which ff had the best characters?

[the_sandman]

which final fantasy do you guys think had the best character development? and please state reasons. dont just be like "fff10" and click post.

for me, i believe final fantasy 9 had the best characters. each character had something with the next character. ff9 can take silly characters and mix it with serious characters and make something between those 2. same thing if you put silly characters with silly characters or serious characters with serious characters.

lets look at amarant and eiko. if you put a person who wants to be anything but alone, and a person who wants to be nothing but alone, than you get these two. and you see it clearly in this game how eiko is always trying to talk to amarant, but amarant is always annoyed by her.

dagger and eiko formed this sisterly love for each other. this was very well developed to the end of the game. eiko ends up being adopted by regent cid, which would make her daggers cousin.


steiner and vivi has this pure respect for each other that allows them to work great as a team, which works really well during battles

lets put two serious characters with similar personality together such as freya and amarant. you get rivalry. a hate but respect type of relationship.

zidane and steiner, you see hatred and disagreements. a lot of untrust for each other. but both have a common goal. the safety of dagger.

you can see pure friendship between vivi and zidane. how zidane is always looking out for vivi. than later we find out that its not a coincidence that these two get along so well. they have similar problems and they both are going through the same things.

and the crush eiko has for zidane.

the relationship that these characters had with each other is only a part of what makes them the best. these characters each have their own personal issues and zidane helped them all get back on their feet and along the way, teaches them something. and towards the end, you see them return their favor.

we can see the character change from before joining zidane to after joining zidane.

amarant who was very competetive, and was picking fights with strangers. we can clearly see the change in him before he fights the fire guardian.

steiner who was always following orders from queen brahne, is now making choices and decisions through whats right and wrong. he ends up going against queen brahne.

eiko who was very alone until he met zidane. she became friends with everyone and even developed a crush for zidane.

vivi who was always scared and confused, learned to live life without asking "what if..?"

quina learned to go out in the world and try different things

etc...we see these changes in the characters, and thats how much of an impact the main character had towards them.


this game also had the perfect characters for the job classes.

zidane - theif
dagger - white mage
eiko - summoner
vivi - black mage
amarant - assassin
steiner - warrior
quina - blue mage
freya - dragoon/red mage


the worst characters were probably from ff7 and ff8

in ff7, the characters had no conflicts with each other. they all basically agreed with everythign. except the very beginning between cloud and barret. if cid told them their next destination or something, thats what they all agreed on. it would be cool if there was that one reject who would stand there and be like "that idea sucks"

ff8, all the characters were basically ignored except for squall and rinoa. they were all pointless storywise.