spoiler</>="ff1 spoiler"]ff1spoiler[</>/spoiler] which becomes ff1spoiler) and which you think are more or less complicated than others.

[kotora]

FFXIII had a complicated storyline? I can understand the confusing part, but it lacked any substance so I don't see how it can be called 'complicated'.

Anyway, I'd say FFX. Your goal is pretty much clear-cut from the beginning and it doesn't stray from it aside from one twist.

[Slothy]

I voted VI because it's my favourite, but really any game pre-VII was pretty clear about what was going on all of the time. Probably in part due to the fact that the space on the cartridges was so limited that it made sure they kept things clear and to the point a lot of the time. I mean you can sum up the overall story of FFVI as evil empire using magic to take over the world. Fight evil empire. Kefka destroys the world. Fight Kefka. Mind you the straight forward nature of the overall plot isn't all that made it clear. It also helped that what you were doing and where you were going typically had a clearly explained purpose that made sense in the context of the story.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Not the first game by a long shot, oddly enough.

[Mo-Nercy]

I think FFX had a pretty clear-cut storyline. As kotora has said, the two key protagonists in Tidus and Yuna are unwavering in their goals. And there aren't any spanners thrown into the works until the end, at which point, the player sort of already knew what the twist was going to be.

[Karifean]

I think FFXIII's was pretty easy, all you had to do was read through the datalogs when you were asked to.

[qwertysaur]

FF VII appears on the poll twice :p

[LunarWeaver]

I suppose the flowery language put some shiny ? on it, but I found Final Fantasy XII pretty straightforward. You had your goal and did it and then it ended.

[No.78]

FFV or FFIII I think.


I suppose the flowery language put some shiny ? on it, but I found Final Fantasy XII pretty straightforward. You had your goal and did it and then it ended.

I was pretty confused from start to finish, lol. Maybe I'm just dumb...

[demondude]

I was going to vote for FFVIII as a joke but the poll sucks. :P

[Goldenboko]

I always felt VI's was straightforward. "Bad Empire Vs. Rebels -> Group of People Vs. Madman". DONE!

[No.78]

Why is 10 winning? I thought the whole dream summoning cycle of death stuff was reasonably complicated. You couldn't easily explain it to someone, let's put it that way.

[VeloZer0]

This is going to be a fun thread to skim :D
I would like to point out that any story can be boiled down to: bad guy wants to do X, heroes stop him. Such simplifications can be applied to any game to defend ones preference and are of no use.


Time loop? Though not mind numbingly difficult it blew way over my head when I first played FFI, mostly because of how simple a story I had been experiencing up to that point. Most definately not simple.



The story was fairly simple, but threw in a few plot points that deviated from the norm. The most difficult points to grasp would be why the gift of mortality would be considered the greatest gift of all, and that the World of Dark wasn't anymore evil than the world of Light, and the consequences of Light overwhelming Darkness were just as dire as Darkness overwhelming Light.



FFIV's story was very involved and epic, but there wasn't anything difficult to conceptualize. I would say that the story was very easy to understand.



I haven't played it in a few years because I've been waiting for FFV DS, so I'm a little rusty on the fine details. Understanding Extedeath was a tree was something I knew a few people somehow missed, as well as the nature of the void. Other than that the story was fairly straightforward.



Thinking about it, the strength of FFVI was characters not plot. The plot I believe was very good, but it is the characters who make the game. The story was very simple to understand, it was the more subtle character emotions that were harder to understand. The whole Celes cliff scene totally went over my head when I first played it, I though she was just upset and went to do some cliff jumping to blow off some steam. :shifty:

Way to miss out on the most powerful scene of the game.
...
Don't laugh at me!


FFVII,VIII and IX
Come on, are you joking?


In FFX the goal was very clear the entire way and did not change. However, as it was noted earlier the whole Zanarkand/dream thing was a little bit to get your head around.



I thought the whole plot to FFXII was brutally simple and easy to understand, but a lot of people seem to find it to be a little hard to follow. I attribute this to it being the first one that had a little more focu on politics. Imo, the politics involved in the game are certainly a step above average FF fare, (which isn't saying much), but still incredibly simple.



The plot of FFXIII was very simple, just hard to understand due to lack of explanation. A.k.a. it wasn't hard to understand because it was complicated, but poorly told.


And, after taking time to reflect on all titles, the winner is FFIV for not having anything that is out of the ordinary to understand.

[Slothy]

Thinking about it, the strength of FFVI was characters not plot. The plot I believe was very good, but it is the characters who make the game. The story was very simple to understand, it was the more subtle character emotions that were harder to understand. The whole Celes cliff scene totally went over my head when I first played it, I though she was just upset and went to do some cliff jumping to blow off some steam. :shifty:

Way to miss out on the most powerful scene of the game.
...
Don't laugh at me!


It's been a long time since I played the SNES version of FFVI, but I'm pretty sure the translation in that one glossed over it to deliberately make it kind of unclear due to Nintendo's censorship at the time. If you missed it then you're probably not the only one. I don't think I picked up on it at the time either (mind you I was 9).

[Vermachtnis]

V, the most complicated thing that happened was ExDeath hiding himself as a splinter in the butt of a little girl.

[PuPu]

The only ones that actually have complicated stories are those with Ultimania guides. After all, the Ultimania guides were created for people who don't understand the stories.

[qwertysaur]

The only ones that actually have complicated stories are those with Ultimania guides. After all, the Ultimania guides were created for people who don't understand the stories.
Or because Tetsuya Normura was allowed near the story :p

[No.78]

...I still don't get why 10 is winning.

Gross injustice.

[Rebellious Eagle]

I thought FFX got complicated towards the end, and sometimes it still confuses me!
I think FFV's storyline was very easy to understand except for Exdeath somehow being a tree.

[Bolivar]

For some reason I voted for IX. I feel like the older ones do have a lot of convoluedness to them like a villain being a tree, some chicks mom getting it on with a Phantom Beast, the Emperor having tournaments for a princess who got stolen bya balloon, and then he becomes SATAN!?

I think IX was pretty straight forward, butnow that I think about it, there are some confusing elements like the Genomes and Mages...

[qwertysaur]

About Exdeath
Exdeath is a tree because Euno was sealed in the forest of Moore after he was defeated. He was so evil and had magic so potent that he turned the tree hw was sealed in evil as well, and it eventually came what we know as Exdeath

[Sephiroth]

About Exdeath
Exdeath is a tree because Euno was sealed in the forest of Moore after he was defeated. He was so evil and had magic so potent that he turned the tree hw was sealed in evil as well, and it eventually came what we know as Exdeath

This is never mentioned in the original version of Final Fantasy V. Enuo defeats himself because the void engulfs him (what an idiot - he is immortal and then he trades it for a power he cannot control). However, X-Death "himself" is not a tree - he was born out of it - and of course he is part of the tree, blablabla, he can turn into a tree and a twig, et cetera...but X-Death himself is a fusion of evil souls sealed in the tree.

And that's why the void turns him into a mega chimera as Neo X-Death. Because it is the fusion of evil souls - X-Death's true form, like Ghido/Gill mentions.

And often people make some mistakes because they think the void, the cleft of dimensions/the rift and the great tree of moore are all the same. But it is not.

[kotora]

This reminds me of how little sense FF5 made to me and how I mostly just played it for the gameplay. Guess I'll have to give it another chance someday.

[Sephiroth]

This reminds me of how little sense FF5 made to me and how I mostly just played it for the gameplay. Guess I'll have to give it another chance someday.

No Final Fantasy is 100 % logical.

After all Final Fantasy (I) is easy to understand, Final Fantasy III is easy to understand, Final Fantasy IV is easy to understand and Final Fantasy XII is easy to understand as well.

[No.78]

It seems everyone who hasn't commented has voted for FF10, now I'm thinking they're just doing it to annoy me.

/cry

/winge

[VeloZer0]

FFI easy to understand? I think not. That time loop throws a lot of people for a loop (no pun intended).

[Sephiroth]

FFI easy to understand? I think not. That time loop throws a lot of people for a loop (no pun intended).

That's pretty easy for me.

[No.78]

Yeah FFI had an overly basic plot if you ask me. The time loop works because it's so simple, if you think about it too hard then it starts to not make sense. :P

[kotora]

What did you find so complicated about FFX?

[VeloZer0]

The whole Tidus not actualy existing and just being the dream of an extinct civilization.
Lol, when writing that I just thought of a Star Trek episode with computer generated characters escaping the holodeck. :lol:

The plot for the most part was very straight forward, not a lot of twists and turns. But that one thing is something that requires a greater deal of cognitive power to understand than anything in the SNES eara.
A lot more stuff happened in the SNES games, but that was all stuff that was easy to understand.

[Freya]

So far with VI I haven't gotten lost once. It all seems very easy to get. Which, with the other games I had to be like "oh wait... huh?" and think about what just happened.

[MJN SEIFER]

Although they're in no way "simple", I am tempted to vote for either FFVII or FFVIII, purley because they are easier to understand than most people give them credit for - FFVII especially.

Everyone keeps saying that FFVII lost a lot of important plot due to bad translation, and while I admit that the FFVII translation was by no means perfect - It was by far the plot that suffered the least. The things that apparently needed to be explained in the Ultimania guides were things like how the the Sephiroth Clones are "made", which is blatently explained in the game when Cloud revovers so I have no idea how people missed that one. People seam to miss what happened to the people from Nibelheim too, but I understood it on my second or so playthrough - you just got to talk to the right people in the game.

Although I can probably thank the fact, that I originally used cheat devices for both games - and this allowed me to restart the games almost instantly after completing them, and then sail through them with the "complicated" parts still fresh in my mind.

[Zeromus_X]

II was pretty simple, no time loops or major themes to think about at any rate.

[Laddy]

FFIV's was good and moving, but usually you knew what was going on very well.

[Levian]

Yeah, FFIV is pretty straight forward. Often you know what's up slightly before things happen even. :D

FFVII is definitely not the easiest to understand with sephiroth being alive and dead at the same time, as well as Jenova's involvement and what's real and not real about Cloud's past. It's not rocket science or anything, but it's not the most basic plot of the series.

[Jiro]

I'd say II or IV.

[Sephiroth]

FFVIII, purley because they are easier to understand than most people give them credit for - FFVII especially.


I don't understand that as well. I don't know how people don't understand the complete story just because they don't know the Ultimania. It is explained good enough in the story excluding some aspects. Final Fantasy VII's story is not very easy but it is not that complicated how it is claimed to be.

[MJN SEIFER]

V, the most complicated thing that happened was ExDeath hiding himself as a splinter in the butt of a little girl.

I know that this is an old post, but I have to ask; do you really concider fourteen year old girls to be "little girls"?

[Vermachtnis]

V, the most complicated thing that happened was ExDeath hiding himself as a splinter in the butt of a little girl.

I know that this is an old post, but I have to ask; do you really concider fourteen year old girls to be "little girls"?

I thought she was like 8 or 12 :P Krile's built like a little girl anyway.

[MJN SEIFER]

No she's 14.

You can tell she's not that young by comparing her to the characters that are meant to be little kids, plus in official art work she's shown to be closer to the other characters than to kids (even though 14 is still young).

EDIT: I think the reason so many people assume she's younger than she is, is because the game doesn't really develop her enough, so you kind of get the feeling she's just a little kid who's "just there" - shame because she has the potential to be an interesting character.

[kotora]

V, the most complicated thing that happened was ExDeath hiding himself as a splinter in the butt of a little girl.

I know that this is an old post, but I have to ask; do you really concider fourteen year old girls to be "little girls"?

I sure do.

[Clo]

I think it's so funny how far behind FFVIII is. That game was confusing! Time compression? Anything with time travel just doesn't WORK, because it just makes paradoxes.

I would say FFX was the simplest. Or IX even. Even at the end it all made sense to me with both.