Quote Originally Posted by johnboy3434 View Post
Well, after much procrastinating, I'm finally giving FF a try. I'll be playing through all the games in the main series (minus XI, since I don't think any game is good enough to warrant a monthly fee), so I can see what all the hullabaloo is about. For the sake of seeing how the series evolved, I'm playing each one in its earliest English translation*. This means I'm playing FF1 on the good ol' NES... emulator.
I would like to address your concern about Final Fantasy XI and paying a monthly fee. The fact is that the actual game itself can usually be acquired much cheaper than most games in the market right now. A massively multiplayer online role-playing game has a high cost of maintenance for any company because of the cost of maintaining servers, customer service, and continuously providing updates. It would be unrealistic to expect to not have to pay for games that take that much time and effort unless you are looking to pirate.

Quote Originally Posted by Khalin View Post
That's a good attitude to have when playing older FF games. It's silly to expect an in-depth story with game length and gameplay rivaling less dated works such as FF IX, Chrono Cross, FFT, etc. With that in mind, we actually are able to appreciate how much they were able to create considering the limitations of the NES [I think when you play through FF II, you'll be quite impressed at what they were able to pack into that primitive little NES cartridge].
Yes, a lot of people lack that attitude when they replay classic games. That is a factor for why Square Enix, lately, continuously remakes the older games to bring them up to an acceptable graphical standard for audiences today.