Okay, I'll take a shot at this. Fair warning, it's a LOT of reading.
Favorite Final Fantasy: VIII. I think VII is better, but VIII holds a special place in my heart. It was the first FF game I ever played, and it was so different from anything else. The futuristic type setting was a big draw for me. I still say that the intro movie is one of the best intros in video games. And that moment when Squall is riding on the boat, just before the attack on Dollet begins, is beautiful. The calm water, reflecting the moon, and then the music picks up...just amazing.
I also loved all the characters. Okay, maybe Irvine a little less than the others, but I still enjoyed him. Yes, I even liked Squall and his moody "Nobody understand me" attitude, because I was like that when I was a teenager. I didn't really fit in, so I could understand the wall that he put up. Selphie was adorable to me too.
I enjoyed how the story started out as just a small one, with you being nothing more than a mercenary at a combat school, but then it slowly grew into something much more. Suddenly, you're playing as a different group of characters and you have no idea why. Now you've been hired out to this rebel cell. Now there's Edea. The way the story just kept building felt like a very natural pace to me.
Yes, the ultimate bad guy's plan is pretty stupid, and once time is compressed, the world becomes very small and boring, but I still adore this game.
Favorite character: Hm...that's tough. I like Yuffie because she's quirky and brings some much needed comic relief to a rather serious group, but she can still be counted on when she's needed. Plus, she's completely optional, as is her entire quest, which means when you do find her, you're like, "Wow, what is all this?" I like Tifa because they made her more than just a pair of boobs, which is something that seems to hard to do now. If a woman is hot, she must either be completely aware of it and use it constantly, or she must be there for eye candy and otherwise not much else. Tifa was strong, independent, can give and take a beating, but she also had a soft side, a caring nature, and wasn't above getting a little jealous and flirting. Everything about her just felt...natural. And Aeris falls into the same boat. I think all the characters from VII and the most well-written characters in Final Fantasy, because they're more than just their first appearance would imply.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I didn't think Final Fantasy XIII was that bad. Yes, it is certainly not the shining paragon that Final Fantasy used to be known for, but I had more fun playing it than I did XII. I hate XII. To this day, I still struggle to remember the characters' names (which is a serious problem for a FF game), and I can't begin to tell you what happened or why people did what they did. XII felt like more of a betrayal to the series to me than XIII ever did. I know that's a minority opinion, but there it is. The characters were forgettable, the story was nothing but a political mess, and I'm sorry, but there's something wrong when you can just put the controller on the ground and the game plays itself during fights.
Plus, everyone could use every weapon. That was something that really annoyed me. I like how everyone gets their own weapon because it makes them stand out.
So why bring that up? Because it helps explain my views on XIII and its following sequels. XIII has some serious faults, which I'm sure you're well aware of. Linear corridor comes to mind a lot. Also, the world just felt...empty. No towns, no people. And sidequests were gone. No sense of wandering off and stumbling across something exciting.
But I still liked it. I can remember the characters. I understood why they were doing what they were doing (and they each had their own weapons, thank God). I know what the plot was about. Yes, it was kind of stupid at points, but most FF plots are. People say the battle system was boring, and if you stuck to only fighting the regular monsters, then yeah, it was. But I went after the bigger hunts. I went after the optional bosses, and some of those battles were edge of my seat. I had to use strategy to beat them. I had to make sure I went in to the fights prepared, with the right party set up, or I would be dead within a minute. That is something I haven't had to do since Ruby Weapon in VII. Most of the time, my characters would just be so powerful that I could crush enemies, but not XIII's.
And the world really was pretty. There was a sense on wonder I got when I first got to Grand Pulse and just running around the fields. I wish they had done more with it, but it was still nice.
XIII-2 I felt fixed a lot of problems that XIII had. The world was populated now. It felt like X in that way, in that I could go out in to the wild, but there were also settlements out there. The time travel thing was a bit confusing, but after a bit I was able to figure it out. I also loved that fact that Noel and Serah didn't fall in love, but became pillars of strength for each other. I wish there had been more party members, but overall I feel that this game was generally better than XIII.
Lightning Returns I played because I wanted to see how the story ends. I like Lightning, and while I enjoyed the game, it tripped in a few areas. While changing costumes in battle, and thus gaining new abilities, was great and a nice way to mix things up, I miss having other people in my party. The world was no longer empty like XIII, but it was smaller now, both literally and in terms of imagination. That grand sense of scale was gone because you could only explore four places. Yes, the places changed and new areas were unlocked, but it was still stifling.
Of course, I do think this game did the best job of characterizing Lightning, which is funny, because she spends the whole game talking about how she has no emotions, and yet she shows more here than she did in the other two games combined.
