Most underrated Final Fantasy?

[Meat Puppet]

hmm VII

[Omni-Odin]

V and VIII

[arcanedude34]

To those who responded to my post, I will say, fair enough. Though, expecting me to grind excessively to be on par with enemies whereas I normally coast through RPGs without grinding except for optional superbosses is a bit annoying, but I don't hold that against Tactics since it's kinda supposed to be that kinda game.

That being said, I don't think Tactics is underrated, as nearly everyone who has played it acknowledges it as one of the best. TA, on the other hand, gets overlooked as being a kid-friendly handheld game.

[Wolf Kanno]

^ I will not disagree with that. FFT is only underrated in that its not as well known as fans would like but when considering people in the knowing, I feel the TA series gets kicked down more for silly reasons when they titles are actually very good. That's why it got my vote for being the most underrated.

[Skyblade]

Off the top of my head, the enemy nearly always has several more troops than you can ever have on a playing field

Most SRPGs tend to let the player be outnumbered. In FFT its usually only by two or three and with a proper party its rarely a big deal. The difference between leveling in FFT and FFTA series is that FFTA is completely mission based so you get all your random leveling through the missions you undertake whereas its easy to actually avoid random encounters in FFT and be underleveled for the story battles.

Actually, experience in FFTA was done via actions in combat, via a very straightforward system that is far easier to manipulate than FFT's.

You are still grinding in both games but FFTA series hides it behind you redoing the same missions over and over again whereas FFT makes you do more traditional RPG random battles. Where I feel FFT is better than FFTA is that its possible to maximize these encounters to get major benefits for your party whereas FFTA feels it has to mediate all XP and JP for every encounter meaning that you are better off just using overly abusive abilites that litter the title, to end battles as quickly as possible, so you can get to the next mission. It makes battles very tedious in my opinion and even with the laws, its very easy to get past them or flat out ignore them.

FFTA had randomly set up enemy encounters that you could engage or retreat from far easier than the "walk back and forth for 5 days" that FFT used. It just also had a number of optional missions in addition to make things more interesting than fighting the same enemies over and over (as happens in the random encounters, as each area only has something like two possible set-ups for enemies).

there's NO semblance of balance between jobs (who the hell is ever going to use all or even half the jobs in the game when so many are just terrible?)

Well me for starters and I must say that with the proper preparation I've found that all the classes are extremely useful as long as you know what you are doing. Certainty some classes are more useful than other but I feel this is less about the class being broken as much as its that the class requires less work and effort to bring out their full potential. With a proper set up, you can actually beat every applicable battle with just using the same party and with the right equipment, you may not even need sub classes or abilites outside of the classes theoretically.

Um, yeah, no. Sure, you can argue about how each class "has its potential uses", but how many of them do you actually use when you play the game? 3 or 4, tops. There are clearly some classes that just do way better than others. Calculators eliminate the need for basically every other magic-using class in the game, for example.

In TA's case, the classes are completely unbalanced. Soldier is completely useless, Gadgeteer is completely unpredictable and makes the class useless and other classes like Beastmaster are only useful for helping make good classes (Blue Mage) useful. You can ignore the Nu Muo, Moogles, Bangaa, Seeq, and Gria and easily beat the game. I can solo missions with a two party set-up using an Illusionist and a Paladin with Fighter skills.

Soldier is useless? Did you PLAY Tactics? Squire is useless. It has one passive ability that everyone uses because without it, the grind becomes even more tedious, and one ability that can be spammed infinitely for JP. That's it. Soldiers have a hell of a lot more utility than that. They have more well rounded stat growth than Paladins or Fighters, and, while their weapon choice is inferior to those classes, their debuffs can be very handy.

Most of the Humes classes are horribly overpowered and they are easily the best melee characters in the game simply because they get Duel Wield which allows them to out-damage anything the Bangaa could throw at the enemy not to mention the time spent learning the skill as a Ninja means your Hume will get two turns for every one the Bangaa gets unless you leave the Bangaa as a White Monk until the game ends. The Seer Class is just cheap as well.

Ninja don't have great attack growth, and a lot of the Bangaa classes do. Even once you unlock Dual Wield (which isn't done in the first half-hour the way it is in Tactics), it takes a long time to master it, during which your Bangaa is levelling up in a job like Gladiator, which, when combined with Doublehand, lets him out damage most Ninja, even with Dual Wield. Dual Wield on its own isn't that overpowered. It's when it's combined with the weapons of a Paladin and a job with decent attack growth that it rises to such a prominent position (and even then, in FFTA, Concentrate is usually better).

Viera are faster than the Nu Muo, more durable and better at magic than the Moogles and can actually hold their own with melee. A summoner with with proper equips can just nuke chunks of the map and restore their own health.

I won't try to argue that FFTA doesn't have problems, especially with racial balancing (although any of the other races is vastly more useful than any of the monsters from FFT, except for the two or three that let you infinitely min-max your team). But every race has its points. Jugglers are the best distraction unit in the game, with no-cost abilities that put the Elementalist to shame, and Tinkers can kill entire groups on their own if you set them up right. And even Nu Mou have their purposes in TA (they can be the highest-damage unit in the game, used right).


I'm too lazy to answer the rest right now, but I'll do it later.

[Slothy]

Um, yeah, no. Sure, you can argue about how each class "has its potential uses", but how many of them do you actually use when you play the game? 3 or 4, tops. There are clearly some classes that just do way better than others. Calculators eliminate the need for basically every other magic-using class in the game, for example.

Can't really agree with any of this. If you only use 3-4 classes tops when you play through FFT then that's cool and all, but everytime I've played through I've used almost every class in the game very successfully at one time or another. The only ones I've never used much were basically Dancer, Mystic, Bard, and Orator. Not that they can't be good, I just never cared for their play styles and abilities. Plus, everything else can either hold their own in battle, or in the case of the calculator, has a skill so good that you'd be a fool not to learn it. Point is though, that pretty much every class is useful which does lead to a wide variety of different party setups and strategies. I've talked with plenty of people who use different class setups than I do regularly.

Which brings me to your last point actually. The Calculators ability is amazing, but their stats are so weak that their only use is learning it. Once you learn their Math abilities you're better off never using them again, and they aren't so good that I'd take them into a hard fight over a Black Mage or Summoner that can actually attack at a reasonable rate.

[No.78]

V is the most underrated FF.

It has the best job system, imo.