Your final Final Fantasy

[Flying Arrow]

This question's probably more for the older members out there - those who grew up side by side with the series for years:

Which game in the series is the last one for you? Specifically, which game marks the end of the warm memories and nostalgia, with all post-(your choice) entries being rip-offs, dumbed-down, whatever criticism. For instance, a lot of poster might see VI as the last game in the series, with VII and everything afterwards being the stuff that happened to come later, inferior to the true, earlier iterations of the series.

I've read a lot about the 'charm' of the series on this board and others, and I'm really curious about what this 'charm' entails for different players. I want to make it clear also that you don't necessarily have to like your "final" game; I'm curious about which last represented your idea of Final Fantasy.

My answer: X, probably. I could easily go with IX if we're talking about entries I enjoyed, though. X is a game I did not like, but, thinking back, still has the intangible Final Fantasy charm that I remember from the now-mid era entries (VII-IX). Although another reason is entirely practical: X, for a long time, was the last game in the series. XI as an MMO was so far removed from what Final Fantasy was up to that point, and XII came out so much later (five years after X?) and was so different that it might as well have been stuck with an entirely new moniker. The length of XII's development also makes it the longest gap between the single-player FFs to which most (*all) players had become accustomed. In a sense, Final Fantasy did end for a lot of players, with the new entries being the gaming equivalent of one's favourite band re-uniting after a long hiatus, still pretty good but no longer as cutting edge or as interesting as in the prime.

On that note, it's probably worth mentioning that the time between X and XII's releases marks my transition from teenager to young adulthood, with the mystique from news of newer entries long evaporated and the nostalgia lenses firmly suctioned onto my eyeballs. Although I'm not so big on X and smurfing loved XII, I still see XII as kind of a post-Final Fantasy. For more context on my perspective, the new XIII is even farther removed from the older games, despite being modeled after what I consider to be the 'last' game in the series.

A fact worth considering: the homage-like nature of IX was essentially designed for an era no more than eight or nine years its elder. FFs IV-VI were the biggest influences on IX, because those were the entries most of the world had played. Now with XIII, we have a game that riffs on a previous fan favourite (X) from almost nine years ago. I'm not sure what my point is with all this (other than making myself feel old) but I do find it interesting that XIII seems to be the IX of the new generation, albeit with substantially less material to work with.

Not sure how this thread will go over. Try to keep it civil, I guess. Curious to see what everyone else says.