EoFF Final Fantasy Census 2010! REVELATIONS!!!!

[Laddy]

This incredible hatred of the excellent VII shows that Vivi22 is nothing more than a hipster with a computer.

[Slothy]

Your theory is flawed since I voted shinra best evil empire. I'll give credit where it's due, and that's about all the credit VII deserves. Besides, if anything I'm a cranky old codger by FF standards.

Anyway, unexpected internet trouble kept me from updating last night. It was 12:00 by the time I got it sorted out and I have to work today so the final update should happen later tonight.

[Slothy]

It ends tonight!

After much heel dragging, disappointment, and me taking all of the credit when Flying Arrow did most of the hard work, we're finally at the end. It's been a long road filled with tears, dead babies, and sexual satisfaction and although it will probably be months, if not years, until the next census we must press on. So without any further delay since the word adieu is French and offends me as an English Canadian, here it is.

Favourite Story:

I want to do this one a little differently by giving you the full results first.

1) FFVI 9 27.3%
1) FFVII 9 27.3%
2) FFIX 8 24.2%
3) FF Tactics 2 6.2%
3) FFVIII 2 6.2%
4) FFIV 1 3.1%
4) FFX 1 3.1%
4) FFXIII 1 3.1%

Now as you can see there is a tie for first, however, as a result of a quirk of automatic sorting in Openoffice, likely resulting from some priority placed on a VI over a VII, FFVI is higher on the list. Therefore I'm declaring it the winner due to the inherent limitations of a single column list. Yep, a computer program has resulted in the better story winning out and a lot less death and destruction than you'd all suffer if it hadn't happened that way.

Now I didn't really want to use another quote from Wolf on this one, but he does tend to spend way too much time thinking about crap that no one cares about and therefore explains why FFVI deserved to win better than I would. At least I think that's what he did. Frankly I tend to doze off a few sentences into his posts and just assume the wall 'o text is an indicator of his intelligence.

VI, it's premise was kind of novel for its time but really its the cast and the events of the WoR that make this game standout for me. The fact your party utterly fails to stop the worse case scenario let alone have to topple a world on the brink of death. The game is just epic.

And so that FFVII is represented I guess, here we have Roto13:

VII, smurf the haters

That's the spirit Roto. Keep fighting that battle for the game that has now been scientifically proven (through science!) to be wrong.

I like the anti-Shin-Ra story of FF7. I keep mentioning FF7. I swear I'm not obsessed, I've played and liked most of them.

You may have played most of them Clo, but you're still wrong.

And here to talk about FFIX, the game that would have been second if we stopped relying on human testing, is Genius Lynx:

In Final Fantasy IX this monkey loves the girl he is hired to steal and then fights his thong-wearing brother

Well said my friend. Well said.

Now that may be it for the actual results, but we'll cap things off with a few more random facts compiled by Flying Arrow since I'm a lazy smurf:

FFVI:
- FFVI is the favourite story of all users aged 28 or older
- 44.4% who state it's their favourite began playing FF with a PS1-or-later-era entry
- 44.4% who state FFVI as favourite story have another game as favourite ending
-Of the 30% who voted FFVI as having the best cast, >70% of these users began the series in an SNES or earlier game.

FFVII:
- 50% of users who voted it as having their favourite plot twist have a different game as favourite story
- Of users who began with FF7:
- 91% have a favourite story among the PS1 entries
- 72% are (as of voting) 23-years-old or younger – (10-years or younger at original release)
- Only 50% of these users voted it their favourite story
- 27.3% consider it to have the best writing
- Of the 48.5% of users who voted Shinra best evil empire:
- Only 44% of these users have FFVII as favourite story
- 69% of these users have a ‘favourite world’ from another game

FFIX:
- 75% of users who state ‘favourite story’ began the series before FF9

And finally, before we end this completely, I leave you with the comments of the lone voter for FFXIII, Jessweeee♪:

FFXIII! Many complain about the game's linearity, but I think it made the story an even better experience.

There was a lot wrong with FFXIII, and linearity was the least of it's problems. But kudos to you. Until now I thought only politicians were stubborn enough to keep backing a turd for over a year.

So there we have it. Go forth and discuss. I promise I'll be less of a dick for now. At least until the next census.

[Jiro]

Good to see the right game won to be honest

I'm impressed with how tight the top three were. I expected a blow out. If we had a bit more participation, I'm sure we could've seen everything including Tactics and all those older games (IV, V et al) up there as contenders.

Poor Jessweeee♪, backing a sinking ship. I'm gonna be honest though, I think the haters are hatin' too much. 13 weren't that bad of a game, though I haven't finished it yet. It might fail harder in the last few hours than I have foreseen.

'grats to Vivi22 and the boys for running a top gig. I'll upload your rants to the wiki after I have a nap.

[Raistlin]

FF7 is deserving of Best Plot Twist. Aeris's death is commonly known as one of the most emotional and shocking events in FF history (even if some people -- *cough*meandBoB*cough* -- later enjoyed it. It still was shocking the first time, and really well done.

I am also quite amused and pleased that no one voted FFX for Best Story -- not even that crazy Jessweee with her freakish tastes. Then again she probably voted FF8. *gag* Actually why is FFIV listed three times at the end?

My agreement ends there, however. FF7 definitely doesn't deserve Best Story, because the writing was terrible and skimmed over gaping holes that needed to be better filled. It maybe deserves "Best Potential Story," as it is so disappointing to me that the story held so much promise, yet was so poorly executed.

[Slothy]

Actually why is FFIV listed three times at the end?

Because the auto correct in open office is weird sometimes and I didn't notice when I copy and pasted the results after reformatting them a bit from what Flying Arrow gave us originally. I've fixed it now.

[Raistlin]

So someone did vote for FFX after all. I know it was you, Jessweee!

EDIT: Also, how the hell did anyone vote for FFXIII? Chapters 9-13 was the worst example of writing I have ever had the misfortune of playing through. Chapter 13 especially was basically the designers saying "ok, let's just do something weird and put a lot of completely random mini-boss fights along the way. That should distract them. And then we'll wrap it up with an entirely incoherent ending, but it'll be ok because it ends happily and people love that corny ."

[Jessweeee♪]

So someone did vote for FFX after all. I know it was you, Jessweee!

EDIT: Also, how the hell did anyone vote for FFXIII? Chapters 9-13 was the worst example of writing I have ever had the misfortune of playing through. Chapter 13 especially was basically the designers saying "ok, let's just do something weird and put a lot of completely random mini-boss fights along the way. That should distract them. And then we'll wrap it up with an entirely incoherent ending, but it'll be ok because it ends happily and people love that corny ."

I voted FFXIII. Though FFX, which I think I voted for Favorite Ending, would be my second choice. Also, I suggest you play Star Ocean: Til the End of Time.

[The Man]

The first disc of SO3 was pretty good. The second disc was almost completely nonsensical. At least the music was good though.

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll take my fourth dimensionwall breaking plot twist over XIII's utter garbage of a plot. At least So3's plot twist was funny, XIII takes itself so seriously it can't even be taken as gnarm and is just awful...

[The Man]

That is a point in its favour; while earlier parts of the game are definitely quite serious, it's very difficult to argue that SO3 was attempting to take itself seriously by that point

[Jessweeee♪]

I wonder about that