Census Results - Get your slack asses in here.

[Loony BoB]

My name! It was mentioned! And therefore.

Barthandelus is, thus far, the only boss I have fought that has required me to actually figure out a strategy. Perhaps this is mostly down to me loving to get my characters really powerful before fighting bosses (eg. getting max'ed out materia, getting maximum junction magic going on, using hero potions etc.). The other bosses I've fought in I, II, V, VII, VIII, X and XII all allowed me to overpower my characters should I wish it, and in the cases of at least half of them my characters were already overpowered anyway. That to me wasn't strategy, so yeah.

Zell was the best character for me gameplay-wise because when I think of gameplay, I think of battles, and he had the most interesting type of unique skill (button sequence attacks) and the most fun of that kind of skill (with Sabin it seems to not appreciate my input when it deals with diagonal directions, which is frustrating).

Terra is boring as hell. I have never come across a character I have cared less about despite clearly being a major player. I don't know why. She just never came across as interesting to me. She has an interesting background, yes, but background does not a personality make. She could be the lovechild of Kefka and Ultimecia and her daughter could be Quina but all that would mean is that those three interesting characters would have a very boring relative that links them together. As for her skills, all she does is turn into some Espery weirdness. It's the same with Rinoa, and I think it's the most utterly boring skill of any of the VI characters. I'm glad she's rarely forced upon the player.

Disqualify me from entering the next census? Hey, at least I'm not biased towards my favourite and least favourite characters. Aeris is by far my least liked character but I can still appreciate her gameplay value. This is a gameplay census that clearly suffers from favouritism. >=|

Balamb Garden is slow and does turn like a tanker. How is that incorrect!? Hey Jiro, maybe you should write for IGN. >=| We're talking gameplay, and gameplay-wise with transport all I have to go with is the way you actually get transported, and Balamb Garden was awful. I didn't even mention how fat it was. I mean, damn, if you're that big, surely - surely - you can knock down a bridge? But no, it can't get through small gaps and it apparently isn't strong enough to bash it's way through, either, which means we miss out on more gameplay rather than gain it. You mention the fight between the two gardens, but this isn't a case of transport-gameplay, this is the case of cutscenes and field-based gameplay that just so happens to be taking place on/within vehicles. It is not down to the gameplay you experience when actually using the vehicles for, you know, transportation.

I can't see your pie graph, but I think it just demonstrates not how wrong I am, but how wrong you are to assume that everyone else is right, when clearly I am right, thus making so many other people wrong.

Also, XIII would have got at least one more vote for best job system if it wasn't for the fact that TA, V and XI are all just amazing.

[Slothy]

Disqualify me from entering the next census? Hey, at least I'm not biased towards my favourite and least favourite characters. Aeris is by far my least liked character but I can still appreciate her gameplay value. This is a gameplay census that clearly suffers from favouritism. >=|

To be fair, every census has had more than it's fair share of favourtism and participants ignoring instructions. You just happen to be more fun to pick on than most of them because you're staff and we don't like you.

[Quindiana Jones]

Good to see Vivi's got his hate back on!

[Slothy]

(with Sabin it seems to not appreciate my input when it deals with diagonal directions, which is frustrating).

I completely skimmed over this before. Did no one ever tell you about the alternate inputs for Blitz commands? Basically anytime you see a diagonal input you can simply press the direction before it again. So instead of a quarter-circle for Aura Bolt, try down, down, left instead. This works for every blitz input, including the obnoxious Bum Rush.

[Forsaken Lover]

The Northern Crater is tied for First Place?

It's a big hole in the smurfing ground. WOWZERS.

Granted I don't even think Memoria is my favorite dungeon. I just voted for it because I knew FFXII wouldn't be getting any votes. No matter how much I love the Great Crystal and Pharos, everyone else will whine about them.

Thanks for quoting me a few times though. I feel special.

[Jinx]

Memoria is kind of cool. You have all the different bizzaro rooms and stuff. And how "you can't see this memory, because you weren't there, you idiot."

[Wolf Kanno]

My name! It was mentioned! And therefore.

Barthandelus is, thus far, the only boss I have fought that has required me to actually figure out a strategy. Perhaps this is mostly down to me loving to get my characters really powerful before fighting bosses (eg. getting max'ed out materia, getting maximum junction magic going on, using hero potions etc.). The other bosses I've fought in I, II, V, VII, VIII, X and XII all allowed me to overpower my characters should I wish it, and in the cases of at least half of them my characters were already overpowered anyway. That to me wasn't strategy, so yeah.

Dude, the only strategy involved with Barthandelus is "kill him faster" which isn't much of a strategy if you ask me, which is not even terribly hard if you've actually been updating your weapons like you should be.

Terra is boring as hell. I have never come across a character I have cared less about despite clearly being a major player. I don't know why. She just never came across as interesting to me. She has an interesting background, yes, but background does not a personality make. She could be the lovechild of Kefka and Ultimecia and her daughter could be Quina but all that would mean is that those three interesting characters would have a very boring relative that links them together. As for her skills, all she does is turn into some Espery weirdness. It's the same with Rinoa, and I think it's the most utterly boring skill of any of the VI characters. I'm glad she's rarely forced upon the player.

You could not be more wrong, Terra spends the first half of her game trying to find out who she is, why she has magic and dealing with the burden this power she never asked for has on her life, as everyone, including the Returners, simply see her as a tool for their war. After she discovers her true origins, she spends the rest of the game questioning her very humanity, wondering if she could ever find a place for herself in a world that fears her and wants to use her only for her power, or must she be like the espers who placed themselves into self-exile to save themselves from the greed of humanity. Terra hesitantly chooses to use her powers for the greater good in order to save both sides of her lineage, but even by Thamasa, she is still questioning her decision, and her place in the world. Only in the World of Ruin does she find her salvation and raison d' etre by meeting the orphaned children of Mobliz, in the beginning she lies to the children in order to be accepted, but when her true friends and the children really need her, she finally awakens her true power. She is rewarded because instead of being ostracized and feared like she was before, the children of Mobliz accept Terra for who she is.

This all intertwines with Terra's theme and story about the hope of a new generation. Terra was born to be the bridge between espers and humanity that were thought to be unable to co-exist, and later she finds her own hope in a new generation that has not been tainted by the bias of the past and she is finally able to be accepted and to accept others who need her for who she is and not simply for her powers that have defined her and marked her all her life. In the very end, her strong ties to other people, allow her to escape the fate of the doomed espers and she is granted the normal life she always wanted. I don't quite fathom how any of this is boring.

Gameplay-wise, Terra is a Red Mage with a really nasty equipment and magic pool that makes her the ultimate jack-of-all-trades in her party in terms of offense. Her Trance/Morph skill is awesome because it's the only skill that doesn't lose its usefulness by end game. Especially in the GBA version with the Dragon's Den and Soul Shrine. The rest of the casts skills grow useless as the game goes on but, Morph/Trance allows Terra to be pretty much unstoppable. Not to mention it's incredibly useful in low level runs because it allows her to do incredibly damage and take lots of punishment at lower levels than other characters who need lots of abuse of the esper/relic system to come close to pulling off the same kind of theatrics.

Disqualify me from entering the next census? Hey, at least I'm not biased towards my favourite and least favourite characters. Aeris is by far my least liked character but I can still appreciate her gameplay value. This is a gameplay census that clearly suffers from favouritism. >=|

You've discovered the ulterior motive of the census, and it only took you two years.

[Jiro]

It's good to see that my constant prickery (totally a word) has managed to spark a little bit of discussion. Honestly though, I'm just smurfing with you all. Thanks for being good sports! There are no right or wrong answers in the Census!*

Least Favourite Customisation System

Let's take a look at which of these fine setups you hated the most. If it were up to me, we'd have a lot of ties for first place seeing as "customisation" also seems to stand for "making clone armies" in Final Fantasy. I thought the term was meant to imply a certain level of uniqueness.

One Pointers

• Natural Progression (FFII)
• Materia
• Character Class (IV/IX)
• Espers/Relic

Disappointed to see the creative genius that is Natural Progression sitting there. Why would anyone hate a game that rewards you for wailing on team mates? You're obviously doing things wrong.

Whatever you call FFII's system. The beat-up-your-own-characters-to-build-your-stats system.

I should've known it'd be you, pops! You're making me sad. Maybe I need to make a pie chart for you, too.

Fourth Place (3)
Chilling here is the License Board. I'll tell you why it sucked because I'm one of the three people who voted for it. Bloody thing isn't even real customisation.

The License Board was a good concept that ultimately fell short. It was far too easy to just grind for LP and fill the board entirely, instead of making choices about where to go next as was the case with the Sphere Grid.

See? It's bollocks. Waste of time. How does it even work, anyway? I'm sorry you can't use that axe because you don't have the right license! WHAT THE smurf SERIOUSLY COME ON.

First Place (5)
We've got a three way tie for first position, and frankly, you're all wrong. Well no, that's not true. Five of you are correct. First of all, we have the Junction system. It might be easily exploited but "easy" doesn't really discount the fact that it can be horribly horribly time consuming. I think our voters are either too lazy and stupid to make it work, or just didn't know how to vote for something truly tit.

I guess I'd say Junctioning. That's system seemed bitchy.

What does that even mean?

]

Our next tied position and once again the wrong decision is the Sphere Grid. You guys wouldn't know customisation if it ran up and smacked you in the face with the Buster Sword and then ran off humming a chocobo theme. smurfing hell. Maybe you just didn't get the Expert Grid. The Expert Grid is amazingly good for customisation. It's so good at making things customised that you could potentially smurf everything up. You only hate that if you're a useless wimp, so suck it, suckers.

Sphere Grid. Didn't get it.

Precisely.

The last and only acceptable winner of this is the Crystarium. There was no actual "customisation" here. You followed one pathway, and that was it. Sure, you have the choice between which jobs to level, but you have to level them all if you want to succeed. It's stupid. Only in Endgame can you really customise party-wise and by that point you're probably already on your way to maxing the three main jobs so it's not even like there are differences between each of your characters!

Crystarium. So little ACTUAL customization, to call it such is laughable.

Crystarium or whatever it was called. Its nothing more than you manually upgrading your party like the CPU did back in FFIV. There is no real customization option to be had and it becomes a total grind fest by the end game. At least Sphere Grid gave the illusion of customization, even if it rarely amounted to anything of use.

Lastly we have an astute observation from Mr VeloZer0.

Crystarium. As a wise-ish man once remarked, we have come full circle to the computer handling the battles and the player handling the mundane stat upgrading.

Yeah, smurf you Crystarium. It was pretty, at least.

[Jinx]

I like the Sphere Grid, but it doesn't become customization until 3/4 of the way through the game. A majority of it is just following the path already laid out for you. Of course, except how you always never have enough ability spheres until smurfing Home, and you have to skip a lot of abilities and come back.

[Slothy]

Yeah, smurf you Crystarium. It was pretty, at least.

I wouldn't even give it the satisfaction of being called pretty. Like most of FFXIII, I think it was a god damned eye sore.

I like the Sphere Grid, but it doesn't become customization until 3/4 of the way through the game. A majority of it is just following the path already laid out for you. Of course, except how you always never have enough ability spheres until smurfing Home, and you have to skip a lot of abilities and come back.

I declare Tifa's Boobs the unofficial winner of the census for recognizing the sphere grid to be the cheap parlour trick it is.

[Jiro]

Clearly you need to invest in Distil Ability early on. I never had an issue with Ability Spheres once I figured that little trick out. Now let's continue shall we? I don't have all smurfing week.

Least Favourite Dungeon

Honestly I'd probably say most of them. Dungeons are a pain in the butt. I mean they are essential, but sometimes it's just like...smurf, I don't want to walk through this cave/sunken ship/ruin/whatever any more. I just want to go home where it's warm but not too warm where I can sleep on a bed for seven seconds and be fully rested and abuse my italics for emphasis.

One Pointers

• Ebot’s Rock
• Cave of Shadows
• Garasmythe Waterway
• Carleige Citadel
• Mysidian Tower
• Ice Cavern (FFI)
• Great Crystal (FFXII)
• Zozo
• Midgard Underground

Basically what I'm getting from this is that you guys basically hate every dungeon too. Now I know I was just talking about my lack of enthusiasm for dungeons but smurf me you're pussies. Man the smurf up, pick up that two tonne sword, and start smurfing spelunking. No wonder you hate everything, your lives are bland and lack adventure. I will bury you in a tiny underground chamber and see if you can find your way out. Then who's laughing. Still me. Always me. Let's see if any of you jackasses managed to provide some reasoning with your submissions.

The one where you come out at that place. There were things in there trying to kill you. A lot. There was treasure there but it wasn't very good. Before I left I fought this really hard baddie and died. Yeah, that one.

Way to be a comedian, Bubba. You're the first one I'm gonna bury. I'll put you in the attic of a haunted house. Maybe the zombies will keep you warm at night. smurfing smartass son of a submariner.

Great Crystal (FFXII) (too repetitive; too dangerous)

You are a smurfing pansy bitch. Too dangerous? Go home and cry to your mother then. Leave the scary stuff to the real adventurers.

Midgar Underground, especially the train tracks. It's the same thing for way too long.

That's because you went the wrong way, dumbass. GOODNESS. What kind of adventurers have zero sense of direction? Invest in a small ethnic boy to help if you can't find your own way.

Special Mention

Before we move on, I have to give a special mention to Final Fantasy XIII. Three people thought they would be clever and nominate the whole smurfing game as being their least favourite dungeon. You realise that not only are your votes disqualified, but I now know you to be full fledged halfwits with a poor sense of humour and even poorer taste in vidya. I'm not even going to read your damn justification - if there even is any you lazy sasquatches - because your right to have opinions is now completely revoked.

First Place (3)

We can't decide between Deling Sewers and Lodestone Cavern/Dark Elf Cave. Never been to the latter. What's it all about? I like the name though. Lodestone Cavern sounds boss. I'm assembling a crack team of adventurers to go and clean the place out. You want in? Don't make me laugh. You're too crap to come with me. Go practice your meagre skills on some goddamn Imps and come back later.

FF4 Dark Elves Cave. Great game design, but I freaking hate every trip in there.

The fact that you recognise it is great game design but then continue to denounce it leaves me no choice but to revoke your right to an opinion also. Is there anybody around here that isn't a grand disappointment?

Any cave. I just hate video game caves. A special shout out to the Deling Sewers because I thought I was supposed to go down them when I was Laguna and I was lost for hours.

You were doing so well until you pointed out the fact that you are incredibly bad at following in game directions. Clearly Laguna would not want to spend his time off in a sewer, but rather chatting up Julia over a couple of pints. You have let me down for the last time. Obviously you all have no idea what is going on, so let me show you what an acceptable answer looks like.

The sewer of FFVIII. It was inconvenient, detracted from the plot and was utterly stupid in its existence. It was repetitive, bland and confusing. It built no tension like it was supposed to and meant taking time to shuffle GFs between Squall and Co. and the gate team and then back again.

Happy now? Go get lost in a cave or something. Hell, save yourself some walking and just put a paper bag over your head. You'll be just as lost and we still won't have to look at your dopey faces.

[Jiro]

Can you smell that? Smells like... danger. Excitement. It's time for me to attempt an impossible feat, and that's to do two reveals in one. Can we do it? I don't know folks. Let's give it a good shot. At least I have a mild chance of success. You would crash and burn before we even took off.

Most and Least Favourite Spell Types

Basically these categories are about what kind of magic turns you on. Or doesn't. We have a lot of spells to look at in the Final Fantasy series. Even when we break them down into categories, it can be confusing. We even helped you out by listing the categories you could vote for, and the ones you couldn't. Sadly, a lot of people still didn't smurfing vote for one or both of these categories. You people sicken me. You could have just rolled a smurfing dice to choose, you know.

Sixth Place
For the Most Favourite side of things, in sixth place we have Arcane with absolutely no smurfing votes. Remember this, folks. Because if you are not complete imbeciles, Arcane should have the most votes for the negative side of things. Speaking of, in sixth place for Least Favourite we have Time with a single vote. How crap would you feel to be the only person hating something? Also keep this in mind: Time should win the positive side of things, unless you are all bipolar nutjobs who probably need to return to school and learn how to rank things.

Fifth Place
We'll start with positive again so your little pea-sized brains can handle it. Here we have Green with only a single vote. Again, must feel pretty stupid to like something nobody else does.

Green. Shell, Protect, Bravery and Faith are all awesome, though Haste comes in close second.

On the negative side of the fence, we have Arcane with two smurfing votes. Hang on one smurfing minute. None of you like Arcane, but only two of you dislike it? I don't need to explain that you are all imbeciles again, do I?

Arcane, I guess. Different games use them to better or worse effect. Before X, casting debuffs was usually more hassle than its worth.

arcane (arcane magics are always obsolete imo)

Yeah, okay, whatever Mr Banned. Hang on one more smurfing minute, what's this? We have ties in the negatives? smurf me, you people just try so hard to make my life difficult. Alongside Arcane is Black magic. You hate the magic that blows tit up? What's wrong with you! That's the most fun!

Black. Never really found it too useful, blue magic always topped it.

Poor Karifean. Both of his choices in these categories end up at the bottom. Nobody shares a wavelength with the poor kid. Now what the smurf is the third spell type tied up here? I'll tell you what it is, it's smurfing White magic. You hate both Black and White magic the same. Did you know that's all there used to smurfing be?! You privileged pricks and your rainbows of magic, back in the day they had to deal with only two kinds. TWO. KINDS. Greedy spoilt sons of submariners.

White, yes you heard me right. Mainly because most of the classes spells are boring and pretty samey unless its one of the pre-FFV titles and you get stuff like Haste and and Harm. If the game gives me a job class with more versatile spells options and can heal, I'll usually drop my healer in exchange for that class (usually Blue Mage). Later entries also give you souped up potion items and save points that restore health so I feel the White mage tends to be dead weight unless they have some other magic to help them stay relevant.

Thanks for the essay but you're still wrong. White mages - especially female white mages - are awesome. Disregard census results, get bitches.

Fourth Place
Seeing as the negatives are tied up for a while (OH MAN THE PUNS ARE FANTASTIC), we'll only be looking at the positive result this time. Can you guess what it is? Time magic, baby. Gotta go fast, gotta haste this bitch, gotta burn rubber, aw yeah But seriously, with 4 votes, it's not enough to get anywhere.

Time. One of the benefits of ATB is having those charge times, and having character speed matter. Being able to cast haste and slow alone is hugely useful in a battle, and I like that you're essentially manipulating the most fundamental aspect of the battle system to your advantage.

Clearly this is the only correct answer. Time magic is baller.

Time! Tidus was a bit of a game breaker with his time wizardry. The Tidus solo challenge is pretty fun.

Third Place
Once more, we've only got a positive entry. Who's it gonna be? Well, it'd be predictable if you dicks knew how to vote. Anyway, say hello to Black magic. Who needs nukes when you can summon giant fireballs out of thin air? smurfin' ace. Nobody could tell us why Black magic is awesome but then again they probably froze their mouths shut with a misplaced Blizzaga or something. It got 5 votes so that's a lot of useless people.

Second Place
You know I just remembered that this Census was based on gameplay and practicality which means technically there are right and wrong answers. Which means you are all wrong and I haven't just been saying it because I wanted it to be true. It actually is true. So For the positive second place we have White magic, 'cause everybody knows that white mages do it best. Six votes in the bank, aw yeah.

White. I can kill things with swords, but I need white to heal. Which also usually gives me the option of nuking the crap out of things with the best offensive spell in the game.

Holy is pretty boss. Healing undead is also kickass.

White. "Heal the World. Make it a better place. For you and for me and the entire human race. There are people dying. If you care enough for the living. Make a better place for you and for me."

You just keep on singing you talented prick.

For the negatives we have Blue magic, proving beyond all doubt that you people are idiots. Let's get some explanations from the 6 voters to try and reconcile this in my head, shall we?

Blue. Aside from my dislike of that colour, I never liked having to wait until I got hit by spells and attacks in order to learn them and make use of them. As a result, I either rarely take my Blue Mages, or rarely use the class because they start off fairly useless. Plus, I have such a tendency to fly through areas as quickly as possible that I often miss good Blue Magic simply because I didn't have the time to have it cast on me. Even knowing that Blue Mages can be some of the most broken classes in FF titles doesn't make me take the time to train them, largely because the games are pretty easy anyway.

After all that text I still don't know what you're saying. Oh well.

Blue Magic. Derpaderp, I got a great idea! You can only gain this ability if the monster decides to use it on the specific character you want it used on! It's genius!!!!!!!

I think you're being sarcastic.

First Place
Here's the winrars. I hope you're smurfing satisfied. For positives, we have Blue with 10 votes. It's the first best and second worst magic type guys!!! Seriously, you make me cry. Humanity is doomed while people like you walk this earth. smurf off to Pluto. Not a real planet? Even better.

Blue Magic has by far the most functionality, but loses some value by being difficult to learn. Still, the wide range of abilities and generally cheap cost makes a blue mage a powerhouse.

Enemy Skills bounced back with a Reflect spell is fun, but using it from your own repertoire is even better.

Blue Magic, yes they are difficult to obtain, but they are always worth it, the only games where they suck are in the titles that make them into Limit Breaks but seriously I'll take White Wind and Mighty Guard over a simply heal and Wall spell thank you very much.

Green takes first place in the losers category. It gets 8 votes, which is substantially more than what it got in the favourite spell category. What a useless pile of tit. GREEN, of all colours...

Green. Sorry, there is no affirmative action color magic policy. You do not deserve to be your own spell class.

Green! Sometimes it's really useful, like in FFVIII or FFXIII, but most of the time it's just not worth it.

While the spells within Green magic are actually good, there are rarely times where they are necessary. The need to debuff enemies particularly, as you can usually just exploit elemental weaknesses or beat the tit out of them.

Green. Not a big fan of status changes. Why go for a status change when you can just kill?

Green, I suppose? Seems pointless to me...this stuff was mostly White or Black for the longest time...why change it?

Notice how I voted for both winners. This is how you know you're not completely back to smurfing front. We might not have ranked them very well but at least the correct result is on top, no? Try not to fail so abysmally next time.

[Loony BoB]

Dude, the only strategy involved with Barthandelus is "kill him faster" which isn't much of a strategy if you ask me, which is not even terribly hard if you've actually been updating your weapons like you should be.

Yeah, but that's still more strategy than "be at least L50, don't worry, you'll slaughter him, just attack attack attack attack attack."

Gameplay-wise, Terra is a Red Mage with a really nasty equipment and magic pool that makes her the ultimate jack-of-all-trades in her party in terms of offense. Her Trance/Morph skill is awesome because it's the only skill that doesn't lose its usefulness by end game. Especially in the GBA version with the Dragon's Den and Soul Shrine. The rest of the casts skills grow useless as the game goes on but, Morph/Trance allows Terra to be pretty much unstoppable. Not to mention it's incredibly useful in low level runs because it allows her to do incredibly damage and take lots of punishment at lower levels than other characters who need lots of abuse of the esper/relic system to come close to pulling off the same kind of theatrics.

Like I said, boring. Useful != Fun. Damaged past != Interesting. etc. etc. etc.

You've discovered the ulterior motive of the census, and it only took you two years.

It would have taken me seconds if the census didn't take two years...

PS. Thanks Vivi22 I'll have to try that out. Here's hoping it does the trick, because I'd like to see what his moves are like.

[Jessweeee♪]

Dude, the only strategy involved with Barthandelus is "kill him faster" which isn't much of a strategy if you ask me, which is not even terribly hard if you've actually been updating your weapons like you should be.

Yeah, but that's still more strategy than "be at least L50, don't worry, you'll slaughter him, just attack attack attack attack attack."

Seriously! If you ask for help in most other FF games people are like "game's not hard dude, just grind a little more and try it again."

[Wolf Kanno]

Like I said, boring. Useful != Fun. Damaged past != Interesting. etc. etc. etc.

Coming from a man who likes Vanille, I certainly hope to never share your opinion on characterization. Terra's past is probably the most damaged past in the cast if you stop to think about it. Not to mention customizing Terra is fun, but considering you said before you don't bother with most magic and skills and just spam attack and cure spells, I can see how the concept of gameplay is lost on you.

Dude, the only strategy involved with Barthandelus is "kill him faster" which isn't much of a strategy if you ask me, which is not even terribly hard if you've actually been updating your weapons like you should be.

Yeah, but that's still more strategy than "be at least L50, don't worry, you'll slaughter him, just attack attack attack attack attack."

Seriously! If you ask for help in most other FF games people are like "game's not hard dude, just grind a little more and try it again."

Except it still is the same strategy with Barthandelus, you can't grind levels for your characters but 99% of the time, he kicks your ass the first time because you haven't bothered leveling your weapons, so you are still basically level grinding better gear and then switching between an attack paradigm and healing paradigm, which is essentially the same thing you do in other FFs.

The dressing is a little different but the game still hangs with all the old problems of JRPG gameplay.