Final Fantasy Census!!! Final RESULTS!!!

[Forsaken Lover]

FFIX is obviously gonna be Number 1 or 2.
I hope so anyway.

[Del Murder]

My prediction is FFVII number 1, FFVI number 2. Maybe FFIX or FFX number 3.

FFVII will probably be in the bottom 3 as well. Most people have a strong reaction either way on that one.

[Levian]

I'll guess same games as Del Murder (FFIX in first, not FFX) except in reverse order.

[Loony BoB]

I'll say FFX will be higher than #3, just to be different. Not sure which will come first, but if I had to guess, I'd say VII, X, then either VI or IX... I'll say VI, I suppose.

[Wolf Kanno]

MAJOR UPDATE

Alright, outside of doing one more recount for overall totals for the titles, I have everything finally counted out. Though there was some issues trying to find the averages in the individual categories cause a few people are split on some of the titles elements. It doesn't help that people can't follow instructions

Also, just to warn everyone, there was a few changes cause I ended up accepting a few late entries and I blackmailed some of the fine women of EoFF (threaten them with the Raistlin bikini pics ) to get a little more estrogen into the voting so some of the stats listed above no longer apply and the top fave FF is no longer a tie.

With that said, expect the results to be posted soon!

[Wolf Kanno]

So its time for the final results of the first unofficial EoFF Census!!!!


*sound of crickets chirping...*

Okay so I took my sweet time doing all this but that's what happens when you do stuff on a whim without any real planning.

Anyway...

First the results of the sexes and what FFs appeal to them!

Favorite FFs for Men:
In third place is Final Fantasy VI with a total of 17 votes from the guys, I guess all that SabinXCyan Bromanace. Course I feel its all about some Yeti on Moogle action...

The second favorite FF for Men is surprisingly Final Fantasy VIIwith 18 votes. I blame it on all the phallic symbolism and sexual innuendo's like Cloud and Sephiroth's big swords and tense sexual frustrations

The top favorite Final Fantasy for guys is Final Fantasy IX. SD graphics be damned, the guys gave this game a whopping 20 votes and none of the girls even voted for it. I blame it on our fascination with monkeys and Orko from He-Man.

Favorite FFs for Women:

The women of EoFF tended to be a bit more balanced than the guys so their results are much more interesting imho.

First up is a three way tie for third place in the form of Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VII, and Final Fantasy VIII with a three way tie of 2 votes. The ladies like their leading men with their complex issues of identity, opening up emotionally, and dealing with... heights?

In second place for the second favorite among our pure maidens of EoFF is a tie between cult classics Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI with a two way tie of 3 votes. I'm guessing it has to do with all the badass stuff the girls do in this game. From Rydia's saving the parties ass from Golbez in the Dwarf kingdom to Celes single handling recollecting the Kefka's Doomsday crew.

The number one favorite for the ladies? Why not surprising its Final Fantasy X with its sweeping story of romance, fantasy, blitzball and wanting to tell Wakka to STFU. This one won with a whopping 4 votes from the ladies.


Overall favorites of the forum and their voting numbers:
First Place: Final Fantasy VII with 21 votes
Second Place: (Tie) Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy IX with 20 Votes
Third Place: (Tie) Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy X with 11 votes
Fourth Place: Final Fantasy XII with 10 votes
Fifth Place: Final Fantasy VIII with 9 votes
Sixth Place: Final Fantasy IV with 8 votes
Seventh Place: Final Fantasy Tactics with 3 votes
Eighth Place: (Tie) Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy X-2

Now for the individual scoring of elements for the games. To understand how I did this one, I added up the numbers and give you the final total. Remember that they were rated 1=Most Favorite and 4=Least Favorite. So for that reason the lower the number, the higher people rated it.

Title: Final Fantasy IV
Story/Characters: 11
Combat: 29
Exploration/Sidequests: 19
Music/Graphics: 21
Comments: Everyone's favorite element for FFIV was its story and characters which recieved a near unanimous 1 rating from all but one person. Everyone's least favorite element was the combat system which is a bit dry compared to the rest of the series.

Title: Final Fantasy V
Story/Characters: 26
Combat: 21
Exploration/Sidequests: 32
Music/Graphics: 31
Comments: Some surprises and some not so surprising revelations. Often toted as the Best Game in the series, its not surprising that FFV's top element is its combat system which utilized a revamped Job Class system and introduced the idea of sub-classes. In last place surprisingly is FFV's exploration. With three worlds to traverse as well as underwater locales, I guess people got bored exploring and were more interested in some hot Gilgamesh action.

Title: Final Fantasy VI
Story/Characters: 31
Combat: 53
Exploration/Sidequests: 48
Music/Graphics: 48
Comments: Debatably the best Final Fantasy in the series by some fanbases, its not surprising that Story and characters is the top fave elements with a cast of 16 characters all unique from each other and a tale that spans a global conflict and the aftermath of its terrible destruction, fans love the story and cast. In last place though is the combat system. Combining the strict class roles of IV and adding a relic/esper system that gives a very abusive version of V's job class system, VI definetly suffered from some interesting balance issues, especially when Auto-crossbow will be the only thing you'll see for 30 hours until you trade it up for Ultima.

Title: Final Fantasy VII
Story/Characters: 42
Combat: 56
Exploration/Sidequests: 52
Music/Graphics: 50
Comments: As the game that put FF on the map also debatably the best FF by just about everyone, its not surprising that VII's top vote went to story and characters with its distinct cast of characters and tales of environmental catastrophe first from corporations and later from Aliens. Like VI, VII's lowest rank goes to combat which utilized an even more broken down version of FFV's job class system than VI. Course for all its customization options, it never changed the fact the easiest way to beat the game was just to cast the unnecessarily long Knights of the Round to kill the final boss in a single round...

Title: Final Fantasy VIII
Story/Characters: 18
Combat: 19
Exploration/Sidequests: 26
Music/Graphics: 27
Comments: One of the black sheep of the series its a surprise to see the two most criticized elements (Story/character and combat) are ranked significantly high for this game. The story of loner Squall falling in love while saving the world from Time Traveling witches is pretty difficult to forget, whether you liked it or not. Its music and graphics were ranked the lowest despite both being cutting edge at the time and holding up considerably well by today's standards. Course its hard to remember the whole soundtrack when you can't stop humming Laguna's Battle theme.

Title: Final Fantasy IX
Story/Characters: 39
Combat: 52
Exploration/Sidequests: 50
Music/Graphics: 39
Comments: A forum favorite and considered by many to be the most underrated of the Sony era FFs. IX is well loved not only for its tale of kidnapped princess, alien plots, and more moogles and chocobos than you can shake a stick at, but also the music that help immerse the player in the story and characters which is considered by some to be Nobuo Uematsu's last great soundtrack. Of course IX's theme was "going back to the roots" in terms of design and for some, that leaves a sour note. The games slow ATB gauge and incredibly long battle intros do much to aggravate players who are in a hurry to see the next story segment.

Title: Final Fantasy X
Story/Characters: 16
Combat: 22
Exploration/Sidequests: 32
Music/Graphics: 20
Comments: Hailed as having one of the most immersive stories part in thanks to being the first FF to use full voice acting in its cutscenes. The cast was brought to life by the addition of voices behind those pretty faces, it also doesn't help your trying to save the world from a giant whale that happens to be the main characters father with a party composed of a jock, a summoner, a goth black mage, a talking blue cat, jailbait, a badass, and Bender. Course all this gripping story took a toll of the games world design, while Spiura is definetly pretty, the fact is, the game is just one very looooooonnnng road, and with blitzball as your only means of diversion until the end of the game...

Title: Final Fantasy XII
Story/Characters: 33
Combat: 26
Exploration/Sidequests: 22
Music/Graphics: 29
Comments: Despite all the hate in the FF community, this relatively new entry in the series did pretty well in this census to my own surprise. As the "anti-FFX" as its sometimes know as, its not surprising that the games scores are the complete opposite of FFX. Exploration and sidequest? Hell yes cause Ivalice is a smurfing world and if you want to see it all, you need to get out there and do some stuff not just wait around for an old man to fill you in. So many side-quests and such a massive world design, its not surprising that it can take hours between each story segment... which is why most people never got into the game, with a cast that many consider "cold and aloof" from the player and a textbook political story, the most common question asked by people playing XII is "What's going on, and why should I care?".

Title: Final Fantasy XIII
Story/Characters: N/A
Combat: N/A
Exploration/Sidequests: N/A
Music/Graphics: N/A
Comments: See kids, this is what happens when you don't follow instructions and then decide to disappear from the Web.

Title: Final Fantasy Tactics
Story/Characters: 3
Combat: 3
Exploration/Sidequests: 7
Music/Graphics: 7
Comments: The scores are a bit low on account that there were only three people voting for them and only two of them know how to read instructions properly. FFT is well known by the small circle of geeks and nerd who actually bothered to play it for its incredibly mature story telling and cast as well as its revamped and deep combat system. Its no wonder its a tie. On account its an SRPG it has really know exploration and little in terms of side-quests. Its music while very good is also not as noticable when you are playing through the dramatic duel between Ramza and Weigraf with your Dragoon Monk with Move +3 and Blade Grasp counter move.

Title: Final Fantasy X-2
Story/Characters: 2
Combat: 3
Exploration/Sidequests: 1
Music/Graphics: 4
Comments: With its new mission based set up as well as the addition of a "jumping ability" X-2 allowed you to return to Spira and actually explore the place instead of rushing you to the final climatic battle between good and evil. The design of the game allows the player to choose their own pace and the variety of missions and mini-games makes each step towards the games conclusion that much more rich and enjoyable. The music is not as memorable, with Yuna suddenly becoming all J-Pop idol and belting out love ballads to bring peace to the world, you would almost think this was Macross but the quality shows its actually Macross 2.


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So there you have it, the unofficial EoFF census. So... while we are discussing the results, I would also love to hear some feedback on what worked and what didn't for this test run. With the exception of the long delay in getting the results cause that will be rectified in the future. If people feel this was at least a nice diversion, I'll be happy to do it all again except this time I'll build a team of volunteers to help me this time so it will be much easier to organize and not have to deal with my erratic whims. So feel free to add any feedback on what you would like to see for the next Census questions and I'll be happy to get PMs from anyone willing to volunteer to be a part of the EoFF Census Bureau.

[Shin Gouken]

I'm pleased with the results for the most part. FFV and FFXII are no longer unapreciated VI, VII, and IX would undoubtedly take the top three spots but V and XII closely following behind has restored my faith in the fans a little

[Slothy]

Its music and graphics were ranked the lowest despite both being cutting edge at the time and holding up considerably well by today's standards. Course its hard to remember the whole soundtrack when you can't stop humming Laguna's Battle theme.

VIII's graphics have certainly held up well for a PSX game, but I think most people were probably ranking based on the music there. Easily one of the most underwhelming soundtracks in the series, Man with the Machine Gun being one of the few exceptions.

As far as what I might change or would like to see, while I like the idea of ranking elements in the games based on what people liked the most to least, I think I'd rather see those elements simply scored (say on a 1-5 scale) and an average of those scores taken. There were times where I felt like I was almost flipping a coin to rank them simply because I would weight them almost equal, or at least close enough that making any distinction was fairly arbitrary. It might also be a little more readable. As for other questions to ask (and keeping in mind that more people would be adding this up) maybe we could keep some semblance of a ranking by asking for everyone's top 3 FF's in each category (music, gameplay, story/characters, etc.).

Also, I said it before in another thread but it's worth repeating: mark me down as volunteering to help total all this stuff up in the future. I think it's worth doing again (and perhaps even doing for other series in general gaming).

[VeloZer0]

As far as what I might change or would like to see, while I like the idea of ranking elements in the games based on what people liked the most to least, I think I'd rather see those elements simply scored (say on a 1-5 scale) and an average of those scores taken. There were times where I felt like I was almost flipping a coin to rank them simply because I would weight them almost equal, or at least close enough that making any distinction was fairly arbitrary. It might also be a little more readable. As for other questions to ask (and keeping in mind that more people would be adding this up) maybe we could keep some semblance of a ranking by asking for everyone's top 3 FF's in each category (music, gameplay, story/characters, etc.).

Yeah, me too.

Also, I said it before in another thread but it's worth repeating: mark me down as volunteering to help total all this stuff up in the future. I think it's worth doing again (and perhaps even doing for other series in general gaming).

Ditto.

I was reading the FF10 write up and I couldn't help but thinking 'man, writing all this good stuff about FF10 must be killing WK". Nice to see you brought it in by the end.

Any chance we could get some interesting stuff like which do the men/women value higher on average plot/gameplay/exploration/graphics? Or just raw data to mull over.

[qwertysaur]

Thank you for taking the time to do this

[Hot Shot]

That was pretty cool, but the results were a tad bit confusing. It might have been easier if you put the average scores up instead of total points. But never the less, great job WK!

[Wolf Kanno]

I plan on expanding the elements section and breaking it down further since that was one of the biggest gripes when I started trying to do this, though I may still lump combat with the character growth elements seeing as how the battle systems are mostly identical until recent entries.

I also plan on taking Levian's advice and letting people list their top 3 least favorite FF's and have a section for that as well. The next survey will be much longer and hopefully much fuller. So keep giving me feedback to wok with. I'll aslo contact everyone who has been volunteering.

The scoring turned out to be a bigger chore than I first imagined. Averages didn't work out partly cause some had a sheer higher volume of votes going for it and doing averages often lead to scores involving fractions. I was going to use the Mode but that ended up also causing issues with titles like VII, VIII, and XII who nearly had three way ties on their elements, so adding them up worked out the best for me at least.

I'll try to figure out the averages of favorite elements between Males and females but I assure you that story/character is pretty much number 1 across the board except when dealing with titles like FFV and XII where combat is number one. The biggest difference between guys and girls is that what few votes I got from girls shows they are pretty even on the series as a whole except FFX whereas guys definetly like VI, VII, and IX the most as the next ones up have significant number drops. I'll try to figure our averages for them nonetheless, but it would take way too long to write up all the data since I don't have Excel or anything.

One interesting tidbit is that the data for guy stuff would be much different if I actually bothered to put in my own entry (I didn't, cause I felt I should be a bit objective for this) cause it would have resulted in a three way tie for first place and either push FFV into second place or made second place a three way tie as well.

[Slothy]

One interesting tidbit is that the data for guy stuff would be much different if I actually bothered to put in my own entry (I didn't, cause I felt I should be a bit objective for this) cause it would have resulted in a three way tie for first place and either push FFV into second place or made second place a three way tie as well.

Who says one person can't make a difference?

And I should add a thank you for doing this since I forgot to earlier. I'm sure it was a fair bit of hard work and do appreciate your taking the time to run this.

[Depression Moon]

Cool results. I didn't know many really liked VIII's for it's music that much. Only about three stood out to me. Shame IX wasn't first and what's with you girls why don't y'all like IX?

[Levian]

Sweet stuff there, interesting to read! How many voters were there in total?