Poll: Summon Spells

[Venom2k]

9 was brilliant but 10 was a bit dissapointing

[Lengis]

FFX for a few reasons

1) They are the most powerfull Summons ever in all of FF
2) You can control them like normal characters
3) They look AWSOME
4) Anima is AWSOME
5) Bahamut is AWSOME
6) Did I mention Anima is awsome?

[Ragnarok]

My favorite summon spells were in Final Fantasy Tactics. But my judgement is a bit clouded since it is my favorite final fantasy game.

[BG-57]

I'd say VIII has the best looking summons I've seen. I've even collected most of the GF action figures (except Shiva and I'm not sure if they ever issued Quetzecoatl). (I haven't played X, but I thought the action figure for Anima looks more evil than any of the monsters!).

I really liked the fact in IX that they used weapons most of the time instead of the full summons. Full summons chew up a huge amount of game time and although the power was lower, I liked to be able to keep battles shorter.

That being said, I think that the most overblown summon spell is definately Knights of the Round. And am I the only one who sings the 'Camelot' song from Monty Python and Holy Grail when summoning KOR?

[Sefie1999AD]

I agree with most points with Bahamut2000X. But let's see.


FF3j had the innovative thing of various summon attacks, and the summons looked cool too. This is also the first FF to have summoned monsters. They weren't useless at all. You can use Shiva to kill those FlameDevils in the Crystal Tower with one blow even if 3 of them get a back attack and each flame you. Bahamut is also an excellent way to destroy things. It's one of the most powerful attack in the game, as it does 3000-6000+ damage. Only HASTEd Shuriken does more damage

FF4 had pretty cool summons, though I didn't use them too much. Well, more than for FF6 at least. Bahamut is cool, especially against the last boss. It does 8000-9999 damage, and it's a lot faster to cast than Meteo. It also hits all targets.

FF5 had really useful summons. They didn't take much MP (especially the lower-level ones. the higher-level ones don't take much either, when you use Goldpins), and you can cast them for infinite times, and all 4 of your characters can cast them. In my first game, I won loads of hard boss fights by using 4 summoners casting Titan, or later Syldra, or even later Leviathan and Bahamut. And Bahamut is magnificent against Neo-Exdeath: it does 3000-4000 damage to every part! The only attack which could do more damage to Neo Exdeath would be GilToss.

FF6's summons had great story, but they sucked in battle. They also took loads of MP, and you could only cast them once in battle. Just like Bahamut2000X, I never used Espers in FF6 unless I was really bored.

FF7 had my favorite set of summons, but you can read more about that here. The summon spells are pretty powerful and I like to use them during boss fights.

FF8 had pretty cool-looking summon animations and for long they are the only ways to kill enemies, but I think the summon animations are too long, especially when you cast them hundreds of times during the game, in every battle. The effects are still really cool, IMHO, especially with Alexander.

FF9 had very cool summons too. I never used them much until I got Boost, because I wanted to do full damage with them. I wonder why I spared them so much. They would have done nice damage for not too high MP cost. Meh, I guess I was stupid and over-sparing. But the summon animations are really, really cool. And the amazing FMVs with Eidolons will take your breath away.

I won't analyze FFX or FFT summons, because I haven't played too much of those yet.

[mog42]

I think that FFIV definitely had the most useful summon monsters. In other games, I didn't use summon magic very much because it wasn't as necessary for survival. The only exception is FFVII where Knights of the Round is pretty much required to beat the 2 secret bosses.

[LOCKE 54]

I definitely voted for FFX. The summons are the best-rendered ones yet, and you can actually control them instead of just the previous "fire and forget" arrangement. As for the others...

FFIX: Eh. They were good, but only 2 characters could use them, and those two characters' entire offense (except for Holy) rested on these summon spells, which took quite a bit of MP.

FFVIII: I didn't like this game in general so that doesn't predispose me to say too many good things about the summons. Beyond that, I do feel they played way too big of a role in FFVIII between junctioning and them being in most cases your most potent offensive weapon.

FFVII:

And am I the only one who sings the 'Camelot' song from Monty Python and Holy Grail when summoning KOR?

...the downside here is that you can get the entire song in during the hugely overextended duration of the animation, through which you're forced to wait and twiddle your thimbs since you can't use commands.

FFVI: The summons, aside from maybe a couple, just weren't that good. They cost an exorbitant amount of MP and could be used only once.

FFV: Haven't played

FFIV: In most cases I found Rydia's Black Magic to be more powerful than the summons she was equipped with. Moreover, the spells cost less MP than the summons.

FFIII: Haven't played

[moon light]

ffx

[Aviva]

Originally posted by LOCKE 54
FFIX: Eh. They were good, but only 2 characters could use them, and those two characters' entire offense (except for Holy) rested on these summon spells, which took quite a bit of MP.

thats because the main purpose for those 2 characters is to heal the party.

i think FFIX had the best summons; just because i like Ark also because i didn't like the huge MP cost in FFVII and the whole compatibility thing in FFVIII

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Originally posted by Sephiroth1999AD
FF4 had pretty cool summons, though I didn't use them too much. Well, more than for FF6 at least. Bahamut is cool, especially against the last boss. It does 8000-9999 damage, and it's a lot faster to cast than Meteo. It also hits all targets.

Originally posted by LOCKE 54
FFIV: In most cases I found Rydia's Black Magic to be more powerful than the summons she was equipped with. Moreover, the spells cost less MP than the summons.

It seems to me that a lot of people don't realize that the damage dealt by Lydia's Mist Dragon summoning is proportional (but not exactly so) to her current HP. So if you level her up, feed her a couple Gold Apples, and keep her healed throughout battles, you can deal maximum damage for the very little time and MP that Mist Dragon costs.

[Shiroi Kumo]

Yeesh, I just realised how very, very FF-igronant I am.

*follows Kawaii around with a pad and pencil*

Cheers.

[bennator]

I'm not going to analyze the other games, because people have already said what I want to say about them, however I will look at FFT.

In FFT summons were much more useful at the begining of the game, because enemies had slower speeds, so your summons would go off before they could act. Later in the game, you would need to have the 'short charge' ability equiped to make the summons go off in a reasonable amount of time. Summons did have the adavantage of being 'smart', they didn't hit allies (for offensive ones), meaning you could cast them in an area where some of your units were.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Originally posted by CloudRider
Yeesh, I just realised how very, very FF-igronant I am.

*follows Kawaii around with a pad and pencil*

Cheers.

[The Man]

OOC:	We might note that he much prefers to be called Kishi. Having a stranger call you cute is somewhat... weird.

I've only played FFIV-VI, and I only used summons frequently in FFV. I barely used them at all in FFVI. Thus, I'm not going to vote on this poll.

Peace
The Man

[Shiroi Kumo]

Urp.

No one tells me these things, but how am I calling him cute? And just out of sheer curiousity, what is the point of that cartoon that Kishi posted in reply to my comment?

Cheers.