LEAST favorite Final Fantasy location

[Formalhaut]

In XII? I cannot remember a tower with 100 floors. I do remember something incredibly similar in FFX-2, with the Via Infinito that I quite enjoyed because it was the only difficult part of the game. And in the international version of X-2, there was a tower, though fairly certain it wasn't 100 floors.

I've never owned the IZJS version of XII because the bloody Japanese never release international versions to little ol' Europe, but there might be a new dungeon in XII IZJS that I don't know about. Sorry I'm not very helpful

[Wolf Kanno]

I think he's talking about the Pharos Lighthouse, though it did have some story scenes (not many considering its length) and tons of bosses and a few minor puzzles.

[Clo]

It's really odd, because I love MOST of the locations in FFXII, but I remember that tower Roogle is referring to and that thing WAS HELL.

[Forsaken Lover]

I'm pretty sure the only story scenes are in the very beginning and the very end of the Pharos.

Although you can read those glowing pillar things to get some fluff about the Occuria. I didn't even do that though - just read all of it on Wikiquote.
Plus I liked the music.

And FFII might have had some pretty crappy dungeons but a lot of them were saved by one of the best dungeon tracks in the entire franchise:
Final Fantasy II OST : 13 - Ancient Castle - YouTube

Although the tower talk and the talk of the 2D FFs having inherently worse dungeons makes me think of Mysidia Tower....

Why did you force me through all those gimmicky floors of elemental bosses and hell just to get a spell that isn't even worth trout in gameplay, let alone story?!
WHY FF2?!! WHY DO YOU MAKE IT SO HARD FOR ME TO LOVE YOU?

[Pete for President]

There was a dungeon in Final Fantasy XII that involved going up almost a hundred floors to retrieve an item. I can't remember what the dungeon was called because it was so tedious that I have tried to block it out of memory. That place had very little interaction between the characters or any story events at all while you were ascending the tower. So am I to believe that they could scale this tower in a few hours without stopping to rest with a campfire scene or something? The dungeon was horribly paced for me and it took me several hours to get through it without any promise of a cutscene or something to take a break with.

It had some terrible puzzles too!

Like many have already said Zozo must get nuked, as well as the Tower of Fanatics. I would't even know how to beat that thing without the emulator's ability to save everywhere. Bosses that have an insta-kill move that is triggered by actually beating them are just a kick in the nuts to a player.

[Loony BoB]

How anyone can objectively say that any location from VII onwards is worse than a random lengthy mine/cave dungeon in FFI through FFVI is beyond me. At least in 3D worlds the mines/caves can look different. Seriously.

I can understand abnormally high encounter rates, but if you're going to go down that road then I'll point to some rooms in early FF dungeons which had encounters for every few steps you took. Basically you had to avoid those rooms and not explore them unless you wanted to level up using them or something. Either way, those early FF dungeons were basically crap in every way I could imagine. I can't really blame SE for that, games of that era were restricted by game engines and graphical capabilities. But that doesn't mean that suddenly a beautiful landscape in one of the more modern games is suddenly worse.

It sounds to me like people are associating these locations with one-off plot devices or cutscenes rather than the locations themselves.

I can get behind the FFVII dungeons are blah cause only a handful of them really impressed me because as I've mentioned (I'm a broken record now) that the adment of 3D simply made dungeons more about how they look and lost a lot of their gameplay appeal, not the the first six games don't have troutty dungeon design at least somehwere but I do agree that barring the ShinRa-HQ and the Temple of the Ancients, I never felt like any of the other dungeons had lasting gameplay appeal. Even the Crater is a pretty subpar final dungeon in comparison to the four games before it.

As for why people trout on a dungeon, I feel its perfectly legitimate to nail it for story reasons, especially if its because the game either can't justify the place for story reasons of in the case of my Mt. Gagazet rant, I felt the story interfered with enjoying the location. Its a package a deal if you ask me.

But how can anyone honestly say that these dungeons are worse than the copy/paste mine/cave dungeons found in all 2D RPGs? :S Most of them have nothing but perhaps lava or switches or something, and that's it... 2D hallways all over the place for the rest of it. Perhaps it's unfair because they're 2D and comparing to 3D gives them an immediate and instant disadvantage, but you can't say that a cripple isn't slower than an athlete just because they're a cripple.

[Formalhaut]

I think he's talking about the Pharos Lighthouse, though it did have some story scenes (not many considering its length) and tons of bosses and a few minor puzzles.

Ah, my bad. I got confused on the whole 100 floor thing and went "Wait, eh?!". Of course it's the Pharos; the the only damn tower in the game.

Actually, one area of the game I didn't enjoy was the Great Crystal. Maybe it's because of the confusing way stones and names like Leo XVIII and trout like that which can get confusing. Though even that pales in comparison to spending plenty of time there trying to get the bloody Danjuro...

[Wolf Kanno]

But how can anyone honestly say that these dungeons are worse than the copy/paste mine/cave dungeons found in all 2D RPGs? :S Most of them have nothing but perhaps lava or switches or something, and that's it... 2D hallways all over the place for the rest of it. Perhaps it's unfair because they're 2D and comparing to 3D gives them an immediate and instant disadvantage, but you can't say that a cripple isn't slower than an athlete just because they're a cripple.

See this is an issue of value dissonance, I'm not terribly bothered by the limitations of the systems making them look the same, as long as I have something to do within them. This is where I don't like the 3D design cause I often felt the dungeons are just there for atmosphere and usually hold no game purpose so once you get over how pretty it is, it's just a pretty straightforward romp through the dungeon fighting enemies. I feel the best dungeons are ones that give me something to do and keep my interest up. I am playing a game after all and I feel that if you focus on atmosphere and visual appeal too much you sort of limit yourself in making the dungeon a gameplay experience. FFX is a perfect example of this, with the basic dungeons largely being visually interesting but generally straightforward and organic looking, great for atmosphere but leaves little place for gameplay beyond combat and maybe the odd mini-game (that usually feels out of place) whereas you get to the actual Temples which have some visual flair but are largely designed for puzzles so their architecture makes no sense and with the exception of an occasional room for eye candy they are largely boring reused 3D models for walls used to help keep the dungeons purpose of being a puzzle manageable without distraction. Bizarre fantasy architecture and avant garde camera angles are only going to make a block puzzle into a nightmare to play through, so often dungeons are separated from being pretty and being fun.

Overall, I prefer fun and interesting gameplay experiences in my dungeon over fancy camera angles and avant garde art style because dungeons are suppose to be a core gameplay element and I feel the design should reflect that first, doesn't mean I'm against atmosphere, but I feel one element holds more weight and value over the other.