Wow, this is the kind of stuff we need in General Final Fantasy, something with some serious balls that sparks some real debate.

I'm totally with Forsaken Lover on this, and you guys can rationalize all day about time period, imagination, Led Zeppelin, and foundations all you want, but this thread IS NOT ABOUT your preferences, personal ranking of favorite games. It's about I-III being the worst in the series.

And they are. Hell, I rank FFII pretty high up on my list of Final Fantasies, I would III as well, but they're not better games than IV and V, much less VIII and IX. The characters in the SNES era were paper-thin and I-III's were even worse than that. And non-existent stories cannot be better than developed stories because the fact that there are so many differing opinions in games like VIII and X shows that they count as real art where people can have different interpretations of the meanings and quality.

Speaking of which, STOP OVERRATING THE TIME TRAVEL TWIST IN FFI AND THE LIGHT/DARK DEAL IN FFIII! There's nothing "deep" about them. They're generalizations briefly mentioned with no real exploration of the concept. There's nothing thought provoking in either of them, except for the inevitable head-scratching when you realize that FFI's ending is the worst deus ex machina literary technique of all time.

That being said, I have to concede two things:

1. Wolf brought up a great point about the music in FFII being better than most PS2 era music, this is a concept I've elaborated on myself and I would be a hypocrit to not acknowledge it. Although I would use "Castle Pandemonium" as an example b/c that jawn is bonkers!!! But still, we're talking about FF, and with Uematsu, Sakimoto, and ummm... the XIII dude handling the series' music, I simply cannot say FFI-III's were better on the merit of their ingenuity. Close, but they're not.

2. Thinking about XIII, I just *might* be coaxed into admitting that FFI is a better game than FFXIII.

But I won't!!! I still gotta beat that jawn, so no spoilers!