For jobs system aka dress spheres, or general zaniness?

dresses were amazing, j-pop ist kvlt and all that.

And that annoying blonde prick from FFX wasn't the main protagonist.

Yuna power! xoxoxoxo ♥♥♥

To a degree ff7 suffers from an attempt to try something new and un tested. Theme and story were unique and this is around the time squaresoft began developing unique and fairly complex battle systems. I'm willing to have a certain amount of patience for games that make these kind of leaps. Chances are it won't be perfect on the first try. What caused me to chuck ff7 on the shelf and not look at it too much after is the fact Its end was rushed for the US version. In some regards it was the mass effect 3 of its day. The ending made little sense and little explanation. Rumors of an unfinished special ending that never got written in began circling soon after. So that is why FF7 is not a first pick of the series for me, I would rather play 4 6 or even 9 then 7.

Unlikely, Last Remnant was done by a different team I believe.


Japanese teen girls, a.k.a. most of FF's Japan audience.

Yeech. OK, OK, you win. :)

(I have heard that - for most JRPGs - the original Japanese voice acting is usually magnitudes superior to the dubbing done for the westernised versions. So maybe that's what happened here?)

I think FF7 is the most over-rated in the series. But not for the ending ...

*** SPOILER ALERT ***

(The ending doesn't make it 100% clear what happens to everyone. IMO Square left it to the player on how to interpret it - to the point where you could take it as meaning that all the humans were killed/died out soon after Meteor and 500 years later, Nanaki/Red XIII or possibly a descendant of his gazes down on the wreckage of Midgar - nature having reclaimed its own. Yes I know this interpretation has since been contradicted by the retconns made in the spin-offs. If you are interested, read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_%28Final_Fantasy_VII%29 )

So yeah, the ending didn't bother me so much.

It was more the (mostly) mediocre storyline, boring game environments, appalling quality of the FMVs, frustrating amount of grinding and annoying personalities.

I found Cloud to be an annoying and unappealing protagonist who kept swinging between bouts of arrogance and moody existential angst. And his personality felt so fake - even more than Squalls loner stance & social complex.

But I found the most fake aspect of FFVII is the much acclaimed Aeris death scene.
I can't understand how FFVII fans found that plot device to cause them to treasure the game so much. The whole 'oh no Aeris is dead' felt so contrived. (By contrast, I did feel a momentary sadness when Palom and Porom made their brave sacrifice in FF4).
And I say that if Square was determined to tug gamers heart strings then they should have offed Tifa, not Aeris. But of course that wouldn't gel well with the 'mystical pure maiden who is in sync with the planet' crap - so it had to be Aeris who gets it - for the sake of storyline.

*** END SPOILER ***

Anyway I better stop now before I start getting flamed from all the FFVII fan-boys/girls. XD


========================================================================================


Whaddaya mean "even 9"?! ;)

I am not saying that 9 is the best FF. It's certainly not. But IMO it is the most under-rated FF.

Coming out at the end of the PlayStations life when many were holding off waiting for the PS2 didn't help.

Also some FF fans actually preferred a) playing FF in a sci-fi environment and b) having their playable/party characters (mostly) human. So they loved FF 7 & 8 and then many of them turned down 9 when it came along - simply because 9 was so different in style to the previous 2 releases (even though it was more of a return to the roots of FF 1-5)

(UPDATE: changed the FF 1-6 reference to FF 1-5. FF6 is not exactly the typical pseudo-medieval FF RPG)

*SHPOILERSH*
Heh... there's a slowly ongoing screenshot/text LP of FF7 at somethingawful which does pay attention to the plot and the characters. Turns out, Aeris is the one who makes most innuendo-heavy jokes, and she's generally the most rational and level-headed in the group, with no emotional scarring going years back. Oh, and she's the first character in that LP who hits for 9999 in melee.
Really, this is a fun read, even if you're familiar with the game http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3415223
*end SHPOILERSH*

Perhaps they still sell well in the West, but FF 13 showed that even in Japan a game can tank really really hard. It got to the point, just a few months after release where stores couldn't even GIVE their stock away. In a country where games usually maintain the release day price even several years later, FF 13 went from a near $100 price tag to $5 in the space of no more than 3 months.

Subsequent games in the series have not faired any better. It's also looking like the upcoming renewed MMO is going to do poorly too due to some dubious UI decisions. It'll be interesting to see whether the FF 10 rerelease on on the Vita will maintain its price tag seeing that the Vita itself is struggling.

I sort of feel sorry for the Final Fantasy 14 and even 11 because their world looks so beutiful and interesting, it reminded me of Ivalice, which is me favorite Final Fantasy world.
Not me, medieval enviornment all the way(Though I like Final Fantasy 7) even though you see sci fi stuff in XII and I criticize that a lot, at least you don't see to often in your face.

I hate Sci Fi settings in Final Fantasy because they look dare I say it, stupid and illogiacal.

Worse is Final Fantasy 13, its to alien and weird for me in a bad way.

Again at least 7 never made me hate the setting.

[i]DRM_free_fan: Whaddaya mean "even 9"?! ;)

I am not saying that 9 is the best FF. It's certainly not. But IMO it is the most under-rated FF.
[/i]

I'll agree with that statement that 9 was underrated. To me it was fun. It just wasn't as well received as others. However I still hold 4 and 6 as the gold standard

(Slightly off topic)

I was reading an article on joystiq just now about some new FF game until I read this comment:

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/05/27/square-enix-registers-final-fantasy-agito-trademark/

wish they'd stop.



"Just stop, take a step back, and make a new final fantasy game.

Fuck this "Fabula Nova Crystalis" shit. Fuck ivalice. Fuck it. Make a new game, like you used to. Nobody wants FFXIII-3. nobody wants FFXIII-spinoff-number-4. Nobody wants FFXIII: The Fighting Game. Nobody wants FFXIII anything. The game sucked. The game was atrocious. It was beautiful, it had fantastic music, it had interesting characters, but the game was about walking down a fucking hallway and watching cutscenes in between what were basically cutscene battles that let you level your characters in a linear way along a hallway of experience points, before jumping to another set of characters and doing the same thing. It was awful. It was horrible as a game. It was horrible as a final fantasy game.

We're over it.

Make.

A new.


Game.


Like you fucking used to!

Or at least hurry the fuck up and release FFX and FFX-2 HD, so you can get started on FFXII HD for Vita."





This guy's comment makes me so angry, how dare you insult the great world of Ivalice while, while turning back on your word and saying you want Square to make FFXII HD.

What a htpocritical asshole, I sometimes hate the internet.

FFXII HD would be totally sweet. It's only been a few months since I finished the game, actually, and I've sunk in like 200 hours into the game, but I'd still play it again. I just hope that a hypothetical remake would use higher-quality voice audio for cutscenes.

For a second I thought that was you who was saying that...but found the same comment on that website. Whoops.

Although I wouldn't mind a HD release of FFXII and FFX. And I'm still waiting on Type-0 and Versus XIII.

And I accidentlly made alot of typos :P

This guy's comment pissed me off so much, I am reminded that the internet is really stupid sometimes and really want to slap him in the face :P

no fucking way am I reading through 5 pages of rants about Final Fantasy drama, so I am just going to respond to the OP.

FF12 & FF9 are the two FF games most in need of HD overhauls; they both were great games that got released at the ass end of a console's lifespan.

as such they were rushed to make deadlines and lack end game polish while the visuals suffer from late-gen restraints when the developers had the next gen capabilities in mind.