Help me resolve my deep-seated Final Fantasy problems

[Seldon2639]

DO NOT start with VII I can't stress this enough.

Might I ask why? I've personally only played two FF games - VII and VIII - and have found myself simply too bored to finish either of them. I'm wondering if your reason for saying this might explain why.

For a newcomer to the series, FFVII can be a bit tough to get into. A lot of the themes it explores build upon earlier games (VI most especially), and so it can be a bit intense for a new player (especially someone new to RPGs in general). It takes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and being willing to embrace the cerebral aspects before it becomes the kind of kickass game it can be.

It's a bit like watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. You won't really like it unless you can embrace it without reservation. The best moments of FFVII came from ones personal connection to the characters (there's a reason everyone remembers shedding a tear for Aeris), which is a learned ability. That kind of empathy doesn't come naturally.

FFVII is a bit too dark and consistently dire and melancholy to start with. If you can't begin with the assumption that you should care about the characters, you can get turned off very quickly.

I'd start with VI, honestly. It's a shorter game, and meant to be an ensemble cast, so you start getting a feel for both the games in general, and for how to connect with characters.

Throw Chrono Trigger in there, if you can. It's not FF, but it's the same people as FF VI. Again, we're just working at building up tolerance for empathy to characters. Super Mario RPG: The Search for the Seven Stars is another good one. Light enough that you can start to care about the characters, but with moments of actual heart-string-tugging.

Once you have those under your belt, I'd suggest picking up FFX. If you can get through it, and especially if the ending feels like a bit of a kick to the crotch, you're probably up for FFVII.

For VII and VIII:

You'll either love them or hate them. If you begin from the outset caring about the characters, you'll quickly be swept up in their motivations, their stories, their heartache and triumph.

If you begin not caring that much, you'll get very bored.

It's a bit like watching a movie like Ghost World. You've gotta actually be able to give a damn about the people.

 

[Hazy]

"***** I got a gun!"

***** I got a bomb!"

Classic stuff right there.

"You're standing in my way, sir."

"WHAT?! Oh eat my shit Jackson, you stupid fucking fuck whistle!"

 

[Latinidiot]

erm... XII is very accessible, as is VII, and I haven't played the rest. be prepareed for a massive shift in graphics standards.

 

[Chefboski]

my 2 cents

FFVI (SNES FFIII) - Excellent choice if you can get past the 16-bit graphics. I've never played the remakes so someone else will have to weigh in on whether they're a better or worse choice

FFVII - I must agree with everyone who said that FFVII hasn't aged well. Great game, but I wouldn't make it my first foray into FF games

FFVIII - I feel this is a decidedly average choice for a first game. There's probably a minimal number of turn offs, and there's also probably a minimal number of things you'll fall in love with

FFVIX - If the overly fantastic setting + the squat character models don't turn you off, this would be a good choice. It starts off great, but then runs out of gas in the middle. If you start on this and it doesn't hold your interest in the beginning, you might not have the stomach for FF games

FFX - Probably the most accessible for someone starting right now. Voice acting + good graphics + an interesting start = minimal culture shock. Drags on in the middle and gets more interesting at the end

Misc: I've never played FFXII because I don't know a single person who liked it. Haven't started FFXIII yet. FFI and FFII are strictly for fans at this point. I've heard great things about FFIV and FFV but cannot personally weigh in on them.

Hope some part of this helps

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

For a newcomer to the series, FFVII can be a bit tough to get into. A lot of the themes it explores build upon earlier games (VI most especially), and so it can be a bit intense for a new player (especially someone new to RPGs in general). It takes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and being willing to embrace the cerebral aspects before it becomes the kind of kickass game it can be.

It's a bit like watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. You won't really like it unless you can embrace it without reservation. The best moments of FFVII came from ones personal connection to the characters (there's a reason everyone remembers shedding a tear for Aeris), which is a learned ability. That kind of empathy doesn't come naturally.

FFVII is a bit too dark and consistently dire and melancholy to start with. If you can't begin with the assumption that you should care about the characters, you can get turned off very quickly.

Not entirely true, FFVII was my first exposure to the series and I had no problem with it at the time.

In retrospect though I do find myself continually baffled by the story but consistently wowed by how good the pacing and structure of the events in the scenario are. FFVII is a testament to the art of "Scenario Writing" a discipline that only really pops up in JRPG design that has made all the difference to several titles, Chrono Trigger and Skies of Arcadia among those. It's the importance of WHAT you do in a game, and in FFVII the WHAT you do is very, very fun.

But then there's that translation, which to this day makes the overarching plot night impossible to understand.

 

[Seldon2639]

DO NOT start with VII I can't stress this enough.

Might I ask why? I've personally only played two FF games - VII and VIII - and have found myself simply too bored to finish either of them. I'm wondering if your reason for saying this might explain why.

Many will disagree with me on this and hate me for saying it but it is by far the worst FF in the series for the reason that it had potential but fell flat on its face

The game had characters with next to no personality whatsoever and while the combat and materia system were interesting they had a flaw: the combat was too easy and the materia system was far too exploitable making all your party members super powered and not giving them any diversity, draining the fun out of it. The story was very dry as you constantly just seem to be following in the shadow of the antagonist rather than trying to stop him. It really felt like a total downgrade to the lighthearted sometimes silly but still very epic FFIV and FFVI games where all the characters were well rounded and had individual traits that made you value them all in battle. FFVII tried to take a darker approach but left a lot of the charm from the previous games behind and overall just was a much less enjoyable experience.

Eh... I dunno, I don't think it's just nostalgia for me.

I liked the exploration of some of the themes that went unexplored in the earlier games. Not just "darker and edgier" but "more psychological, more personal". I loved Terra, Locke, Ceras, all of those guys, but I never felt like there was much reason for them to do what they did. Sure, Terra made sense, but Locke never did.

And, personally, I liked that most of the game is spent in the quiet dread of following someone who completely outmatches you, seeing his handiwork, unable to stop him from doing evil. There's something to the feeling that you can't actually fix things, but you have to try, that I find more appealing than the constant feeling like it's just an obstacle.

And I preferred Sephiroth as a villain. I like my villains with complex motivations, dark but not simply "mindlessly evil". Kefka was ruthless, evil, and brilliant, but not at all deep. Sephiroth, brooding proto-emo-kid that he was, had at least a bit of depth to his psychology. He wasn't evil for the sake of evil. He was angsty, whiny, and sometimes annoying, but he comes across as more of a complete person.

I like that in a story. The evil shouldn't be some faceless "other", it should be a person, with real motivations. Less Voldemort's "let's just fuck shit up" and more a principled man who believes that what he's doing is right, and for the greater good.

On the gameplay issues:

It only loses its challenge if you try to break the game or get a disk one nuke. Otherwise, the challenge is pretty decent all the way through. And I liked that you could put any character in any job, with varying degrees of strength. The whole "only one guy can steal, one can use tools, and one can do buffs" crap pissed me off. If you're going to do that (a la FFX) you have to allow switching on the fly.

 

[p3t3r]

all you the final fantasy games are different the only things that are the same is the chocoboos are birds you ride and Cid pilots air ships or is a scientist engineer thing. oh and that they all have airships.

 

[Seldon2639]

For a newcomer to the series, FFVII can be a bit tough to get into. A lot of the themes it explores build upon earlier games (VI most especially), and so it can be a bit intense for a new player (especially someone new to RPGs in general). It takes a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and being willing to embrace the cerebral aspects before it becomes the kind of kickass game it can be.

It's a bit like watching Neon Genesis Evangelion. You won't really like it unless you can embrace it without reservation. The best moments of FFVII came from ones personal connection to the characters (there's a reason everyone remembers shedding a tear for Aeris), which is a learned ability. That kind of empathy doesn't come naturally.

FFVII is a bit too dark and consistently dire and melancholy to start with. If you can't begin with the assumption that you should care about the characters, you can get turned off very quickly.

Not entirely true, FFVII was my first exposure to the series and I had no problem with it at the time.

In retrospect though I do find myself continually baffled by the story but consistently wowed by how good the pacing and structure of the events in the scenario are. FFVII is a testament to the art of "Scenario Writing" a discipline that only really pops up in JRPG design that has made all the difference to several titles, Chrono Trigger and Skies of Arcadia among those. It's the importance of WHAT you do in a game, and in FFVII the WHAT you do is very, very fun.

But then there's that translation, which to this day makes the overarching plot night impossible to understand.

It was my first exposure, too. But I'd spent a long time playing other RPGs/adventure games, and the ability to empathize with characters was ingrained in me early. My older brother and I would (when we were young) pretend to have pets from things in video games. We would sympathize with the lone coin Sonic would be holding after getting hit, that kind of thing.

If you can't do that, if you can't feel for the characters, you'll lose interest in FFVII, because it's very much about the characters themselves.

Besides, I didn't find the plot difficult to understand. Especially if you play through a second (or third, or fourth) time, it fits pretty well. I continue to compare it to Evangelion.

 

[LeonLethality]

I never felt like there was much reason for them to do what they did. Sure, Terra made sense, but Locke never did.

When Locke lost Rachel he swore to protect and help and that's what he did for Terra.

And, personally, I liked that most of the game is spent in the quiet dread of following someone who completely outmatches you, seeing his handiwork, unable to stop him from doing evil. There's something to the feeling that you can't actually fix things, but you have to try, that I find more appealing than the constant feeling like it's just an obstacle.

Why though? Just following him for what purpose if you couldn't stop him why even bother following him? Most characters do this because of motivation to defeat the villain but there was no motivation to following Sephiroth.

And I preferred Sephiroth as a villain. I like my villains with complex motivations, dark but not simply "mindlessly evil". Kefka was ruthless, evil, and brilliant, but not at all deep. Sephiroth, brooding proto-emo-kid that he was, had at least a bit of depth to his psychology. He wasn't evil for the sake of evil. He was angsty, whiny, and sometimes annoying, but he comes across as more of a complete person.

FF6 does fall short in villain motivation I will admit but Sephiroth is pretty crappy as far as villains go, Sure he had proper motivation but so did Golbez and Golbez constantly got in your way unlike Sephiroth who had his mother do all the work while he hid in the northern crater.

On the gameplay issues:

It only loses its challenge if you try to break the game or get a disk one nuke. Otherwise, the challenge is pretty decent all the way through. And I liked that you could put any character in any job, with varying degrees of strength. The whole "only one guy can steal, one can use tools, and one can do buffs" crap pissed me off. If you're going to do that (a la FFX) you have to allow switching on the fly.

The feeling anyone can do anything makes the characters lose even more personality, A real person isn't skilled at everything and while I do like the fact that you can switch characters in battle in FFX that also ruined a bit of challenge of FFVI also the difficulty of VII was easy unless you ran away from half the battles. The fact that I can beat Emerald weapon with two characters below level 10 says that the materia just broke the game, it is incredibly exploitable even at the very beginning in fact in my first playthrough before I even knew many game breaking combinations I found that they were overpowered.

 

[Forever of the Stars]

I'd start with I, V or VI, VII is overrated but it is accessible to new people. II and III were alright too but II is different from the rest III was just fucking difficult.

 

[Seldon2639]

When Locke lost Rachel he swore to protect and help and that's what he did for Terra.

That's a bit weak, though. And you only find that out if you take an optional side-quest. In the main plot, his motivation simply isn't explored (IIRC). Same with everyone else save for a very few. If you only follow the game, you get about a dozen party members who just seem to hang around for shits 'n giggles.

Why though? Just following him for what purpose if you couldn't stop him why even bother following him? Most characters do this because of motivation to defeat the villain but there was no motivation to following Sephiroth.

Because that's part of the heroic struggle. Fighting a battle you know you can't win. And because it fits the characters. Yuffie, I exclude, since I hate her with the fire of a thousand suns, but for everyone else it makes sense. Hell, they even spend a good deal of time (in the main plot) on why any of them are fighting.

FF6 does fall short in villain motivation I will admit but Sephiroth is pretty crappy as far as villains go, Sure he had proper motivation but so did Golbez and Golbez constantly got in your way unlike Sephiroth who had his mother do all the work while he hid in the northern crater.

C'mon, that only happened for a very short while. Besides, most of the time her was in the Northern Crater, we were fighting Weapons/Shinra, not him directly. And I liked that there were four different competing groups, three of which could be called "villains", but all of which fundamentally were trying to do what they thought was right. Moral ambiguity FTW.

As opposed to Kefka, Golbez, Lavos, ect. Who are clearly defined as "evil" and are doing bad things for bad things' sake. I mean, come on.

The feeling anyone can do anything makes the characters lose even more personality, A real person isn't skilled at everything and while I do like the fact that you can switch characters in battle in FFX that also ruined a bit of challenge of FFVI also the difficulty of VII was easy unless you ran away from half the battles. The fact that I can beat Emerald weapon with two characters below level 10 says that the materia just broke the game, it is incredibly exploitable even at the very beginning in fact in my first playthrough before I even knew many game breaking combinations I found that they were overpowered.

I don't see a character's personality as being linked to their combat prowess. But, I also like a division between gameplay and story. The gameplay was more fun in VII.

Yes, I accept that the system can be exploited. But you don't have to exploit it (and I never did). If you don't want a challenge: cheat. If you do want a challenge: don't cheat.

If you get Beta from the Zolom, for instance, you can burn through the entire first disk not breaking a sweat. But if you do that, you're denying yourself the challenge. Hell, I think it's considerate that the game allows you to take away the challenge if you like, or keep if if you want to.

 

[Bosola]

The combat was too easy and the materia system was far too exploitable making all your party members super powered and not giving them any diversity, draining the fun out of it.

You may be interested in my "rebalance" of the game. You can find the ModDB page here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/final-fantasy-7-rebirth

Because that's part of the heroic struggle. Fighting a battle you know you can't win. And because it fits the characters. Yuffie, I exclude, since I hate her with the fire of a thousand suns, but for everyone else it makes sense. Hell, they even spend a good deal of time (in the main plot) on why any of them are fighting.

No. The scene on the Highwind hardly constitutes 'a good deal of time', and the fact remains that there's little explicit purpose to wandering around the world in the first disc, and even less in the second besides 'HURR TEH SHINRA ARE DOIN THIS LETS ANNOI THEM'. Failing to give your story consistent purpose and direction does *not* make for generating a sense of 'struggle' or 'mystery'. I might as well say that Far Cry 2's random wandering and failure to string individual missions together is somehow mimetic of the chaos in African State X. A nice little rhetorical flourish, but no-one's convinced.

The odd thing is that *all* the PSOne FFs go belly up at the half-way mark. 7 offers no reason to deal with huge materia; 8 pulls a relentlessly predictable teen romance about "TEH POWAR OF FRENDSiHP!". 9 is one of the strongest, but even that falters when we need we leave for the Northern Continent. The rationale? "Well, Kuja sure looks odd, and there's talk of him being from far away, so let's pick another random continent to search, hope that some rumors about a cave in Qu's marsh are true, and likewise hope that, by terrific fortune, this cave links us to aforementioned Northern continent. But once that's out of the way, we're home and dry, and need only scour an entire landmass for a single man, at which point we can happily take on a magical arms dealer capable of summoning city-sized demons with a ragtag group built of a rusty knight, two pre-pubescents and a street urchin". Not convincing.

 

[Broady Brio]

Haven't properly played a Final Fantasy game. It's just not my game.

 

[Terramax]

Okay, I have something to admit. I've never played Final Fantasy. Not one. Not ever. At all. It's not for a lack of interest, on the contrary; I want to be involved in what look to be games that offer some of the industry's best, but (and here's the hard part) I just don't understand them.

I'm not deliberately adverse to trying new things because that would just be sad, but I live on a small income where I have only a certain amount of time to dedicate to gaming. I don't know where to start! There are more than a dozen of them (I think?), but they don't go in chronological order - I can't tell if they go on in the same universe. I can't tell if plot carries on from one to another. So I suppose, what I'm asking for from a veteran corp of people familiar with these games is where to start, what to enjoy, what to avoid, and with what attitude I should approach playing them.

Wouldn't it be best to explain what games consoles you have? For instance, if you are able to play the PS1 FFs, I'd start with those.

Also, what type of stories do you enjoy? That's pretty important. Do you like melodramatic love stories? If not, that'll cut the list down somewhat. What type of settings? Medi-evil/ old fantasy (FF9, FFXII), more contemporary (FF8), or sci-fi (FFX)?

 

[martinstatic]

I started with VII, and didn't know of the rep it had, and it blew me away.
VIII was also nice and IX I didn't like at all.
So yeah, just start with VII, then X, then VI (known in US as III. The actual Japanese III is crap though).

 

[Wintermoot]

Okay, I have something to admit. I've never played Final Fantasy. Not one. Not ever. At all. It's not for a lack of interest, on the contrary; I want to be involved in what look to be games that offer some of the industry's best, but (and here's the hard part) I just don't understand them.

I'm not deliberately adverse to trying new things because that would just be sad, but I live on a small income where I have only a certain amount of time to dedicate to gaming. I don't know where to start! There are more than a dozen of them (I think?), but they don't go in chronological order - I can't tell if they go on in the same universe. I can't tell if plot carries on from one to another. So I suppose, what I'm asking for from a veteran corp of people familiar with these games is where to start, what to enjoy, what to avoid, and with what attitude I should approach playing them.

they dont they are all stories on itself unless said so FF13 and FF1 have NO similarities in story

 

[thebackupfreak]

Pedro's Quick and Easy Guide to Final Fantasy Games

Pedro Personally Recommends...
- Final Fantasy 6, because despite it's age it has fantastic characters and one of the best overall plots.
- Final Fantasy 7, because it has some of the best moments JRPG's have ever given us and set the standard for giant bosses, cutscenes and mini-games.
- Final Fantasy 9, because it's very, very funny and the characters are fantastic.
- Final Fantasy 10, for the best ending the series has ever had.
- Final Fantasy 12, Warning: Mileage May Vary while I loved the fantastic writing, deeply political story, fantastic soundtrack and realistic villain, many people were turned off by the irritating lead, boring battle system and poorly paced plot.

Thanks for the recommendations! And thanks to everyone else who commented for your own imput; always nice to have additional wisdom when making a hobby decision.

 

[twaddle]

i kinda disagree. my favorite is ff7 but i don't recomend it for first timers or any of the 2d vresions either. FFX (final fantasy X) is probably where u should start. People who are used to the linear shooter games would enjoy it because unless you got to try and find everything the game can take under 20 hours to beat if you go for a straight play through. Sure there is the matinece with the power up system (called the sphere grid)but u have to do that in most shooter games with the weapons anyway. the other FF games can often make it difficult to figure out where the fuck ur supposed and you will lose ur patience, but in ffx they basically treat u like ur stupid and say "GO HERE" or "?" means click "X". the map also is very helpful because anything that glows is where ur supposed to go.

 

[dstryfe]

You can start from any of them. Other than those whose titles explicitly state they are sequels (that being X and X-2), none of the roman-numeral-sporting titles are even set in the same universe (except 7 and 10, but they're not connected by story).

That said, I very much dislike 8 and 12 for various reasons, 11 shouldn't count, and I've never really gotten into 4 or 5, let alone even seeing 3. The original is a history lesson, 2 is an interesting side-project, and 10-2 is an adventure in fanservice, but 6, 7, 9, 10, and 13 are the ones not to miss.

 

[SavingPrincess]

Eh... I dunno, I don't think it's just nostalgia for me.

I liked the exploration of some of the themes that went unexplored in the earlier games. Not just "darker and edgier" but "more psychological, more personal". I loved Terra, Locke, Ceras, all of those guys, but I never felt like there was much reason for them to do what they did. Sure, Terra made sense, but Locke never did.

No. Locke, because of Rachael joined up with the Returners, he was also a personal friend of Edgar, he had every reason to be involved in the conflict and help Terra, also his relationship with Celes is a pivotal plot thread in the game.

And, personally, I liked that most of the game is spent in the quiet dread of following someone who completely outmatches you, seeing his handiwork, unable to stop him from doing evil. There's something to the feeling that you can't actually fix things, but you have to try, that I find more appealing than the constant feeling like it's just an obstacle.

And I preferred Sephiroth as a villain. I like my villains with complex motivations, dark but not simply "mindlessly evil". Kefka was ruthless, evil, and brilliant, but not at all deep. Sephiroth, brooding proto-emo-kid that he was, had at least a bit of depth to his psychology. He wasn't evil for the sake of evil. He was angsty, whiny, and sometimes annoying, but he comes across as more of a complete person.

Grrr... no. Sephiroth was a good "character" but I never even felt he was a "villain;" he could have easily been a protagonist (see: Crisis Core). Sephiroth WAS mindless. His Oedipal motivations were totally counter productive to the idea of "stopping evil," and turned into stopping a mama's boy. I actually viewed Rufus as a better villain and was sad when he was _____'ed. You may prefer "complex motivations" and "moral ambiguity" in your bad guys, but I actually like them to be bad. Kefka's motivation was "power corrupts," and when you take someone already corrupt and give them access to corrupting power... you get someone that can literally blow up the world, and get away with it.

It only loses its challenge if you try to break the game or get a disk one nuke. Otherwise, the challenge is pretty decent all the way through. And I liked that you could put any character in any job, with varying degrees of strength. The whole "only one guy can steal, one can use tools, and one can do buffs" crap pissed me off. If you're going to do that (a la FFX) you have to allow switching on the fly.

Ugh no... you can't compare the "customization" abilities of Final Fantasy VII and place them above Final Fantasy VI. In Final Fantasy VI you could teach any character any spell, you could give any character melee weapons, ranged weapons, any accessory... you could make them defense oriented, magic oriented, attack oriented (Genji Glove + Offering anyone?), and you had to be creative with how you developed them if you wanted to low-level the final encounter. I could not (read: STILL cannot) stand the "You get the sword, you get the gun, you get the megaphone" weapon mechanic of the newer Final Fantasy's. It's insulting to me. It's like they're saying I can't manage my own party or put people into appropriate rolls. Adding the "skill" mechanic to characters however (i.e. Tools, Blitz, Runic, Steal, etc.) made you care about who you took in your party and it gave the characters interesting battle mechanics. ALL of the characters in Final Fantasy VII played the exact same way with the exception of limits so I never cared "who" I had in my party. In Final Fantasy VI you had characters that played NOTHING like one another, but could be balanced out if you so chose. Gau and his 'rage' abilities, Terra's esper transformation, Celes' Runic ability, Cyanne's SwordTechniques, etc. etc. It set the characters apart, and during the dividing battles/dungeons, it made you think about who you wanted to group with who. Way more fun.