Heretical Final FAantsay Admission Take 2

[Wolf Kanno]

Based off this thread (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/130908-Heretical-Final-Fantasy-Admissions) from a few years back, what are some unpopular opinions you have about the series that goes against the usual fandom way of thinking?

Apparently I think fantasy should be spelled with two A's.

[Lord Golbez]

Based off this thread (http://home.eyesonff.com/showthread.php/130908-Heretical-Final-Fantasy-Admissions) from a few years back, what are some unpopular opinions you have about the series that goes against the usual fandom way of thinking?

Apparently I think fantasy should be spelled with two A's.

Fantasy is spelled with two A's. @_@

That FFVI was a phenomenal, groundbreaking game for its time, but far from the best in the series. My opinions on FFXII, which apparently have become unpopular, although at the time they were pretty common. That FFVIII was actually good.

Holy trout. I started reading the thread you linked to and now I hate people I've never met or even interacted with on this forum. Dislike Vivi? What kind of sociopathic monster do you have to be to dislike Vivi? Okay....maybe I shouldn't read this.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

Final Fantasy VIII will forever be my favorite game in the series. I’ve learned to accept many of the flaws of the game and recognize that it has a lot of points that missed the mark. That said, I really like the world, Triple Triad is great, and I actually think it has a good story and cast of characters.

Final Fantasy VII is the worst FF game of the SNES/PS1 eras. It has a decent set up, and the stuff before they leave Midgar is decent. After that, I feel it goes off the rails, and I can rarely convince myself to play after that point.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is an extremely fun and good game, and it mostly makes the existence of XIII worth it to me.

This is mainly heretical to the kid version of me, but I’ve grown to really like the art style of FFIX over the years. I hated how all of the characters looked as a kid, but I just like how everything in the world looks now. This probably doesn’t count since I don’t know that it is heretical to most people, but I feel like kid me would be mad at adult me about this.

Equally, kid me would hate that adult me really likes FFXII, but that’s not very heretical anymore.

[Rez09]

I do not especially like Vivi.

Final Fantasy III's final dungeon is not hard. Like, at all.

[Fynn]

FFVII’s first disc is pretty great but everything falls apart after that and the plot becomes one of the most nonsensical in the series. The party is one of the blandest out there, and the material system is one of FF’s least satisfying. Although I think in the end I’m glad Xenogears didn’t get to face the pressures of being the new FF, I feel it deserved VII’s budget so much more.

FFVIII is very good, I think the Junction system is insanely satisfying and fun to play around with. It also has one of my least favorite soundtracks in the series.

The PS1 era of FFs is the blandest in the franchise’s history. Though it doesn’t have trainwrecks like XIII and OG XIV, I don’t get as much enjoyment out of it as I do from the SNES era or XII. Tactics is the single best thing out of this generation and it is hella great.

On that note, FFTA is my favorite FF, period. Best story, no contest, and the job system combined with races is awesome.

FFXIII-2 is even worse than XIII. I don’t care that they’ve addressed fan complaints if every single moment I’d it is pure pain. However terrible XIII was (and it was), it at least felt like a project somebody had a vision for. XIII-2 is just all these random ideas slapped together and the end result is horrifying. And the music sucks. Let Hamauzu work alone.

I think XIV is overrated. It’s cool for a while, but after a few hours with it you realize just how small this world is and it just doesn’t have the epic feel that XI had. Catboys are a definite improvement, though.

FFV has a great, epic story with an insanely good soundtrack.

FFIV’s soundtrack is cool and all, but it’s overrated.

FFXII, XIII and XV soundtracks all deserve so much more love.

ATB peaked at FFIV. Why they ever removed charge Times is beyond me. However, ADB felt like a natural evolution of the concept and should have been used more along with gambits.

Also. Red Mages are dumb. Blue Mages are where it’s at.

[maybee]

So like Final Fantasy confessions? Opinions?



Final Fantasy 2 is not that bad and it's not the worst Final Fantasy game.
Final Fantasy 3 is horrible and is made pointless by the much better and more fun Final Fantasy V
Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core is fricken TERRIBLE. It's one of the worst games on the PSP.
Final Fantasy 8 is a great game. Final Fantasy 8 has a great cast of characters too.
Final Fantasy needs to go back to being Turn Based.
Final Fantasy 10-2 is fun and great.
Final Fantasy 13 is better than Final Fantasy 15. Final Fantasy 15 is a terrible mess.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a tedious bore. The series got better with the Advance series.
Cloud is not "emo " in the original he was a dweeb nerd that tried to act cool and cracked jokes and even tried to provoke Barret constantly. Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts ruined him. If you played the original and STILL thought that Cloud was "emo ", you weren't paying attention.
Squall is not "emo " either, he has separation anxiety and trust issues among people due to a traumatic childhood.
Final Fantasy 5 if you play it on the GBA is one of the best Final Fantasy games out there. It's a solid gem.
Final Fantasy 13 and Final Fantasy 15 while not the best Final Fantasies, they have solid soundtracks that are one of the best in the series.
I could care less about Noctis and his friends. No matter how many countless attempts the game tried. And no, I shouldn't have to watch an anime series to get more character development about them. That's beyond stupid.
Crisis Core ! Aerith is terrible. They ruined her character. Just so Zack could look better. Tabata is also a creepy asshole for changing Young Tifa's cute cowboy costume into that.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi1221.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fdd466%2Funipeg13%2FFinal%2520Fantasy%2520VII%2FNibe lheim_Photo.gif&f=1
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smurf you Tabata. SHE IS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD.

[Galuf]

That all Final Fantasys are good.
even XIII.



Even XV....

[Karifean]

Jesus Christ reading my posts in that old thread was painful. 14 year old Karifean whyyy.

I find Tidus to be the best protagonist in the series with also the most powerful character arc. Squall is up there as well though.

I like the voice acting in FFX a lot, including the infamous laughing scene.

I play Catcher Chocobo for fun. However, I do absolutely despise Lightning Dodging and will never defend it.

Final Fantasy IV is not explicitly bad but incredibly unmemorable. Final Fantasy V is much better in basically every way.

I have never played the first three games, and I have no interest in doing so.

Final Fantasy X-2 is a good continuation of Spira's storyline, at least conceptually, it only really falls apart when a song fixes the world's social issues. Also Paine is a pretty well-written character.

And finally: I don't really care about the series much anymore.

[Fynn]

I agree with that last point

[WarZidane]

- I think Kefka's overrated and could never take him seriously

- Then again I think FF villains in general are just bad

- I don't like any of the Tactics games

- Uematsu's good but not that great, my favorite FF OSTs are actually not by him.

- FF in general has always been merely a "pretty good" series, with some great entries. There are far better JRPGs out there.

- FFV is boring

- FFXV isn't bad at all, i wouldn't call it great but it's still a good game

[Vermachtnis]

Mystic Quest is good. I don't mean just the music. It did what it set out to do, be an introduction to JRPGs. Or a parody. Maybe both.
Monk is the best class in I.
I like Snow.



I find Tidus to be the best protagonist in the series with also the most powerful character arc.


Tidus grows on me, more and more everytime I play X.



Cloud is not "emo " in the original he was a dweeb nerd that tried to act cool and cracked jokes and even tried to provoke Barret constantly. Advent Children and Kingdom Hearts ruined him. If you played the original and STILL thought that Cloud was "emo ", you weren't paying attention.


I've said it before, Cloud is a giant dork and he's way better that way.



- FFV is boring


We can't be friends anymore.

[Lord Golbez]

You're not supposed to take Kefka "seriously," but yes, he's overrated. One sign is that a big point on supporters of Kefka as "best villain" is that he "actually succeeded in destroying the world." First of all, that's an incredibly shallow reason to rank him best, so excuse me if I don't pay it any mind. Secondly his "destruction" of the world leaves nearly all the towns you can visit beforehand relatively intact. Rumors of the world's end are greatly exaggerated. I like Kefka, but he's overrated. He gets more points for personality than destroying the world either way.

[Mr. Carnelian]

I really quite liked Lightning Returns. It DEFINITELY had its problems, but I could tell they were trying for something, even if they didn't entirely succeed.

X-2 is the FF game I have most consistently enjoyed. Although I'm not sure a "X-2 is actually really good" opinion is actually heretical these days, at least around here.

I like the sci-fi elements in some of the more recent games. Fantasy doesn't HAVE to mean medieval.

FFIV's repeated conceit of characters dying and then coming back an hour later is nothing short of hilarious.

[Galuf]

I really quite liked Lightning Returns. It DEFINITELY had its problems, but I could tell they were trying for something, even if they didn't entirely succeed.

X-2 is the FF game I have most consistently enjoyed. Although I'm not sure a "X-2 is actually really good" opinion is actually heretical these days, at least around here.

I like the sci-fi elements in some of the more recent games. Fantasy doesn't HAVE to mean medieval.

FFIV's repeated conceit of characters dying and then coming back an hour later is nothing short of hilarious.
That sci fi thing and LR thing are definately things i agree with there !

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I had a good amount of fun with Lightning Returns. I’ve actially been considering replaying the xiii series recently to see how my views hold up now.

[Fynn]

I mean, I don’t think anyone has had actual problems with sci fi elements in their FF for around two decades considering FFVII

[maybee]

FFIV's repeated conceit of characters dying and then coming back an hour later is nothing short of hilarious.

Yeah, that almost ruined FFIV for me. That was bad. :lol:

[Vyk]

Still can't enjoy FF9. Appreciate the homage but i don't think they made a very good story or very compelling characters. And the music puts me to sleep :/

[Sarisa]

I have no idea what counts as popular or unpopular opinions anymore since I haven't played anything since XII first came out, but here goes:

I is alright; I never got terribly lost or found it that hard, and I wish the series had kept the Dia spells as they were actually kind of neat.

II is a terrible game. The combat is unfun, the story is forgettable, and you stop caring about your fourth party member because you know they are just going to die off like all the others. If the combat system was changed to something else this game could be so much better.

III should have had the remake for the GBA, PSX, or PS2; but since the remake was for the DS I never got to play it since I don't own the system.

IV had too many playable characters, making it impossible to be attached to most of them. Delete Palom, Porom, and Edward. Let Rydia keep her white magic.

V had the best fighting system with the job class thing, the chicken knife is amazing, and so is the black chocobo music. Having a tree boss is stupid though.

VI is meh, and I never did get very far in it. It wasn't outright bad like VII was, but I never really felt like I wanted to continue with it and only ever picked it up when I had nothing else to do. Though to be fair the GBA was a pretty old system by the time I got this, so that may have something to do with it. Also I hate Kefka.

VII is boring, and I couldn't make myself play past the first disc. I had to FORCE myself to get that far. My brother tells me it gets better in subsequent discs, but I felt literally nothing during Aeris's death scene that was supposed to be all tragic, so this game is obviously just not for me. Maybe the remake with better graphics would help, as looking at polygons after you have a PS3 is painful. Then again maybe all the hype ruined it for me.

In VIII I just spammed GFs all the time instead of actually using my people, and they until wait almost endgame to punish you hard for this. This is dumb, and so is junctioning.

Zidane should be pronounced ZI-DANE not Zi-DAN, like don't you know how vowel rules work? Also, Kuja is the best Final Fantasy character. Fight me. Though trance Kuja is ugly.

FFX is the best game, Tidus should be pronounced TIDE-US, he is an okay character, and I hate Jecht with a passion. Fight me. Also blitzball is stupid; and I shouldn't have been forced to play a game.

X-2 was not good, but it was not that bad either; it just feels worse than it is because the combat and everything else broke pretty sharply from X and we obviously have a different main character who acts nothing like herself anymore. Also sphere break is the best minigame in Final Fantasy history, and I played it for hours because it was just that much fun.

I don't believe MMOs like XI and XIV should be mainstream final fantasy titles. I still had dial up when XI came out, and it made me mad I had to miss out on it because of it. And having to pay for a monthly subscription instead of being free to play with cosmetic purchases like most other MMOs is really stupid. Either charge me a one time upfront fee or only charge for add-ons; having to continually pay each month to play something is stupid.

XII has a terrible storyline, I can't remember the plot at all, and Vaan and Penelo could have easily been removed and the game literally would not have changed one bit. Also Fran's voice annoyed me. Reks was literally the best character in the game and he didn't even make it 30 minutes.

I have all of the XIII saga which I got slowly over the years for Christmas (ironically XIII itself was the last one I got) but I haven't played any of them. At first it was because I was waiting to get the original to play first as I wasn't sure if the sequels would make sense without it, but by the time I finally got XIII I had kind of grown out of the franchise. So I guess my criticism here is that FF had failed to keep me hooked enough up to this point, though that's more of a series fault than this particular game.

XV having a party of all guys made me really mad; as I girl I'd appreciate some female playable characters to identify with. I get that X-2 was an all girls game but it felt more like a spinoff than anything and reception to it was obviously poor. Though to be fair I never did play XV cause I was mad they went backwards in terms of gender diversity.

While tactics and tactics advanced are both good games, the former has a stronger story while the latter has more fun combat. Though I wish in tactics characters didn't stop mattering to the story once they joined your party permanently as then they could die; just keep them story relevant and give me a game over if I kill them.



- FF in general has always been merely a "pretty good" series, with some great entries. There are far better JRPGs out there.



And finally: I don't really care about the series much anymore.

And these also.

[Vyk]

Agreed on character pronunciations. If they wanted them pronounced a certain way, they should have spelled them phonetically, and not expect everyone to just automatically throw all their english speaking rules out the window and just magically know it's romanized japanese rather than english. They probably could have easily rectified it with just a weird apostrophe in the middle. Ti'dus. Done. But we pronounced it how it would be pronounced with that spelling in our own language, and got used to it. Also seems like a terrible idea that the first voiced final fantasy still let you name the main character, so that nobody ever said it and corrected us on it at the time

[Lord Golbez]

There's really no gameplay reason to have Rydia keep her white magic. She basically only has it so you can cast white magic before you get Rosa. Later on her low level spells won't have much impact and you can use Cecil for backup curing out of battle. Giving her higher level white magic would ridiculously unbalance the party and she's already arguably the best character. Besides, she has Sylph and Asura. In terms of story, there's no reason to say it's ridiculous that after years (her time) of focusing on black and summoning magic she would lose the affinity for white magic, and it's not super important anyway.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Probably using this thread wrong but here's my hot take.

Lightning's personality isn't "Female Cloud". They're not equally angst filled. She's justifiably upset at the beginning of the game learning that her sister is a l'cie and she has to give up her life and hometown to be "purged to Pulse". She's wrestling with a lot of radical life changes at once, on top of not knowing whether she will turn to crystal or a monster herself. Once you move past the Vile Peaks in the opening hours of the game, and she finds her true north, she's a strong and encouraging leader who's there for her friends and even hugs them.

Yeah, she's rough around the edges, but no more than you'd expect a soldier might be.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

Oh, I've got another one.

Final Fantasy XIII doesn't "play itself".

Yeah, I get it. There's an "auto-battle" button. But you have a lot more attacks to queue, as well. In terms of button presses, it doesn't matter if you hit "attack" and you swing your sword one time, or if you hit "auto-battle" and attack six times. There's more action going on on the screen, but player input is the same.

Instead of flipping through attack and magic menus, you change your job class on the fly, and frequently. So again, whether you open a magic menu, and choose fire. Or click on "Paradigm Shift" and change to "Ravager" and use fire six times. The amount of button presses is comparable.

I think I could make a solid case for an article titled "Reasons you think you hate Final Fantasy XIII but you shouldn't".

[maybee]

II is a terrible game. The combat is unfun, the story is forgettable, and you stop caring about your fourth party member because you know they are just going to die off like all the others. If the combat system was changed to something else this game could be so much better.



Nah, that's pretty popular.

[Lord Golbez]

Oh, I've got another one.

Final Fantasy XIII doesn't "play itself".

Yeah, I get it. There's an "auto-battle" button. But you have a lot more attacks to queue, as well. In terms of button presses, it doesn't matter if you hit "attack" and you swing your sword one time, or if you hit "auto-battle" and attack six times. There's more action going on on the screen, but player input is the same.

Instead of flipping through attack and magic menus, you change your job class on the fly, and frequently. So again, whether you open a magic menu, and choose fire. Or click on "Paradigm Shift" and change to "Ravager" and use fire six times. The amount of button presses is comparable.

I think I could make a solid case for an article titled "Reasons you think you hate Final Fantasy XIII but you shouldn't".

I don't know of anyone saying FFXIII plays itself (usually that criticism is leveled at FFXII), but I definitely don't see how your argument counters the notion. The fact that it "doesn't matter" whether you hit "auto-battle" or not is surely why people make that criticism. Lots of games have an auto-battle option, but in most cases it bloody well does matter whether you use it or not, because the AI can't be trusted too well to make good decisions. Now, I didn't get too far in FFXIII, because both the gameplay and story were both disappointing to me, but I'd say at least by a good 9-10 hours in, you're still limited to such a dearth of options in battle that really it seems like the only bad choice you can make is taking time to decide what you're going to do. I've heard it gets better, but it's pretty inexcusable to let the game go on that long with such lame gameplay that you might as well just constantly hit auto-battle. I imagine the "plays itself" idea comes from that, though I would rather think of it as I wish it played itself, because I don't want to be bothered if my options are so limited.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I think his argument is that the auto battle doesn’t mean it plays itself because your focus is on picking and changing paradigms rather than the specific abilities. Also, it doesn’t really play itself any more than other Final Fantasies since auto-battle is essentially replacing hitting the attack button over and over. I am not a huge fan of the first XIII game, but the battle system was one of my favorite parts once it opened up more. I liked changing paradigms

I’ll never understand why anyone would say XII plays itself either though. Sure, you can set up gambits where it mostly does play itself, but that is only if you want. I’d say XII probably has the best computer controlled party of any game I’ve played because you have complete control over what everyone does. It was fun for me to fine tune the gambits for specific situations, and I still personally controlled all the actions of my party leader as if I were playing any other final fantasy. I could even switch the character I personally controlled on the fly if I wanted someone to do something I didn’t properly program them for.

Of course my heretical admission is just probably that I think FFVIII is the best in the series even despite the few moments it drops the ball or doesn’t live up to potential.

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

I think his argument is that the auto battle doesn’t mean it plays itself because your focus is on picking and changing paradigms rather than the specific abilities. It doesn’t really play itself any more than other Final Fantasies since auto-battle is essentially replacing hitting the attack button over and over.

Pretty much sums it up.

I also love the paradigms because the quickness of shifts make spells like haste and protect useful even in normal enemy encounters, where as in past titles you would typically save buffs and debuffs for boss battles because a normal battle would usually go by too quick to justify using them.