Every time people say Final Fantasy 3/6 or 7 as the best Final Fantasy game of all, they inevitably bring up the magic/skill system, and that is what really makes me lose my understanding of their definition of "best". The problem is by allowing the player to choose what talents the characters can learn from almost the whole selection of abilities in the game makes the characters lose their uniqueness, turning "The Fighter" into "Character Model C". Let me make this clear: I don't hate these games, I love most of them, I just dislike how they handle certain elemets, now to start off with the games above and then go onto the less serious offenders.
Final Fantasy 3/6: I agree with the magic system on the whole, as in theory it's great. Yes I admit having it so that even if my one person I had dedicated as my Healer goes down, I have another character or two who can pick up where they left off until I find a good time to stuff a Phoenix Down somewhere on their person, but I found that the characters ended up being inter-changable and unless I needed one for a specific plot point or Boss battle I found myself picking characters randomly, only stopping to think when the Parties would be split up and even then all I did was make sure the Celes, Saban and Edgar were on seperate teams.
Now I know that everybody has a separate ability that makes them unique, but unless you find yourself wanting to use a certain skill for a certain reason you could normally ignore them, and when at the end of the day when Cyan can cast every spell Terra can with roughly equal damage and much more physical power, it makes the characters a bore.
Final Fantasy 7: This game is the biggest sinner of over customization period. You can make any character do anything you want in any combination you want them to. you want Cait Sith to be a Mugging Goblin Puncher with the ability to to outrun rays of light? done. You want Red XIII to be a summoning, confusing, unmovable fortress? done. You want to turn Barret into a crying schoolgirl who only casts healing and buffs? All to easy.
Much like 3/6, the ability for any character to learn not only any magic, but also every ability that the player has access to in THE ENTIRE GAME to anyone they want makes characters even more interchangeable then in 3/6 but 7 doesn't even have unique talents and no limit breaks do not count because 98% of them just consisted of that one character doing a whole lot of damage and that was it.
Final Fantasy 8: This game may seem like a near identical situation to 7 in that you merely replace Materia for Magic stock and GF's, but there are 2 differences. Yes being able to junction spells to your stats made it so any character could do anything as well as anyone else stat wise, the game made special abilities unique to the GF's so it more turned into playing as specific sets of GF's all crammed into the bodies of 3 unique looking puppets
Final Fantasy 9: This game really toned down customization a good bit. you could give almost all the characters certain abilities like Jelly, Insomnia, Locomotion, but Vivi would NEVER be able to cast White Magic or hit as hard as Zindane, Eiko would NEVER be able to Steal, Quinoa would NEVER be able to throw and Steiner will NEVER be able to summon a Ham Sandwich, much less the Goddess of Ice Shiva. They also limited the amount of abilities any character could have equipped at any time.
Final Fantasy 10: i've never played it so this one is short, but given what I've seen of the sphere system, it seems to fall into the same category as 7, but i admit I could be wrong.
Final Fantasy 10-2: Actually the least of the Sinners because well any girl could take any job they were stuck in the job they took and if they took another job even mid battle, they left all the other skills behind.
Final Fantasy 5: It falls on the low end of the sin scale, worse then 10-2, but better then 8 and way better then 7. Well all of the 4 character could learn everything, and I do mean everything, they limited what the characters could use at any given time. The game limited you to your current job plus the skills of ONE other job, which meant yes, you could have a powerful beat stick with the power to cast healing pixie dust or to mug an enemy with every attack, but NOT BOTH at the same time (I THINK there was an ability to get 2 sub jobs at some point, but I could be wrong, and even if I am and your powerhouse could cast cure and beat monsters for their lunch money before killing them, he still couldn't also throw ninja stars or summon Ramuh).
I never played 11 or beyond, nore did I play the official 1,2 or 3 or the Game Boy games but I'm pretty sure that they didn't have much customization in them, but hey, I could be wrong. I know 2/4 for the SNES didn't, but the DS version had the Augment system, soooo....
Final Fantasy 4 DS: The Augment system almost sounds like a 8 or 9 rip off, and to an extent it is, there are major differences between them. The Augments for those that don't know, we're unique character skills or new skills period that would be dropped or found/given after when you'd reach a point of no return, killed a major boss and were able to get back to where you fought them, or when characters left your party for good if they had a skill that only THEY had access to (Such as Palom and Porom's Twincast ability) then they would leave the skill behind as a one-time use item to teach it to another character (More if you counted New Game+ but for this argument I'm not though I do admit the more you NG+, the more samey you can make them but even that has it's limits.).
Now well this made it possible to have SIMILAR characters to one's you lost, such as giving Twincast and Cry to one Character and then Twincast and Bluff to a different character, and unless those characters happen to be Rosa and Rydia, the twins respective White magic and Black magic will NEVER be dropped for you to give to any other character. Much like 9, the game places a limit to how many Augments you can use, more accurately a limit of 4 abilities per character and almost all characters come with a full list, so if you wanted to give them one ability from another character you had to remove one of their unique abilities (Or the attack command, but that seems very unlikely). Even the generic none character augments like HP+50% had to take up one of the 4 slots.
Augments WOULD raise your stats upon level up, but they would raise them AFTER you hit a certain level (at least level 50 if I recall correctly) and even if you did waste your time giving your heavy hitters all the magic powering augments, only 7 or so had a magical power to them: 4 being the signature move of 4 major bosses or an ability related to them, 2 were the Twincast Augment which could only cast 1 of a VERY select few magic spells and required 2 people to do it (Certain powerful magics would cast randomly if the right two people had Twincast) and the last was Recall, a Augment that a randomly selected spell on the proper target IF it worked, you have no selection over what type of spell or who it targets, if it even worked in the first place.
The last difference is Aguments are COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. Well in almost every game from 5 on, the customization has been almost mandatory to win, with 7 and 8 being the biggest offenders, fallowed by 3/6, (seriously, go ahead and try or look up a no Materia/no Junction run) 5 and 9 could stand with minimal use of it (It's not a requirement to have a subclass in 5 and not hard to beat 9 with just character unique skills only) for 4 they aren't needed at all the game can be fully beaten with the skills the characters come with.
I know that last one is by far the longest but with such a specific system in place, I felt the need to explain it as best I could and point out the differences between it and other games that shared a similar mechanic to it. Don't take away that I don;t like these games, because I really do, but since how a Role Playing Game is about unique characters and story, a lot of the "Best" games have really generic characters. Of course this only applies to battle so maybe I'm making a mountain of a molehill, but you have to deal with these characters as you go along.
Final Fantasy 3/6: I agree with the magic system on the whole, as in theory it's great. Yes I admit having it so that even if my one person I had dedicated as my Healer goes down, I have another character or two who can pick up where they left off until I find a good time to stuff a Phoenix Down somewhere on their person, but I found that the characters ended up being inter-changable and unless I needed one for a specific plot point or Boss battle I found myself picking characters randomly, only stopping to think when the Parties would be split up and even then all I did was make sure the Celes, Saban and Edgar were on seperate teams.
Now I know that everybody has a separate ability that makes them unique, but unless you find yourself wanting to use a certain skill for a certain reason you could normally ignore them, and when at the end of the day when Cyan can cast every spell Terra can with roughly equal damage and much more physical power, it makes the characters a bore.
Final Fantasy 7: This game is the biggest sinner of over customization period. You can make any character do anything you want in any combination you want them to. you want Cait Sith to be a Mugging Goblin Puncher with the ability to to outrun rays of light? done. You want Red XIII to be a summoning, confusing, unmovable fortress? done. You want to turn Barret into a crying schoolgirl who only casts healing and buffs? All to easy.
Much like 3/6, the ability for any character to learn not only any magic, but also every ability that the player has access to in THE ENTIRE GAME to anyone they want makes characters even more interchangeable then in 3/6 but 7 doesn't even have unique talents and no limit breaks do not count because 98% of them just consisted of that one character doing a whole lot of damage and that was it.
Final Fantasy 8: This game may seem like a near identical situation to 7 in that you merely replace Materia for Magic stock and GF's, but there are 2 differences. Yes being able to junction spells to your stats made it so any character could do anything as well as anyone else stat wise, the game made special abilities unique to the GF's so it more turned into playing as specific sets of GF's all crammed into the bodies of 3 unique looking puppets
Final Fantasy 9: This game really toned down customization a good bit. you could give almost all the characters certain abilities like Jelly, Insomnia, Locomotion, but Vivi would NEVER be able to cast White Magic or hit as hard as Zindane, Eiko would NEVER be able to Steal, Quinoa would NEVER be able to throw and Steiner will NEVER be able to summon a Ham Sandwich, much less the Goddess of Ice Shiva. They also limited the amount of abilities any character could have equipped at any time.
Final Fantasy 10: i've never played it so this one is short, but given what I've seen of the sphere system, it seems to fall into the same category as 7, but i admit I could be wrong.
Final Fantasy 10-2: Actually the least of the Sinners because well any girl could take any job they were stuck in the job they took and if they took another job even mid battle, they left all the other skills behind.
Final Fantasy 5: It falls on the low end of the sin scale, worse then 10-2, but better then 8 and way better then 7. Well all of the 4 character could learn everything, and I do mean everything, they limited what the characters could use at any given time. The game limited you to your current job plus the skills of ONE other job, which meant yes, you could have a powerful beat stick with the power to cast healing pixie dust or to mug an enemy with every attack, but NOT BOTH at the same time (I THINK there was an ability to get 2 sub jobs at some point, but I could be wrong, and even if I am and your powerhouse could cast cure and beat monsters for their lunch money before killing them, he still couldn't also throw ninja stars or summon Ramuh).
I never played 11 or beyond, nore did I play the official 1,2 or 3 or the Game Boy games but I'm pretty sure that they didn't have much customization in them, but hey, I could be wrong. I know 2/4 for the SNES didn't, but the DS version had the Augment system, soooo....
Final Fantasy 4 DS: The Augment system almost sounds like a 8 or 9 rip off, and to an extent it is, there are major differences between them. The Augments for those that don't know, we're unique character skills or new skills period that would be dropped or found/given after when you'd reach a point of no return, killed a major boss and were able to get back to where you fought them, or when characters left your party for good if they had a skill that only THEY had access to (Such as Palom and Porom's Twincast ability) then they would leave the skill behind as a one-time use item to teach it to another character (More if you counted New Game+ but for this argument I'm not though I do admit the more you NG+, the more samey you can make them but even that has it's limits.).
Now well this made it possible to have SIMILAR characters to one's you lost, such as giving Twincast and Cry to one Character and then Twincast and Bluff to a different character, and unless those characters happen to be Rosa and Rydia, the twins respective White magic and Black magic will NEVER be dropped for you to give to any other character. Much like 9, the game places a limit to how many Augments you can use, more accurately a limit of 4 abilities per character and almost all characters come with a full list, so if you wanted to give them one ability from another character you had to remove one of their unique abilities (Or the attack command, but that seems very unlikely). Even the generic none character augments like HP+50% had to take up one of the 4 slots.
Augments WOULD raise your stats upon level up, but they would raise them AFTER you hit a certain level (at least level 50 if I recall correctly) and even if you did waste your time giving your heavy hitters all the magic powering augments, only 7 or so had a magical power to them: 4 being the signature move of 4 major bosses or an ability related to them, 2 were the Twincast Augment which could only cast 1 of a VERY select few magic spells and required 2 people to do it (Certain powerful magics would cast randomly if the right two people had Twincast) and the last was Recall, a Augment that a randomly selected spell on the proper target IF it worked, you have no selection over what type of spell or who it targets, if it even worked in the first place.
The last difference is Aguments are COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. Well in almost every game from 5 on, the customization has been almost mandatory to win, with 7 and 8 being the biggest offenders, fallowed by 3/6, (seriously, go ahead and try or look up a no Materia/no Junction run) 5 and 9 could stand with minimal use of it (It's not a requirement to have a subclass in 5 and not hard to beat 9 with just character unique skills only) for 4 they aren't needed at all the game can be fully beaten with the skills the characters come with.
I know that last one is by far the longest but with such a specific system in place, I felt the need to explain it as best I could and point out the differences between it and other games that shared a similar mechanic to it. Don't take away that I don;t like these games, because I really do, but since how a Role Playing Game is about unique characters and story, a lot of the "Best" games have really generic characters. Of course this only applies to battle so maybe I'm making a mountain of a molehill, but you have to deal with these characters as you go along.
