And with Asche (am I mispelling all the names?) she had to deal with the loss of her father and spouse. But she also was aware that she was pretty much the only person who could help her people who she also cared about. And when faced with a Press A to win option from the Occurians at the top of that terribly long tower dungeon, that’s only topped by Tartarus from Persona 3, she eschews it in favor of taking fate into her own hands.

I also liked the sort of thing with Basche taking up his awful brother’s place and protecting that annoying Britishey kid who had unlimited Potions.

@Ethos, I didn’t mean to suggest that FF9 is by any means a bad game. But it is loaded with a ton of (with Japanese kanji having ‘L’ and ‘R’ confusion) references to previous FF games. And we didn’t get 2, 3, or 5, originally at the time, so those references fell flat. And many were not translated the same in our later releases of them.

But with regards to the story it was just so light-hearted, whimsical and wacky that I really didn’t get drawn in. There was that cat-man (I think?) who got petrified in the spikey vine thing early on that was kind of sad, but it was otherwise generally not emotionally impacting to me. It was sort of like FF5 to me in that I liked it, but the gameplay was the star of it not the story. I understand that other people can disagree with this.

And while XII’s narrative was a little underdeveloped, it is absolutely ludicrous to claim that IV and V were superior in this regard. Have you taken leave of your faculties, man?!

Now, is Vaan likable? Nope! Does the plot get washed out by long stretches of gameplay? Yeah, I can agree to that. Some of the locations are so vast, and getting through them takes so long that, as EP said, it’s tough to recall why you were doing what you were doing.

Final Fantasy 5 had an interesting story that was more like the description that was provided of FF4 “Ran out of map? Go to another world! Ran out of that map? Combine the two!” Still I think it had a better story than FF12.

Final Fantasy 6 was a masterpiece… it never felt like the story was out of your hands; you made choices and they had consequences which was a fairly new concept for RPGs back then. More importantly the soundtrack, setting, theme, Final Boss, and even the enemies will bring me back again and again to this world.

Final Fantasy 7 hasn’t aged well though… while the story and characters are endearing and the game play was fantastic it still feels unfinished to me… It feels like something is missing. The translations were laughable and the censoring of language was rather silly… Granted this was another world back then. I think it’s way overdue for a facelift.

Final Fantasy 8 brought us some of the most breathtaking scenes that were not reproduced till Final Fantasy 10. While Final Fantasy 9 was a beautiful world it was still nothing compared to the majesty that was this game. The story was the weak point for me though; it only pushed you to go to the next area and it was missing the thing that FF7 had; you had to kill the guy who killed your girlfriend. Seriously that’s kinda the plot of FF7…. FF8- BURN THE WITCH.

Final Fantasy 9 returns us to the age of well thought story; good progression and while it had moments of bad translations (what game doesn’t?) it still shined in my eyes and made me enjoy it. I don’t gush over it the same way but it really did something for me in the way that it returned to it’s roots.

Now Back to 12…. I think I must make clear;

The main character of FF12 was not Vaan…. Why is this a problem? I don’t know if you notice this but you basically follow this kid around and watch somebody else get all the glory. You are along for a ride and really… who wants to play a game where you are the sidekick? I really want to know WHO? I think it’s the same reason I didn’t like how Final Fantasy Tactics ended… Which I think is relevant since it’s basically the same world. You basically quest along and turns out you save the world from demons and NOBODY EVEN KNOWS YOU DID IT. Then again; at LEAST FFT gave you a real quest; Save your Sister…. Okay fine I’ll save my sister. At least somebody in this world will love me.

Anyway I got sidetracked which is pretty common when it comes to FF12… Mainly because I really wasn’t always sure what was going on…. know what happened; not sure why.

In the RTS sequel of the game I find myself more interested and the story didn’t drag on and make me want to screw a bolt in my head and end it. Also; Vaan is the hero of this game.

I think I’ll end on this note about FF12…. Do you know the only reason I decided to beat that game?

Gilgamesh… Seriously; I beat the game because of ONE lousy hunt and a special boss song that you only hear when hunting him…. That’s kinda sad. I came back for a Side quest. You know your story is weak when the Sidequests are more interesting.

Although Evilpaul, I have no idea what you’re talking about in regards to not being invested in the story. I think the game has the most thorough character progression. It has a clear-cut plot so that the focus can be character. Like what SN is talking about with his experience with X. And nostalgia was no part of it for me, I had only played VII at that point and hadn’t even beaten it at the time. It’s also my favourite character progression system, just edging out Materia.

Yesyes, Ethos, you like FF9, we get it.

-I heard that Ito had wanted to make the ATB super fast for IX, but when they tried to run it the PS1 CPU was insufficient, and the battles were plagued by slowdown. Thus they had to slow it down somewhat, though it seems that they were a little too successful in this regard.

-My sense of XII’s story is that it’s of an appropriate volume for a game the length of Vagrant Story, but in a 60-80 hour RPG it tends to melt away into nothingness.

@Mel: I didn’t really like the randomised chests, as I didn’t often feel like I was receiving anything of any great worth (save for useful gambits in the early portion of the game).

I like FF6 because of how dark it is, the story, and the not really well, but decently developed, large cast of characters. Everybody had a character arc even if it wasn’t particularly deep. There was the nonlinear (mostly) explore the world third act. I can’t think of any game up to the point FF6 came out that wasn’t post-apocalyptic to start with where the villain wins, destroys the world, and rules over its decaying ruins. Also, I really liked flying the airship around swooping and stuff.

FF7 was THE GAME THAT CHANGE EVERYTHING and there’s not much I can add about that.

FF8 was proof that FF7 was the series’ high point.

FF9, to me, is basically just a nostalgia-fest with an interesting, flawed character progression system. The problem with the plot is that really not much happens. I realized that watching the Disc 1 ending FMV with Queen Brahne dying. They really didn’t do much to have me invested in the Queen (she’s physically unpleasant to look at) or her daughter who mourned her. Also, this: http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/4956/questz.jpg I find it hard to believe that whoever translated that wasn’t cackling evily to himself.

FF9 also suffered from PSX Final Fantasy Syndrome. In FF7 the battles had annoying loading times compared to SNES ones, but it wasn’t terrible and other than the really long Summons I can’t complain. FF8 Squaresoft decided to get better looking, more intricately designed and animated enemies. And boy did they want you to watch them. The battles, even if you don’t use Summons, take goddamned forever. In FF9 this came to a head where you could tell all your dudes to just to a normal attack, go make a sandwich, come back, and they still haven’t gone. I think it’s so bad to the point that it creates artificial difficulty.

FF10 had a good battle system and was pretty. The story was predictable, mostly anyway. The storytelling was decent they had the sense to include the annoying Tidus as a fish out of water character so the audience could get explanations of the fantastic shit we were seeing. Without doing any “As you know,” speeches where somebody exposits crap everyone present should already take as second nature.

FF11 I’ve played many hundreds of hours of and has a number of really good stories. It’s just you needed a static group or you’ll never see any of it.

FF12 actually has a really good story. It’s just spread out so much that by the time you reach your destination you won’t remember why you went there. I didn’t like the Hunts though. I’m 99% sure that they were designed to sell Brady’s Guides. I also didn’t like the Gambit system and usually found myself broke.

FF13 I haven’t played a minute of, so I can’t comment.

But the worlds were amazing to explore, and very open. The Hunts were fun just to track down. And I felt the music was VERY strong, not just the voice acting.

And while some say the Gambit system was putting the game on auto pilot, I think (and the developers have stated) that it should have gone deeper. They wanted to make things more complex, so you could perform more actions depending on more subtle circumstances. Perhaps they’ll have their way in 15. And the Gambit system really wasn’t a set-it-and-forget-it experience, especially not in boss battles. Not to mention, if you truly hated it, you *could* play the whole game without it.

Personally I want a game that goes back to the more traditional format Pre-FF10. (Not that I didn’t love Final Fantasy 10…. I just want a bigger world to explore.) I miss the over world where you can pick up the control stick of an airship and fly it all over the world…. it was what made Final Fantasy something I could fantasize about.

Final Fantasy 6 got the character (Particularly the villain) development right. FF7 had the unique battle mechanics that were simple yet complex. Final Fantasy 9 had an interesting romance, and Final Fantasy 8 had…. RIGHT now I remember – it had breathtaking places and wonders. (The gardens specifically; I almost wish we could explore a real life Garden.) Last but not least; Final Fantasy 4 had the gripping story; the one that always had a quest; always had a goal. You never wondered why you were doing what you were doing, you never questioned the task at hand; you knew what you had to do.

Also I didn’t mention FF13 because I have not beaten that game yet… I don’t feel it’s fair to say anything about it without having played it all the way through. So far I’ve liked it actually but… It does have the same problem I had with FF10 about missing that open world to explore. Also FF13-2 appears to have Instance based areas so I can’t exactly explore that the same way either.

The FFXIII development journal was a masterpiece though.

FF15 will be something like FF12? If that’s true, I’m very happy.

And the more I think about it, the more I think it was skirting a problem when the OCR guys started offering physical copies of their remixes for a price. Personally, a physical copy has less use than a digital copy does. The only thing I have that plays CDs and that I would actually USE for music is my PC.