Quote Originally Posted by Fynn View Post
Final Fantasy III: limited phoenix downs, job proficiencies, and super beefed up enemies with multiple turns meant you had to plan every move and grinding took forever, so not only was it difficult to overpower the bosses, but even if you were overleveled, you could easily get wiped in a turn or two
I still don't think FFIII is hard, it's just very grindy. I never noticed limited Phoenix Downs, as the battles are easy enough during the early parts of the game, and later you have Life spells, and I rarely had knocked out characters anyway. The random battles were also very short throughout the game, even the mobs in the final dungeon were over in 1-2 turns. Meanwhile, FFXIII's battle system meant you never had to worry about saving MP, but you could go all-out in every fight (and usually you had to, as even normal battles can kill you quickly in XIII), and near the end of the game, every battle was essentially a 5-minute mini-boss.

While FFIX is my favorite game in the series, and XIII is... well, nowhere in the Top 5, I still have to give credit to those things XIII did right. If you had trouble staying awake during the battles of FFXIII, how in the glorious grounds of grieving Gaia did you stay awake in FFIX, where battles have a 30-second camera pan intro, ATB is extremely slow even on the fastest speed and the animations are just very slow?

Quote Originally Posted by Fynn View Post
Final Fantasy XII: again, buffs and debuffs are incredibly important, and you had to really plan your gambits ahead if you wanted to utilize the party effectively. And you moved around on the map, so you can't tell me all you had to do to win here was press X. And don't get me started on gambits playing for you or just hacing everyone use attack and cure - over here, it's your choice to utilize both and you havre complete freedom to figure out your own strategies against anything. It's really so much more complex and strategic than XIII it's not even funny
My favorite approach, at least in FFXII: IZJS, is to set up gambits properly, then fight all the mobs by enabling fast-forward, and then rotate the left analog stick to win. I admit it's rare for me to use manual commands in FFXIII, at least until the postgame, but it's not like mashing only X for Auto-Battle wins you many battles. Part of the challenge comes from party member and paradigm planning, and the battles are about reacting to the events quickly and switching to another paradigm that fits better to the situation. I also remember fine-tuning the paradigm setups all the time, because different mobs in different areas require different job setup approaches.