I should warn-I make long posts.

So, 'best FF ever', eh?

I'm new around here because an evil friend of mine told me about this and I just needed to check it out.

Before I get into my thoughts on this topic at hand, Renmiri-I see that you truly love FFX. I'd like to give something in that regard-you're dead right that FFX had the BEST opening of any FF game. For me though, FFX focused on the characters I cared least about and the characters that I was truly interested in (*COUGH* LULU! *coughcough*) the game sorta' just tacked on. An affront which slapped FFX down so hard I got to the final battle and asked myself, "..why am I playing this?" As amazing as Auron was, he was not enough to bring me into the conclusion sequence of a game which dragged on, though for different reasons than FFXII (yes, I agree XII does drag on some).

Now for the matter at hand.

Before I played FFXII, if you would've asked me what the best FF game ever was, I'd have said FFIX or Tactics, more or less depending on the day. FFIX was a beautiful game where I really could feel the plights of the characters resonating strongly within me-it's not a far stretch to say that a little bit of Vivi and a little bit of Freya are part of who I really am. The art style was precisely that-an art STYLE. Seeing faithul renditions of Amano's work carried into 3D was enough to move me tears of joy. Complimented with the amazingly perfect, dramatic score by Uematsu, it was the finest game I'd ever played, especially in the FF series... This is doubly true when people count Tactics as a spin off.

But now that's the funny thing, isn't it? People don't always count Tactics as a spin off. Where FFIX made me relate to the characters on a personal, touching level, Tactics exposed us to innocence and how it was stripped of a boy, a land, and a people by ruthless people vieing for power over one another. A blood soaked ascension, a son who murders his own father, boys who were best friends before brother betrayed brother... Tactics set a mark for complex interwoven relationships between world, land, people, government, and tension. Then it went and coupled it up with a way for me to design the characters I wanted to play and I was hooked. In addition to all that, the Lucavi were the best demons I have ever seen in a Final Fantasy story. To the entire story, they were almost secondary because it was man's lust for power that brought them back to that world.

Vagrant Story gets a mention here because it took what they did in Tactics and took it a few steps further. Unfortunately, Vagrant Story was nearly unplayable for me if I wasn't using certain weapons-VS's nearly 'rythym game' mechanic really messed up my enjoyment of the greatest gothic adventure outside of Castlevania. Nothing pisses off a gamer more than screwed up potential.

So now on to XII. XII isn't the amalgam of everything I'd mentioned that might make it truly the best thing I've ever seen, but you can only push things so far every time you push. I wasn't an early adopter of XII-I let my evil friend I mentioned buy it first so I could check it out first hand. I waited for a friend of mine with tastes similar to mine tell me 'yay' or 'nay'. What I can say for sure off FFXII is that if you're playing it because you want to have some kind of deep, personal attachment to the characters... get it out of your system, that's not going to happen. That game was FFIX, and most of 'you' didn't 'get it'.

The story off FFXII is an epic spread across two empires and many nations-it's not that it's impersonal, it's that these events are so much larger than any one character everyone seems insignificant. In spite of that... These characters have their own motivations, and Vaan, stupid kid that he is, is growing up as time goes on. This is something I can't say for ANY character in all of Final Fantasy except Ramza and Delita, if you count them. Even my precious FFIX doesn't actually grow the characters-by the time Zidane finally begins to learn anything, time isn't left in that story for him to fumble around a bit more in the dark and make real decisions that are tested by the fires of fate. He grows, but by then, he's already comitted to his path.

It's new, it's different, and it definately beats the FF game I start judging all FF games by. The first one I played, of course-FFVI. It's still up in the air for me if it beats IX and Tactics, or is merely the next truly great game in their company in my FF collection.

Though let's be clear-that is nothing to be ashamed of. It does already beat both of those titles put together in one way. The world off FFXII beats any and all FF worlds-no, let's go further than that. The world off FFXII is as alive and believable as a pre-programmed world made of text and characters with preset movements can conceivably be at this point in time. FFXII has thrown down a gauntlet in challenge to the way RPGs have been created in the past. This isn't conjecture, this is a fact. By challenging the very 'stuff' of those older games, everyone in this topic has a fiery opinion, and everyone here agrees on at least one thing.

It's the most different Final Fantasy of them all.