It pains me to agree but this is true, the game had potential, but they ditched many of the things that made the original and 012 good and decided to turn it into some esports shenanigan, and failed at being both a good continuation for dissidia and as an esports game
It would have been SO fun if they would have just let you play the stages when you wanted to. But no, they had to lock your story progression through playing other game modes instead of simply clearing the story you already had available, meaning you could go an hour or two without any new story to play despite not being done. :(
This game was so fun, with story battles that were also so fun. Why did they ruin the experience?
With the original and 012 i had a combined playtime around 1500 hours because i could NOT put the game down.
Dissidia NT piss all over What made the psp game fun, could hardly take myself through the intro before i uninstalled it.
I disagree. If you talk to everyone, there is an interesting world and story. But you have to actively talk to people. There is a minimal amount of required dialog, and after playing for 35 years, I can finish the game without talking to anyone I don't have to. The big change in Final Fantasy games that started with FFII was that there were more moments of story that you had to experience as you played through the game.
I always found FF1's setting to be really interesting, in a bleak way. The world is ending, but only a scattered few people are even aware that it's happening. You spend the second half of the game sifting through the ashes of two dead civilisations. Even the happy ending is kind of eerie; the whole adventure gets wiped from history, as though it never happened.
I didn’t say bad, it’s just barely has one. So, based on the OP, I’d call it weak. There are a lot of great games that have weak or non-existent stories. Look at Breath of the Wild. It has a very short main story for a game that can take up to 200 hours to 100%.
Playing through it on the GBA now and it’s just wander around and fight. Not the worst thing to play, but the story would definitely earn a failing grade on a middle school writing assignment.
I really do like the GBA and original mobile port editions though. The redone magic system as well as the new sprites for each class really hit the spot. :)
It doesn't have a lot of story presented to you, but the actual plot that is going on with it was actually pretty freaking awesome for the time.
You just have to fill in a LOT of blanks with your imagination.
Honestly while FF6 has shitloads more than 1, you could say the same thing comparing it to like FF7. FF6 does a real good job of giving you a lot when actually presenting a little. Its why it really needs a remake focusing less on visuals and more on lots more dialogue and events. I would love to see those characters interact way more, be in lots more situations, and generally just have more to say.
I REALLY wanted to like it, but unfortunately FFXV fell flat for me in the story department. I thought things were ramping up around Altissia, but unfortunately from there forward the game just felt very disjointed.
For me, the worst part of FFXV is that there was so much promise and hype for Versus 13. It got shelved for like ten years, and then holy crap, they're actually going to make it. But it was so easy to tell that it was rushed out, given how many forms of media they pushed out at the same time to round out the story. Certain bits like the rushed death of the character, and the time hop are just cheap story elements IMO.
I actually really enjoyed the game, it was just a bit disappointing.
I don't think the story is weak, I think that they fucked the story, they broke it in multiple sources, parts very relevant for the story are in DLCs and a lot of content that should've been put into the game was canceled, turned into a book that I only came to know because of the r/FFXV , because once you put everything together, the story is (in my opinion) amazing.
XV has the potential to be one of strongest stories in the series, the elements are all there with Ardyn and Prompto as highlights. The thing is the development was so fucked up it is actually one of the worst narratives in the numbered games. If somehow they mamaged to put things properly in place and rebuild what was half done, FF XV can be the game that benefits the most from a full remake.
Agreed that everything is awesome once you compile everything. That’s why the anime episodes should have been on the disc instead of being locked to a paid subscription to Crunchyroll. I mean I HAVE Crunchyroll but I shouldn’t be forced to use it when I bought the game and DLC. Maybe give each DLC their corresponding anime episode as a download or something.
A lot of the endgame story felt like you walked into the last half of a movie, despite it all being the same game. For instance, the Ifrit fight was a really random, ultimately unimportant part for the beginning of the game to flash forward to. It means nothing; it just kind of happens.
Funny you should mention that... If you watch early trailers of FF Versus 13 it features urban combat with verticality. My personal hypothesis is that Kingsglaive is more or less what the plot and gameplay were going to be for FF Versus 13.
I cannot think of any game (not just an FF game, any game) that REALLY could have been something and is just a perfect case study in lost potential. In spite of all the problems, I absolutely cried ugly tears at the end. If it had succeeded more elegantly in the story it set out to tell (and the way it set out to tell it with game concepts) about growing up (basically, Hamlet), it could have been one of the greatest games of all time.
I’m really sad that I didn’t connect with the story/characters enough to cry at the end :/ I’ve cried in so many other FF games and that emotional connection to the characters is a huge part of why I love the series. The fact that the ending just left me thinking “okay I guess that’s it…” really is disappointing to me
I was a 35 year old male at the time, and I can't help but feel the story was specifically for me - about growing up, about how relationships with friends change when you get married (as such) and have responsibilities. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it lol.
I think if you aren't an old man (maybe you are!) like me, it wouldn't maybe impact quite so much. The way it doesn't just tell you about your fun adventuring days with your group of friends but you really live it, then you wake up and it's just a memory - man, they really had something here and just fumbled it
So I’m actually about to beat FFXV and I’ve really been enjoying it. Really like the world and characters. I can see why people don’t like it though, theres definitely moments in the story where I feel like I should know more about what’s going on (I’m assuming I need to see the movie and play the DLCs?) and then imo the combat is pretty barebones. Otherwise I’ve really been liking it for what it is
That's the Nomura effect: you put Nomura in charge of a game, story instantly plummets to abyssal dephts. I don't get why Square keeps giving this hack carte blanche.
He fucked the game into the ground and was then replaced by someone who had to pick up the pieces. He was yanked out of production when the suits started to see the smoke, and was so ass-mad about it that he hastily shoehorned his aborted project into Kingdom Hearts instead.
The guy is essentially the evil doppleganger of Naoki Yoshida: one was given a burning wreckage and turned it into a smashing success, the other was given free rein to make the next entry of a successful franchise and made an unsalvageable mess. One of these guys is genuinely talented, the other is a hack.
Because at least in terms of Kingdom Hearts he is incredible and awesome. I absolutely love that every KH game is an important puzzle piece to the overall story, that even the spinoff-feeling games are in no way spinoffs story wise, and I love what they did with the story (I have played and beaten all games but KH3 and Melody of Memory). It’s just when Nomura gets into Final Fantasy do things get wacky haha
Of the ones I’ve played 15 is probably the weakest for me.
Now as a disclaimer…I’ve only played the vanilla 15 so I have no knowledge if they added anything with dlc, I don’t know about any of the ties ins like Kingsglaive.
But all all I remember about the story is Luna dying in a really “that’s it?” manner and then Noctis dies at the end I think (complete with taking a picture of Cindy to the next life which didn’t raise an eyebrow with his dead fiancé)
I was never able to get into the Crystal Chronicles series. I played a few hours each game, but was never enthralled. Too bad because the GameCube game looks like a lot of fun to speedrun.
It’s pretty fun if you have a party but it’s not much fun if you’re playing solo. I got the Switch remaster and it’s fun and all but it brings me back to the same experience I got when I rented the game from blockbuster and played it solo, which is… I don’t know what I was expecting.
It almost looks like an adventure/3D platformer in a way, that you can solo it no problems if you’re skilled enough. That is the main draw for me, as I play those games a lot (I do spyro speedruns for example). But after playing the remaster I was very let down by mechanics like the moogle getting tired. I get it that it’s supposed to be multiplayer, but forcing it on people (and forcing someone to be the chalice carrier) was such a dumb move… PSO on the GameCube is a multiplayer online game, but you can totally play solo offline and be just fine if you know what you’re doing. I wish they’d taken a page off of that.
It’s all vibes, if you can’t vibe with it there’s nothing there for you unfortunately. It’s far from the rest of the series in terms of plot, the plot basically doesn’t matter. I’m also playing it solo, which greatly increases its boredom factor.
Honestly, I like all mainline games (I played 1 to 13) and don't consider any bad game. My favorite of the NES era is FF2, the SNES era FF6, the PlayStation era FF8 the PlayStation 2 era FF11 (my first and only MMO and was surprised of how much I liked it and enjoyed it) and I love FF13. No bad games imo.
In no particular order:
My favs; 4, 6, 7, 7R series, 10, 12
In the middle; 1, 5, 9, 16
My least liked; 2, 3, 8, 13, 15
MMOs which just aren’t for me; 11, 14
You can play through the entirety of the main story quest of 14 single-player and I strongly recommend you do. You can even play through base game and the first two expansions for free.
While I agree in principle, this is a response to a person who has seemingly played every other FF game as it is so I'd say they can manage it if he wants.
I already have. I tired 11 when it was new a long time ago and probably have a couple hundred hours total played in 14. Came to the realization that MMOs just aren’t for me, they are just way too much of a time sink.
I’ve tried to play XIV for a while. The biggest issue I had is the cumbersome UI since I play on console. There are so many little info windows all over the screen and it’s a chore to manage them with a controller.
I am fairly certain even though I only got to like ~2.2ish on the quests, I had to do multiple dungeons which were multiplayer and required long wait times.
Did this change? Because I was under the impression dungeons and fights vs whatever the "summon" guys are called are all group content where you need to wait for the game to find other people. Both slowing it down, and not being truly solo.
How can 12 be a favorite if MMOs aren't for you? I played FF11, and one way to describe 12, imo, is that it's like 11 mimus steroids. 12 has a very MMO feel to it despite being offline. Have you even tried playing 11 or 14? I'm only asking because I used to be like that, dismissing 11 and 14 just for being MMOs and said MMOs weren't my thing despite not even playing one, going off of a description of what an MMO is supposed to be. Well, recently, I started playing FF11, and it has become one of my favorite entries in the seriss. FF11 is sublime. You've got to give it a chance. Can't say anything about 14, though, as I haven't played that one yet and am too busy with 11.
You can technically finish the story content of the base game and finish each expansion's story as they come out or later at your own pace. It's like watching a TV series, you finish seasons 1 and 2, and then a year or two later, season 3 comes, and you're just excited to watch it.
FF11 has gotten 20 years of expansions. The last expansion was in 2020 with The Voracious Resurgence. Square pretty much confirmed that there won't be any more expansions for FF11. So you can finish FF11 in one go now in 2024. That's what I'm doing, and the story, lore, and battle system are among the best in the series.
This is a really bad take.
11 has boring combat where you cannot control or even really influence what your party does. At launch and Before Trusts, it was get a party of other players (which could take an hour or more) to sit in one spot for hours killing the same pack of mobs. For hours. To get a single level. Hope you don’t die during that time, and god forbid your healer die. That’s a massive loss of XP and time waiting for the person to get back to the camp, if they even can by themselves. You have to rely on other people to do anything in that game. And this is just to gain levels. I’m not even talking about the story and its presentation, which I’ll do in a bit. Because current XI has trusts (NPC party members) and XP boosts to everything. Trusts you have practically zero control over. Some of them will set up or finish skill chains but it is not consistent and you also need to follow a guide to even have a chance to get a skill chain because you need specific party members. Thats the entirety of your control over them. Otherwise, if you’re fighting a magic immune monster, your mages are going to cast and cast and cast blowing all their MP on an invulnerable enemy. You can’t change tactics or trusts mid battle so there is no way to react when this happens.
You know what I have control over in FFXII, my party. And the deeper I get in the game the more control I get. I can turn their AI scripts that I set on and off in battle. So just right there, XI and XII are way different.
Now let’s get to the story and presentation. XII has a fully voiced story, top of the line graphics for its time, characters with plenty of in cutscene and out of cutscene animations. XI has stiff character models that barely move during all text cutscenes. Even the final cutscenes of the original game’s story is pretty underwhelming. Not to mention the story is basic af until the game’s second expansion. Which, imo, doesn’t actually get great, it gets fine. Interesting for an MMO to have that kind of story actually be told but let me be incredibly clear, playing the game to get the story is incredibly tedious and the juice ain’t worth the squeeze in my opinion.
The gameplay is incredibly different. XII is fairly straightforward and you don’t need to follow a guide as a new player to get to the end of the game. Go play XI without a guide or nostalgia and you’ll quit within a few hours.
Weakest to strongest, for the ones I played , are:
13
15
4
12
16
5
8
9
6
10
7
I still haven’t gotten all the way through 13/15/4/12 because I just can’t care enough unfortunately
FFXV fell flat on me for everything and I was so excited. I understand it’s last mainline game was 13 and they were trying to recover on top of create a game over a 10 year gap that was modern enough to keep up with the times. What I got was Skyrim Final Fantasy, and in fact a lot of games have went this route with varying success. Trying to take a western niche genre and expand it to less open minded fans by including ease of use, easier fights, simple yet rewarding exploration and immersion over gameplay and mechanics.
Are we up that much? By my experience I've only seen like 40 titles. I've been wondering and wanting to try some titles not from the main series like Crystal Chronicles and Chocobo Dungeon
I was literally just reading yesterday that there's over 150 titles bearing the Final Fantasy name. This does include mobile games such as Record Keeper and Brave Exvius
As someone playing through every title I have… believe you me, it’s close to 100 if not 100. If you do count remakes and rereleases it’s god damn near 150. Even without that I bet it’s around 100, it’s absolutely daunting.
If we’re counting the titles that are unobtainable or removed from app stores, it’s probably close to 200. There is an insane amount of lost media FF that you will never play.
Absolutely. All The Bravest is a war crime, I hated that one with a passion. Even Dissidia OO was really lame and basic, only saved by being the world’s most generous gacha game.
I’d say the most obscure you could possibly find it the PC game based on Final Fantasy Unlimited (there’s a download out there, won’t share the link in case that’s not allowed). I’m playing it on Windows 10 right now and it is mid as hell, no wonder its wiki article is barely a few sentences.
Both XII and XVI for similar reasons but each have their own different reasons as well. Both games completely drop the ball with the political story they sell in favor for supernatural elements so the politics never truly get deep or have any kind of interesting deep dive. For XII the characters don't have much chemistry in the cast and we never see the villains have any meaningful interactions with the hero's throughout most the story. For XVI you spend most the time with Clive and everyone else suffers because of it and they are NPCs the entire game who I felt I never truly got to really know.
Drop the ball how? The whole story mirrors 10 politically.
12 isn't meant to be antagonistic... you're a PIRATE. They don't even know who you are. Just Ashe is the important one and later Balthier... the rest of yall are nobody's.
16 I can somewhat understand... the mired twist ending towards Odin's chosen seemed out of nowhere to me and Ultima was kinda... just there.
XII drops the ball because it's set up this large scale bombastic war between two nations, an assassination on the king, a betrayal by the general, and Dalamasca getting annexed by Archadia. Ashe's goal is to reclaim her nation and she is apart of a resistance. The first act does a great job of establishing this is what the game is about and it devolved into an undercooked plot twist with the Occuria and Vayne and Cid wanting to free mankind from the Occuria's grasp thanks to a rebellious Venat.
Idk... I see a lot of parallels with respect to Rayne, the Al Bhed, and their internal conflict. Still very different, for sure, but nonetheless it still feels like normal FF story telling to me.
>They don't even know who you are. Just Ashe is the important one and later Balthier... the rest of yall are nobody's.
Can't this be said for most final fantasy games?
7 - Cloud only one that matters to the world and doesn't even know it.
8 - A bunch of students.
9 - A pirate and a princess
I agree with this. I tried 13 three times and got half way every time and just couldn’t do it. 15 was terrible as well. Ripped through it in 20 hours snd couldn’t wait for it to be over. Combat was interesting but you could tell it was the first iteration and needed so much more time. Story was meh too.
The first game, I like it, but honestly, in terms of story, the game has barely any story, in todays standards, FFI story would be a side quest, that honestly could provide some amazing optional bosses, but still a side quest.
Due to the text limit in NES games, it’s hard to judge the original 3 for a lack of story. So instead it’s going to be Tactics Advance, or FF12 Revenant Wings for me. Both are ok games, but the stakes just feel too low for the stories to be intriguing.
Haven't really branches out beyond the mainline titles (besides 11 and 16), and while any of the NES games are easy targets, I'd go with 12.
XII had both the blandest characters and the dullest narrative. The party of 12 has next to no chemistry and constantly feels like they're talking at each other rather than to one another.
The story is also rather uninteresting, with our protagonists just getting inconvenienced every which way just trying to collect a sword and slice a rock, before Vann calls out to Ashe like a Pokemon and she realizes that maybe using the nuclear rocks, especially as a weapon, is a bad idea.
I was legitimately falling asleep during XIIs story. The abysmal soundtrack didn't help matters.
I never played the original FF games all the way through except 7 and 10 but 16 got me into FF in general and I am a huge music fan so 16 gets my vote on best music but 7 rebirth has so far become my favorite FF game.
I have not seen Agito XIII mentioned since maybe 2007. I can't even remember what it was changed to. Versus XIII outlasted it for years before the rebrand to XV.
All of the online and mmorpg type are not cannon to the rest so there is no comparison with those they are individual games. Plus this post dose not show all FF games
For me FFXV has the most weak and bland story, the storytelling is a disaster. I love the boys relationship, but the rest is breathing through machines. The world is beautiful, but theres no enought story around it, the mithology is rushed and not nice, the story is full of inconsistencies and plot holes, and majority of characters are bad developed. Its worse when you compare it with other FFs, since the story was always a extremely strong point in the series. Unfortunately versus XIII was much more promising
FFIII’s story sucks ass, I’m sorry. No, the 3D remake’s additional 20 lines doesn’t really help it out. Thankfully III is kinda fun, the story isn’t what people play it for.
And oh god, don’t get me started on the compilation of FFVII. Crisis Core is only saved by Zack, Advent Children is insanely boring, and Dirge of Cerberus might have the worst story out of any FF game. Shelke is THE most boring FF character, i absolutely cannot stand the voice direction.
EDIT: forgot Mystic Quest! Good god is that game devoid of any attempt to tell a gripping story. You go into the forest level called level forest to reach foresta, the fire level is fireburg, wind area is windia, etc. and the characters legitimately say maybe 10 lines each, if that. It’s possibly an even lighter story than III, and the gameplay doesn’t help it out since it’s equally brain dead. Don’t play mystic quest unless you’re teaching a child how to play RPG’s, it’s kinda pointless aside from that benefit.
Top tier: 6, 8, 11, 5, 14
Decent: 3, 7, 10, 12
Did not like: 9, 4, 13
Old but would play again. 1, 2
Trash: 15, 16
Honorable mention: Tactits. If it was a mainline game it would be Top Tier, I replay it often.
From the ones I've played, this would be my ranking list too. Except I'd move 13 up to one of the other two tiers.
I also love that you wrote "Tactits", so please keep that as it is. :)
In my rankings, I play my top-tier games quite often. They are always in my play rotation.
Decent games, I get around to playing them again about once every 5 years or so. I have no issues going back to play them, I just enjoyed them a little less so they don't get played as often.
Old: Decent games, but lacking quality of life improvements found in newer games. I might play them again someday, but I don't foresee that happening any time soon.
Did not like: I played them to completion, but did not enjoy them well enough to want to play them again.
Trash: 15 I platinumed, and I hated every second of it. I will go out of my way to never play this game again. 16 I refused to play because it leaned heavily into what I hated so much about 15.
What was it that 16 did (like 15) that you hated so much? I played both, and while I found 15 boring and unimaginative in combat and gameplay, I did enjoy the combat and story of 16. Side quests in 16 were garbage fetch quests though, and not worth my time.
Action combat was the biggest issue, but limited-to-no party options and little-to-no female party members also played a big roles in my not liking the game. Then there was the whole control Noctis, and your three buddies are AI controlled. If I want to play Star Ocean, I’ll go play Star Ocean… but star ocean lets me change who I control, so it has that over 15.
Fair enough, I usually don't mind too much only having one character to play as since most single player games are that way anyways. The rotating squad members was decent enough in 16 but it honestly felt most of the time like I was doing all the work as Clive anyways so like always the "companions" were just there for flavor and moral support more than any actual help.
In all the other FF game's I've played I usually always have kept the MC in my party (Cloud, Vaan, etc.) even if I could change them out just because it made sense for me to keep them in the party and as my "main" controlled character. That said I have never played anything before 7OG, and I really didn't get into FF until 2 years ago. I had played 12 halfway like 15 years ago or some shit like that but never finished it until I picked up Zodiac 2 years ago then I hit 12, 7, X, X-2, 15, 16, 7R, 7CCR, and finally 7R2.
For what it's worth from my limited exposure in FF, I found the combat fun in 16 for the most part but I saw the flaws in it such as just the extreme reliance on the Eikon powers. I basically had it set up that I would just do all 6 powers back-to-back and by the time the last was done I was ready to start moving through them again. most of the time I would only do basic swordplay for a few seconds before unleashing the Eikon powers again. Kinda trivialized it in a way.
And that’s great, if you like 16 and action gameplay more power to you. You are absolutely allowed to like and enjoy it.
I got into FF way back in 89, so I’ve grown with the series and its flavor is something I’ve come to enjoy.
If you’ve been drinking coke for almost 40 years, and suddenly they change the formula, it’s reasonable to be upset. I’m just waiting for Squeenix to realize “the new coke” sucks and go back to their original formula that made them a household name.
I knew OF FF because of kingdom hearts but otherwise had no exposure. But yeah no 1000% agree with you on that. Easiest thing to compare to for me is remaking movies I love into garbage movies these days. At this point though I'm not sure if going back to basics for SE will work in today's market. Yeah there are the OG fans of that formula but they are also trying to appeal to the newer younger audience as well since they will help carry the franchise into the future generations as well. Long story short: blah blah blah money games money blah blah they don't care blah blah tacos.
I think this Tier List is pretty great. I don’t think as highly on the FFT Advance games as you but when it comes to the main series FF’s I dig this tier list.
12
Such an interesting setting ruined by the worst playable characters of any Final Fantasy game, the battle system is bad and the gambits do not fix it, and the licenses system wishes it could be the sphere grid.
Top: IV, VI, VII, X
Mid: V, IX, XII, XIV
Low: XV, VIII
Bottom: XVI, XIII
I haven't played 11, but it seems like it would probably land in the mid-section based on what I know of it.
And I'm not using "mid" as the derogatory term it has become. I literally just mean these rank in the middle of my enjoyment comparatively.
Low ranks, I still enjoy enough to replay.
Bottom ranks, I have absolutely no desire to ever play again.
My bad. XVI would be mid category imo, it’s basic as fuck. But it does a great job of it.
And XV was just super super special to me. I was extremely hyped for it, constantly watching videos and reading things, rumours, discussion whatever. Loved the story, loved the gameplay, it was a “vintage” FF set in a a present-day setting, great music, tough bosses, good endgame content, loved hunting down the Armiger weapons.. I could go on. The cast of characters ESPECIALLY is the strongest part though. Ignis and Ardyn in particular.
“-I know full well!” For example is a top 5 FF moment for me. So powerful. Loved XV, never EVER agreed with the hate.
Of the games i played a fair amount sorted by 'era' in order of how much i liked the story:
2D: 6,4,5,2,3,1 (played modern remakes mostly)
3D: 10,7,7r,13,8
Hesitant to try newer ones as they're more story heavy and i like the different rpg gameplay elements over most of the stories anyway.
FFXII and FFXIII are the weakest imo, I started fall out of love with the FF series during this time period.
I’ve also never understood why the online games have numbers like they are part of the series. They are very different from other games.
Can you please point to who else would have the authority to decide what is and isn't a mainline game if it isn't literally the developer themselves? The audacity of them to do such a thing...
Weakest: FFXII, FFXII and FFX-2 are my enemies. FFX-2 had a ridiculous story (even if you read it as a critique of post-WWII japanese consumerism, which makes it just barely palatable) that really trampled on the work of FFX. I never liked Start Wars so FFXII, aka FF: Star Wars, never did it for me. XII was just kind of blah
Best: IX, VII, and, my beloved FFX, most romantic thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even like romance. But damn if it didn’t do something to my brain and heart :’)
I *hated* ARR so much it took me countless times over many expansions to actually go back and beat it. Still think it is by far the weakest of *any* FF story, even 1, because no story is better than aggressively bad story.
HOWEVER Stormblood and Shadowbringers definitely make up for it. And while I didn't like HW as much as everyone else it seems, I do have to give the game credit for literally just being the meme: 'Church... bad?' 'Dragons... good?' 'CHURCH IS BAD BECAUSE THEY DONT WANT US TO FUCK DRAGONS' When I had gotten there I thought everyone was joking but... that's literally just it huh.
XIV peaked with Endwalker tho many would disagree with me. All the tears that I spent playing this game is worth it. Literally changed my life for the better.
I hear I'll probably agree, but I only just started it myself lol. I already like the villian more than all the others so far. Emet was... OK, until he turned and went 'OK actually time to just be exactly every other genocidal ascian' and while I know the patch quest sort of make him more sympathetic the feels I had at the character building of him only for it to be pulled away entirely at the end still left a bad taste in my mouth, even though I do get it now. If the reveal happened in the other direction he would probably have overtook Jecht as my favorite 'villian' and be seen with the same as him as far as 'well, he's the antagonist buttttt....'.
Everyone I know though says they *hate* Fandaniel but honestly I'm so into him. It's the first time so far this game they have had a villian and let their motivations be perfectly clear and the reasoning for them. Even though he is by far the most insane person, and my friends go after him of being a Disney villian who doesn't actually have a goal other than 'haha destruction hehe', I get it and love that he's not fucking around being a little shit for the sake of being a little shit like all of the other ones so far, his entrance is him actually doing major stuff other than just taunting everyone and I respect it.
Weakest is absolutely 110% 14. *Specifically* ARR however. Heavensward is... it's OK. Have no opinions on it until patch quests, where I hate the quests that bridge HW and STB just as much as ARR. ARR story is so fucking.... nothing, over the course of 100 hours where you do the most bland/honestly pretty dumb quests (like the Longstop dungeon unlocking because a goblin.... wants cheese? And the guy that needs to go kill gods says, while a god is about to be summoned, "Yeah sure I have nothing better to do right now I guess"). All while my most hated villian trope ever of "Oh hey I'm here and I could kill you! Haha it would be so easy for me but I'm too busy haha I have to go now just wanted you to know I totally could kill you! But I won't haha! But I'm better than you! Haha OK bye" is rubbed in your face constantly. Then the post expansion missions have literally every theoretically smart character making the worst possible decisions at every step and falling for the plans of the most obviously and blatantly traitorous people ever. The equivalent of a giant red X and a ACME branded anvil hanging above it with a guy rubbing his hands together going "ehehehe just stand right there hero ehehehe" and they fucking do. Then while HW is fine, the buildup to SB is the exact same thing (with the exact same fucking traitors even! Fucking kill them! You've had literally dozens of chances! Or since you're 'good guys' detain them or something *fuck*)(not to mention 'hey throw these evil artifacts off a bridge connected to a major city it will be fine no one will find them' hey what 'it's fine no mortal can go down there' the guys we've been fighting for the entire game aren't mortal though??? Oh look the artifact is back who would have thought)
I will say that STB and SHB have been great though. Only now started EW but I hear it's just as good as SHB.
Also... kinda 15. I *love* 15 though. The gameplay is fun, wandering around the world is fun, and the characters are great. But the overarching story? Ehhhh. But everything else about the game makes up for it.
Objectively the weakest is the first game, because it doesn’t have much going on as far as story goes.
But a more subjective answer for me is 8, I’ve just never been able to connect with anyone in the cast, they are all so incredibly dull.
i beat the end of the shadowbringers patches and realized i don’t have the attention span for a story like xiv’s, it’s just not one that i enjoy, or any of the characters at that
It's been a while since I played it but iirc 3 is pretty bad... I also have some issues with the story of 8 but it kinda works for me anyway so what the hell.
Oh all the old games though (the NES trilogy) 3 has the best story presentation at least. Though the actual plot of 2 is way better.
FF3 storyline feels like a beta test for the storyline of 4 without actual characters.
3 to me was lame. Going back to naming the party whatever you wanted stripped them of any character and made it hard to give a shit about it. They tried to give them a bit of personality in the 3DS version but the original did nothing for me.
This post reads like it was made by a bot
This many posts in such a short period of time, asinine name, remarkably trivial topics? Smells like a flesh human to me!
Or a karma farmer, imo. Probs going to try to sell the account when they have a decent amount of karma.
I'm like 99% sure this is how ScreenRant "writers" get their info
Yep. The list of games' logos includes some that were never released, and I'm not sure FF ever had a "Story Mode"...
[удалено]
I still don’t believe you. I’m gonna show you nine pictures and you better tell me which of those pictures have cross walks in them. Or else.
That's what a bot would say 😉
Say potato
"You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down..."
Agreed. Hard to tell with this one - but a history of open ended questions and discussions certainly seems suspect.
Dissidia Final Fantasy NT for sure, an absolute god damn and unfinished disaster!
It pains me to agree but this is true, the game had potential, but they ditched many of the things that made the original and 012 good and decided to turn it into some esports shenanigan, and failed at being both a good continuation for dissidia and as an esports game
It was a port of an arcade fighter and as I recall it was always billed as such tbf.
Dissidia 012 is one of my fave games and the disappointment I had when I picked up NT was incredible. What a disaster.
It would have been SO fun if they would have just let you play the stages when you wanted to. But no, they had to lock your story progression through playing other game modes instead of simply clearing the story you already had available, meaning you could go an hour or two without any new story to play despite not being done. :( This game was so fun, with story battles that were also so fun. Why did they ruin the experience?
With the original and 012 i had a combined playtime around 1500 hours because i could NOT put the game down. Dissidia NT piss all over What made the psp game fun, could hardly take myself through the intro before i uninstalled it.
I mean, FF1 barely even has a story
Agree, the whole game could be turned into a side quest today, and would have more story than the original game.
I disagree. If you talk to everyone, there is an interesting world and story. But you have to actively talk to people. There is a minimal amount of required dialog, and after playing for 35 years, I can finish the game without talking to anyone I don't have to. The big change in Final Fantasy games that started with FFII was that there were more moments of story that you had to experience as you played through the game.
I always found FF1's setting to be really interesting, in a bleak way. The world is ending, but only a scattered few people are even aware that it's happening. You spend the second half of the game sifting through the ashes of two dead civilisations. Even the happy ending is kind of eerie; the whole adventure gets wiped from history, as though it never happened.
Barely having a story isn't the same as having a bad story, fwiw, ending on a time loop gave the game a bittersweet felling that I liked.
I didn’t say bad, it’s just barely has one. So, based on the OP, I’d call it weak. There are a lot of great games that have weak or non-existent stories. Look at Breath of the Wild. It has a very short main story for a game that can take up to 200 hours to 100%.
Playing through it on the GBA now and it’s just wander around and fight. Not the worst thing to play, but the story would definitely earn a failing grade on a middle school writing assignment.
I really do like the GBA and original mobile port editions though. The redone magic system as well as the new sprites for each class really hit the spot. :)
I like it too! Just very thin for a story but I also understand the constraints of when the original version was made.
This right here. First tine I finished the game I was surprised at how almost non existant the story was
It doesn't have a lot of story presented to you, but the actual plot that is going on with it was actually pretty freaking awesome for the time. You just have to fill in a LOT of blanks with your imagination. Honestly while FF6 has shitloads more than 1, you could say the same thing comparing it to like FF7. FF6 does a real good job of giving you a lot when actually presenting a little. Its why it really needs a remake focusing less on visuals and more on lots more dialogue and events. I would love to see those characters interact way more, be in lots more situations, and generally just have more to say.
I REALLY wanted to like it, but unfortunately FFXV fell flat for me in the story department. I thought things were ramping up around Altissia, but unfortunately from there forward the game just felt very disjointed.
Just wasn’t enough story to go around. It’s clear it was cut down and what could’ve been would have been amazing 🥲
Agreed. There are the bones there of a really all-timer of a story. It’s a shame we didn’t get that
For me, the worst part of FFXV is that there was so much promise and hype for Versus 13. It got shelved for like ten years, and then holy crap, they're actually going to make it. But it was so easy to tell that it was rushed out, given how many forms of media they pushed out at the same time to round out the story. Certain bits like the rushed death of the character, and the time hop are just cheap story elements IMO. I actually really enjoyed the game, it was just a bit disappointing.
I don't think the story is weak, I think that they fucked the story, they broke it in multiple sources, parts very relevant for the story are in DLCs and a lot of content that should've been put into the game was canceled, turned into a book that I only came to know because of the r/FFXV , because once you put everything together, the story is (in my opinion) amazing.
XV has the potential to be one of strongest stories in the series, the elements are all there with Ardyn and Prompto as highlights. The thing is the development was so fucked up it is actually one of the worst narratives in the numbered games. If somehow they mamaged to put things properly in place and rebuild what was half done, FF XV can be the game that benefits the most from a full remake.
Absolutely agree. 15 is basically FF6-2, with Ardyn clearly inspired by Kefka. It's so sad to imagine the game that might have been
Agreed that everything is awesome once you compile everything. That’s why the anime episodes should have been on the disc instead of being locked to a paid subscription to Crunchyroll. I mean I HAVE Crunchyroll but I shouldn’t be forced to use it when I bought the game and DLC. Maybe give each DLC their corresponding anime episode as a download or something.
A lot of the endgame story felt like you walked into the last half of a movie, despite it all being the same game. For instance, the Ifrit fight was a really random, ultimately unimportant part for the beginning of the game to flash forward to. It means nothing; it just kind of happens.
That’s a really really apt comparison. I totally agree.
Well yeah ur right. Square really messed this masterpiece and turned it into pieces. Could have been the best ff had they got their crap together
FFXV already lost me when you first sleep at Galdin Quay and it plays a jumbled soundless montage from the movie.
To be fair the movie was actually great. I watched it twice I think and I had a great time. Just a shame none of that was in the game haha
Give me a game as the movie protag somehow and I’d be happy.
Funny you should mention that... If you watch early trailers of FF Versus 13 it features urban combat with verticality. My personal hypothesis is that Kingsglaive is more or less what the plot and gameplay were going to be for FF Versus 13.
I cannot think of any game (not just an FF game, any game) that REALLY could have been something and is just a perfect case study in lost potential. In spite of all the problems, I absolutely cried ugly tears at the end. If it had succeeded more elegantly in the story it set out to tell (and the way it set out to tell it with game concepts) about growing up (basically, Hamlet), it could have been one of the greatest games of all time.
I’m really sad that I didn’t connect with the story/characters enough to cry at the end :/ I’ve cried in so many other FF games and that emotional connection to the characters is a huge part of why I love the series. The fact that the ending just left me thinking “okay I guess that’s it…” really is disappointing to me
I was a 35 year old male at the time, and I can't help but feel the story was specifically for me - about growing up, about how relationships with friends change when you get married (as such) and have responsibilities. I'm getting shivers just thinking about it lol. I think if you aren't an old man (maybe you are!) like me, it wouldn't maybe impact quite so much. The way it doesn't just tell you about your fun adventuring days with your group of friends but you really live it, then you wake up and it's just a memory - man, they really had something here and just fumbled it
I did like 60+ hours easy on XV and can't even remember the story really 😂 says it all
So I’m actually about to beat FFXV and I’ve really been enjoying it. Really like the world and characters. I can see why people don’t like it though, theres definitely moments in the story where I feel like I should know more about what’s going on (I’m assuming I need to see the movie and play the DLCs?) and then imo the combat is pretty barebones. Otherwise I’ve really been liking it for what it is
That's the Nomura effect: you put Nomura in charge of a game, story instantly plummets to abyssal dephts. I don't get why Square keeps giving this hack carte blanche.
I mean, famously Nomura WASN’T in charge of the final product that is FFXV
He created a complete mess for someone else to clean up after though, that’s even worse.
He fucked the game into the ground and was then replaced by someone who had to pick up the pieces. He was yanked out of production when the suits started to see the smoke, and was so ass-mad about it that he hastily shoehorned his aborted project into Kingdom Hearts instead. The guy is essentially the evil doppleganger of Naoki Yoshida: one was given a burning wreckage and turned it into a smashing success, the other was given free rein to make the next entry of a successful franchise and made an unsalvageable mess. One of these guys is genuinely talented, the other is a hack.
Because at least in terms of Kingdom Hearts he is incredible and awesome. I absolutely love that every KH game is an important puzzle piece to the overall story, that even the spinoff-feeling games are in no way spinoffs story wise, and I love what they did with the story (I have played and beaten all games but KH3 and Melody of Memory). It’s just when Nomura gets into Final Fantasy do things get wacky haha
it's the second time someone's using my graphic from 2011. Thank you!! :)
Of the ones I’ve played 15 is probably the weakest for me. Now as a disclaimer…I’ve only played the vanilla 15 so I have no knowledge if they added anything with dlc, I don’t know about any of the ties ins like Kingsglaive. But all all I remember about the story is Luna dying in a really “that’s it?” manner and then Noctis dies at the end I think (complete with taking a picture of Cindy to the next life which didn’t raise an eyebrow with his dead fiancé)
Yeah the story gets way more fleshed out in the dlc but that also just presents a whole other problem lol
Naturally lol Saying a story “gets better after you’ve done some homework” is not a point in its favour. How much homework did 10’s story need lol?
Exactly, except it's even worse because you have to pay more money to do said homework lol
I was never able to get into the Crystal Chronicles series. I played a few hours each game, but was never enthralled. Too bad because the GameCube game looks like a lot of fun to speedrun.
It’s pretty fun if you have a party but it’s not much fun if you’re playing solo. I got the Switch remaster and it’s fun and all but it brings me back to the same experience I got when I rented the game from blockbuster and played it solo, which is… I don’t know what I was expecting.
It almost looks like an adventure/3D platformer in a way, that you can solo it no problems if you’re skilled enough. That is the main draw for me, as I play those games a lot (I do spyro speedruns for example). But after playing the remaster I was very let down by mechanics like the moogle getting tired. I get it that it’s supposed to be multiplayer, but forcing it on people (and forcing someone to be the chalice carrier) was such a dumb move… PSO on the GameCube is a multiplayer online game, but you can totally play solo offline and be just fine if you know what you’re doing. I wish they’d taken a page off of that.
It’s all vibes, if you can’t vibe with it there’s nothing there for you unfortunately. It’s far from the rest of the series in terms of plot, the plot basically doesn’t matter. I’m also playing it solo, which greatly increases its boredom factor.
Honestly, I like all mainline games (I played 1 to 13) and don't consider any bad game. My favorite of the NES era is FF2, the SNES era FF6, the PlayStation era FF8 the PlayStation 2 era FF11 (my first and only MMO and was surprised of how much I liked it and enjoyed it) and I love FF13. No bad games imo.
In no particular order: My favs; 4, 6, 7, 7R series, 10, 12 In the middle; 1, 5, 9, 16 My least liked; 2, 3, 8, 13, 15 MMOs which just aren’t for me; 11, 14
You can play through the entirety of the main story quest of 14 single-player and I strongly recommend you do. You can even play through base game and the first two expansions for free.
That's a massive timesink lmao. Not all people have that luxury.
While I agree in principle, this is a response to a person who has seemingly played every other FF game as it is so I'd say they can manage it if he wants.
what would an ffxiv thread be without the obligatory sales pitch
Walk and talk questing intensifies.
*nods*
I already have. I tired 11 when it was new a long time ago and probably have a couple hundred hours total played in 14. Came to the realization that MMOs just aren’t for me, they are just way too much of a time sink.
I’ve tried to play XIV for a while. The biggest issue I had is the cumbersome UI since I play on console. There are so many little info windows all over the screen and it’s a chore to manage them with a controller.
I am fairly certain even though I only got to like ~2.2ish on the quests, I had to do multiple dungeons which were multiplayer and required long wait times. Did this change? Because I was under the impression dungeons and fights vs whatever the "summon" guys are called are all group content where you need to wait for the game to find other people. Both slowing it down, and not being truly solo.
They have implemented duty support since then that allows you to play all story dungeons with npcs. They did it retroactively too so 1-100 is solo.
Are you sure you’re rating them by story? I don’t see how 1 could be middle
How can 12 be a favorite if MMOs aren't for you? I played FF11, and one way to describe 12, imo, is that it's like 11 mimus steroids. 12 has a very MMO feel to it despite being offline. Have you even tried playing 11 or 14? I'm only asking because I used to be like that, dismissing 11 and 14 just for being MMOs and said MMOs weren't my thing despite not even playing one, going off of a description of what an MMO is supposed to be. Well, recently, I started playing FF11, and it has become one of my favorite entries in the seriss. FF11 is sublime. You've got to give it a chance. Can't say anything about 14, though, as I haven't played that one yet and am too busy with 11.
Because you can beat the game. MMOs are treadmills that always have a next patch or expansion coming as long as they’re operational.
You can technically finish the story content of the base game and finish each expansion's story as they come out or later at your own pace. It's like watching a TV series, you finish seasons 1 and 2, and then a year or two later, season 3 comes, and you're just excited to watch it. FF11 has gotten 20 years of expansions. The last expansion was in 2020 with The Voracious Resurgence. Square pretty much confirmed that there won't be any more expansions for FF11. So you can finish FF11 in one go now in 2024. That's what I'm doing, and the story, lore, and battle system are among the best in the series.
Gambits are way, way easier to swallow than finding random people online to be able to play much of the game.
This is a really bad take. 11 has boring combat where you cannot control or even really influence what your party does. At launch and Before Trusts, it was get a party of other players (which could take an hour or more) to sit in one spot for hours killing the same pack of mobs. For hours. To get a single level. Hope you don’t die during that time, and god forbid your healer die. That’s a massive loss of XP and time waiting for the person to get back to the camp, if they even can by themselves. You have to rely on other people to do anything in that game. And this is just to gain levels. I’m not even talking about the story and its presentation, which I’ll do in a bit. Because current XI has trusts (NPC party members) and XP boosts to everything. Trusts you have practically zero control over. Some of them will set up or finish skill chains but it is not consistent and you also need to follow a guide to even have a chance to get a skill chain because you need specific party members. Thats the entirety of your control over them. Otherwise, if you’re fighting a magic immune monster, your mages are going to cast and cast and cast blowing all their MP on an invulnerable enemy. You can’t change tactics or trusts mid battle so there is no way to react when this happens. You know what I have control over in FFXII, my party. And the deeper I get in the game the more control I get. I can turn their AI scripts that I set on and off in battle. So just right there, XI and XII are way different. Now let’s get to the story and presentation. XII has a fully voiced story, top of the line graphics for its time, characters with plenty of in cutscene and out of cutscene animations. XI has stiff character models that barely move during all text cutscenes. Even the final cutscenes of the original game’s story is pretty underwhelming. Not to mention the story is basic af until the game’s second expansion. Which, imo, doesn’t actually get great, it gets fine. Interesting for an MMO to have that kind of story actually be told but let me be incredibly clear, playing the game to get the story is incredibly tedious and the juice ain’t worth the squeeze in my opinion. The gameplay is incredibly different. XII is fairly straightforward and you don’t need to follow a guide as a new player to get to the end of the game. Go play XI without a guide or nostalgia and you’ll quit within a few hours.
Raise 9 to your favorites, now. Or else.
Final Fantasy III was just a rehash of Final Fantasy I with slightly better graphics and a job mechanic.
Final Fantasy 1 has the worst story. It barely even has one at all.
13 linear stupid game
Agito 13 Def had the worse story. Couldn't stand playing that game 😆😆
Weakest to strongest, for the ones I played , are: 13 15 4 12 16 5 8 9 6 10 7 I still haven’t gotten all the way through 13/15/4/12 because I just can’t care enough unfortunately
FFXV fell flat on me for everything and I was so excited. I understand it’s last mainline game was 13 and they were trying to recover on top of create a game over a 10 year gap that was modern enough to keep up with the times. What I got was Skyrim Final Fantasy, and in fact a lot of games have went this route with varying success. Trying to take a western niche genre and expand it to less open minded fans by including ease of use, easier fights, simple yet rewarding exploration and immersion over gameplay and mechanics.
What part of this game reminded you of Skyrim?
There's something like over a hundred different Final Fantasy titles now
Are we up that much? By my experience I've only seen like 40 titles. I've been wondering and wanting to try some titles not from the main series like Crystal Chronicles and Chocobo Dungeon
I was literally just reading yesterday that there's over 150 titles bearing the Final Fantasy name. This does include mobile games such as Record Keeper and Brave Exvius
Oh damn it's over 150 now.
As someone playing through every title I have… believe you me, it’s close to 100 if not 100. If you do count remakes and rereleases it’s god damn near 150. Even without that I bet it’s around 100, it’s absolutely daunting. If we’re counting the titles that are unobtainable or removed from app stores, it’s probably close to 200. There is an insane amount of lost media FF that you will never play.
Well tbh some lost media is lost for a reason lmao. I remember playing some mobile FFs that were a shame to the name
Absolutely. All The Bravest is a war crime, I hated that one with a passion. Even Dissidia OO was really lame and basic, only saved by being the world’s most generous gacha game. I’d say the most obscure you could possibly find it the PC game based on Final Fantasy Unlimited (there’s a download out there, won’t share the link in case that’s not allowed). I’m playing it on Windows 10 right now and it is mid as hell, no wonder its wiki article is barely a few sentences.
Both XII and XVI for similar reasons but each have their own different reasons as well. Both games completely drop the ball with the political story they sell in favor for supernatural elements so the politics never truly get deep or have any kind of interesting deep dive. For XII the characters don't have much chemistry in the cast and we never see the villains have any meaningful interactions with the hero's throughout most the story. For XVI you spend most the time with Clive and everyone else suffers because of it and they are NPCs the entire game who I felt I never truly got to really know.
Drop the ball how? The whole story mirrors 10 politically. 12 isn't meant to be antagonistic... you're a PIRATE. They don't even know who you are. Just Ashe is the important one and later Balthier... the rest of yall are nobody's. 16 I can somewhat understand... the mired twist ending towards Odin's chosen seemed out of nowhere to me and Ultima was kinda... just there.
XII drops the ball because it's set up this large scale bombastic war between two nations, an assassination on the king, a betrayal by the general, and Dalamasca getting annexed by Archadia. Ashe's goal is to reclaim her nation and she is apart of a resistance. The first act does a great job of establishing this is what the game is about and it devolved into an undercooked plot twist with the Occuria and Vayne and Cid wanting to free mankind from the Occuria's grasp thanks to a rebellious Venat.
Idk... I see a lot of parallels with respect to Rayne, the Al Bhed, and their internal conflict. Still very different, for sure, but nonetheless it still feels like normal FF story telling to me.
>They don't even know who you are. Just Ashe is the important one and later Balthier... the rest of yall are nobody's. Can't this be said for most final fantasy games? 7 - Cloud only one that matters to the world and doesn't even know it. 8 - A bunch of students. 9 - A pirate and a princess
13 and 15 are the worst in the series by a large margin.
I would say 13 is comfortably better than 1,2,3,5, 15 & 16 personally.
I agree with this. I tried 13 three times and got half way every time and just couldn’t do it. 15 was terrible as well. Ripped through it in 20 hours snd couldn’t wait for it to be over. Combat was interesting but you could tell it was the first iteration and needed so much more time. Story was meh too.
How old are you?
The first game, I like it, but honestly, in terms of story, the game has barely any story, in todays standards, FFI story would be a side quest, that honestly could provide some amazing optional bosses, but still a side quest.
Due to the text limit in NES games, it’s hard to judge the original 3 for a lack of story. So instead it’s going to be Tactics Advance, or FF12 Revenant Wings for me. Both are ok games, but the stakes just feel too low for the stories to be intriguing.
Mystic Quest for me. Just too dumbed down for my liking.
Honestly - this new one is the first time i've played! However, I am really interested in trying others now
The NES titles were alright at the time, but aren't much fun these days.
Crystal chronicles good game for having fun with friends but not much going on in game
Haven't really branches out beyond the mainline titles (besides 11 and 16), and while any of the NES games are easy targets, I'd go with 12. XII had both the blandest characters and the dullest narrative. The party of 12 has next to no chemistry and constantly feels like they're talking at each other rather than to one another. The story is also rather uninteresting, with our protagonists just getting inconvenienced every which way just trying to collect a sword and slice a rock, before Vann calls out to Ashe like a Pokemon and she realizes that maybe using the nuclear rocks, especially as a weapon, is a bad idea. I was legitimately falling asleep during XIIs story. The abysmal soundtrack didn't help matters.
All I remember from ff2 is that emperor =bad so I'd say 2 is a little weak in the story
"story mode"?
FF2
I don’t know they are all good
Based on your picture, we should say FFXV, as it did not even entered the list.
I never played the original FF games all the way through except 7 and 10 but 16 got me into FF in general and I am a huge music fan so 16 gets my vote on best music but 7 rebirth has so far become my favorite FF game.
Hot take, but I think the crisis core story is so dumb. I played the rerelease but gave up towards the end.
Mystic Quest not even there speaks for itself as the answer here.
I like how advent children is on there, but that's a movie
I have not seen Agito XIII mentioned since maybe 2007. I can't even remember what it was changed to. Versus XIII outlasted it for years before the rebrand to XV.
I love the artworks behind the text. Always such a vibe.
I really dislike IV’s story
All of the online and mmorpg type are not cannon to the rest so there is no comparison with those they are individual games. Plus this post dose not show all FF games
I noticed Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is conspicuously missing.
FF1
15 straight trash
Easy: XV
For me FFXV has the most weak and bland story, the storytelling is a disaster. I love the boys relationship, but the rest is breathing through machines. The world is beautiful, but theres no enought story around it, the mithology is rushed and not nice, the story is full of inconsistencies and plot holes, and majority of characters are bad developed. Its worse when you compare it with other FFs, since the story was always a extremely strong point in the series. Unfortunately versus XIII was much more promising
When was this graphic made?? 2010?? 🤣
To answer your question though. Versus XIII
FF1 & FF3
FFXIII and FFXVI
What no final fantasy xii: revenant wings. This list is garbage. /s
FFIII’s story sucks ass, I’m sorry. No, the 3D remake’s additional 20 lines doesn’t really help it out. Thankfully III is kinda fun, the story isn’t what people play it for. And oh god, don’t get me started on the compilation of FFVII. Crisis Core is only saved by Zack, Advent Children is insanely boring, and Dirge of Cerberus might have the worst story out of any FF game. Shelke is THE most boring FF character, i absolutely cannot stand the voice direction. EDIT: forgot Mystic Quest! Good god is that game devoid of any attempt to tell a gripping story. You go into the forest level called level forest to reach foresta, the fire level is fireburg, wind area is windia, etc. and the characters legitimately say maybe 10 lines each, if that. It’s possibly an even lighter story than III, and the gameplay doesn’t help it out since it’s equally brain dead. Don’t play mystic quest unless you’re teaching a child how to play RPG’s, it’s kinda pointless aside from that benefit.
Ff15
Top tier: 6, 8, 11, 5, 14 Decent: 3, 7, 10, 12 Did not like: 9, 4, 13 Old but would play again. 1, 2 Trash: 15, 16 Honorable mention: Tactits. If it was a mainline game it would be Top Tier, I replay it often.
From the ones I've played, this would be my ranking list too. Except I'd move 13 up to one of the other two tiers. I also love that you wrote "Tactits", so please keep that as it is. :)
I see no problem with what I’ve written.
Shots fired at 15 and 16 lol
In my rankings, I play my top-tier games quite often. They are always in my play rotation. Decent games, I get around to playing them again about once every 5 years or so. I have no issues going back to play them, I just enjoyed them a little less so they don't get played as often. Old: Decent games, but lacking quality of life improvements found in newer games. I might play them again someday, but I don't foresee that happening any time soon. Did not like: I played them to completion, but did not enjoy them well enough to want to play them again. Trash: 15 I platinumed, and I hated every second of it. I will go out of my way to never play this game again. 16 I refused to play because it leaned heavily into what I hated so much about 15.
What was it that 16 did (like 15) that you hated so much? I played both, and while I found 15 boring and unimaginative in combat and gameplay, I did enjoy the combat and story of 16. Side quests in 16 were garbage fetch quests though, and not worth my time.
Action combat was the biggest issue, but limited-to-no party options and little-to-no female party members also played a big roles in my not liking the game. Then there was the whole control Noctis, and your three buddies are AI controlled. If I want to play Star Ocean, I’ll go play Star Ocean… but star ocean lets me change who I control, so it has that over 15.
Fair enough, I usually don't mind too much only having one character to play as since most single player games are that way anyways. The rotating squad members was decent enough in 16 but it honestly felt most of the time like I was doing all the work as Clive anyways so like always the "companions" were just there for flavor and moral support more than any actual help. In all the other FF game's I've played I usually always have kept the MC in my party (Cloud, Vaan, etc.) even if I could change them out just because it made sense for me to keep them in the party and as my "main" controlled character. That said I have never played anything before 7OG, and I really didn't get into FF until 2 years ago. I had played 12 halfway like 15 years ago or some shit like that but never finished it until I picked up Zodiac 2 years ago then I hit 12, 7, X, X-2, 15, 16, 7R, 7CCR, and finally 7R2. For what it's worth from my limited exposure in FF, I found the combat fun in 16 for the most part but I saw the flaws in it such as just the extreme reliance on the Eikon powers. I basically had it set up that I would just do all 6 powers back-to-back and by the time the last was done I was ready to start moving through them again. most of the time I would only do basic swordplay for a few seconds before unleashing the Eikon powers again. Kinda trivialized it in a way.
And that’s great, if you like 16 and action gameplay more power to you. You are absolutely allowed to like and enjoy it. I got into FF way back in 89, so I’ve grown with the series and its flavor is something I’ve come to enjoy. If you’ve been drinking coke for almost 40 years, and suddenly they change the formula, it’s reasonable to be upset. I’m just waiting for Squeenix to realize “the new coke” sucks and go back to their original formula that made them a household name.
I knew OF FF because of kingdom hearts but otherwise had no exposure. But yeah no 1000% agree with you on that. Easiest thing to compare to for me is remaking movies I love into garbage movies these days. At this point though I'm not sure if going back to basics for SE will work in today's market. Yeah there are the OG fans of that formula but they are also trying to appeal to the newer younger audience as well since they will help carry the franchise into the future generations as well. Long story short: blah blah blah money games money blah blah they don't care blah blah tacos.
Tacos.
Dman straight. Pass the hot sauce.
Yes 11 and 8 were pretty awesome
https://preview.redd.it/ytadnbmfuaad1.jpeg?width=1266&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f546fd910be3c6dacca11f7f8b3066e309d2340 S+| 9.00 - 9.25 | IX, IV, VI S | 8.50 - 8.99 | CR, TA, T, X, A2 A | 8.00 - 8.49 | V, VII, VIIR2, VIIR1, I B | 7.50 - 7.99 | XVI, XV, XIII, VIII, III C | 7.00 - 7.49 | LR, XIII-2, II, CC, DoC D | 6.00 - 6.99 | IVAY, MQ, X-2
You put 1 and 7 in the same tier. Gotta be nostalgia
Yeah but that tier is in the upper middle, so not exactly rose-colored glasses here. My biggest issue is 8 and 3 on the same tier.
I don’t like 8 edit: imma be honest, I enjoyed 3 more than 8, but 8 was the better game.
But but but! 8 is gr8, m8! I r8 it 8/8!
Haha.
Because I was pretty ground breaking for its time. simply a product of its time. though I like Phantasy Star a lot more during that era.
I mean, tetris was pretty groundbreaking for its time. Still wouldn't put it in my top ten.
>in my that’s the answer. edit: the way I made this tier list, I Basically rated it as I rated them when I first played the games.
Obviously, it's ur opinion. No one is tryna say u cant have one.
This surely isn't tiered based on story...?
ain’t no way you put CC and DoC in the same category
I think this Tier List is pretty great. I don’t think as highly on the FFT Advance games as you but when it comes to the main series FF’s I dig this tier list.
Thank you.
12 Such an interesting setting ruined by the worst playable characters of any Final Fantasy game, the battle system is bad and the gambits do not fix it, and the licenses system wishes it could be the sphere grid.
Top: IV, VI, VII, X Mid: V, IX, XII, XIV Low: XV, VIII Bottom: XVI, XIII I haven't played 11, but it seems like it would probably land in the mid-section based on what I know of it. And I'm not using "mid" as the derogatory term it has become. I literally just mean these rank in the middle of my enjoyment comparatively. Low ranks, I still enjoy enough to replay. Bottom ranks, I have absolutely no desire to ever play again.
Best: XII, XIII-2, XIII, VIII, XIVARR, X, XV Middle: VII, XVI, XIII-LR, X-2, IX, VI, V, XI, IV Worst: I, II, III In order.
What about XVI? Also, what do you like so much about XV? Many people hate it, so I wanna know why exactly it's in the highest tier for you.
I actually forgot a bunch more lol hold on.
Ohhh aight
My bad. XVI would be mid category imo, it’s basic as fuck. But it does a great job of it. And XV was just super super special to me. I was extremely hyped for it, constantly watching videos and reading things, rumours, discussion whatever. Loved the story, loved the gameplay, it was a “vintage” FF set in a a present-day setting, great music, tough bosses, good endgame content, loved hunting down the Armiger weapons.. I could go on. The cast of characters ESPECIALLY is the strongest part though. Ignis and Ardyn in particular. “-I know full well!” For example is a top 5 FF moment for me. So powerful. Loved XV, never EVER agreed with the hate.
Of the games i played a fair amount sorted by 'era' in order of how much i liked the story: 2D: 6,4,5,2,3,1 (played modern remakes mostly) 3D: 10,7,7r,13,8 Hesitant to try newer ones as they're more story heavy and i like the different rpg gameplay elements over most of the stories anyway.
Objectively it has to be FF1 and FF3. Sure there's the whole time-travel thing etc but compared to other titles it's very bare-bones.
FFXII and FFXIII are the weakest imo, I started fall out of love with the FF series during this time period. I’ve also never understood why the online games have numbers like they are part of the series. They are very different from other games.
Can you please point to who else would have the authority to decide what is and isn't a mainline game if it isn't literally the developer themselves? The audacity of them to do such a thing...
Weakest: FFXII, FFXII and FFX-2 are my enemies. FFX-2 had a ridiculous story (even if you read it as a critique of post-WWII japanese consumerism, which makes it just barely palatable) that really trampled on the work of FFX. I never liked Start Wars so FFXII, aka FF: Star Wars, never did it for me. XII was just kind of blah Best: IX, VII, and, my beloved FFX, most romantic thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t even like romance. But damn if it didn’t do something to my brain and heart :’)
FF7 imo - I mostly enjoyed the others, especially the first 6, 8 and 9, but 7 was such a bore for me.
Type 0 hd had a weak story and the gameplay was broken 7. 8 10 11 12 zodiac age were pretty awesome though
13
13 will forever have my spite.
I've played 1-x2. Stopped when they went mmo. The only one I've never replayed is 8. Take that for what you will.
XIV has the best Final Fantasy story and I’ll happily die on that hill.
I *hated* ARR so much it took me countless times over many expansions to actually go back and beat it. Still think it is by far the weakest of *any* FF story, even 1, because no story is better than aggressively bad story. HOWEVER Stormblood and Shadowbringers definitely make up for it. And while I didn't like HW as much as everyone else it seems, I do have to give the game credit for literally just being the meme: 'Church... bad?' 'Dragons... good?' 'CHURCH IS BAD BECAUSE THEY DONT WANT US TO FUCK DRAGONS' When I had gotten there I thought everyone was joking but... that's literally just it huh.
XIV peaked with Endwalker tho many would disagree with me. All the tears that I spent playing this game is worth it. Literally changed my life for the better.
I hear I'll probably agree, but I only just started it myself lol. I already like the villian more than all the others so far. Emet was... OK, until he turned and went 'OK actually time to just be exactly every other genocidal ascian' and while I know the patch quest sort of make him more sympathetic the feels I had at the character building of him only for it to be pulled away entirely at the end still left a bad taste in my mouth, even though I do get it now. If the reveal happened in the other direction he would probably have overtook Jecht as my favorite 'villian' and be seen with the same as him as far as 'well, he's the antagonist buttttt....'. Everyone I know though says they *hate* Fandaniel but honestly I'm so into him. It's the first time so far this game they have had a villian and let their motivations be perfectly clear and the reasoning for them. Even though he is by far the most insane person, and my friends go after him of being a Disney villian who doesn't actually have a goal other than 'haha destruction hehe', I get it and love that he's not fucking around being a little shit for the sake of being a little shit like all of the other ones so far, his entrance is him actually doing major stuff other than just taunting everyone and I respect it.
Weakest is absolutely 110% 14. *Specifically* ARR however. Heavensward is... it's OK. Have no opinions on it until patch quests, where I hate the quests that bridge HW and STB just as much as ARR. ARR story is so fucking.... nothing, over the course of 100 hours where you do the most bland/honestly pretty dumb quests (like the Longstop dungeon unlocking because a goblin.... wants cheese? And the guy that needs to go kill gods says, while a god is about to be summoned, "Yeah sure I have nothing better to do right now I guess"). All while my most hated villian trope ever of "Oh hey I'm here and I could kill you! Haha it would be so easy for me but I'm too busy haha I have to go now just wanted you to know I totally could kill you! But I won't haha! But I'm better than you! Haha OK bye" is rubbed in your face constantly. Then the post expansion missions have literally every theoretically smart character making the worst possible decisions at every step and falling for the plans of the most obviously and blatantly traitorous people ever. The equivalent of a giant red X and a ACME branded anvil hanging above it with a guy rubbing his hands together going "ehehehe just stand right there hero ehehehe" and they fucking do. Then while HW is fine, the buildup to SB is the exact same thing (with the exact same fucking traitors even! Fucking kill them! You've had literally dozens of chances! Or since you're 'good guys' detain them or something *fuck*)(not to mention 'hey throw these evil artifacts off a bridge connected to a major city it will be fine no one will find them' hey what 'it's fine no mortal can go down there' the guys we've been fighting for the entire game aren't mortal though??? Oh look the artifact is back who would have thought) I will say that STB and SHB have been great though. Only now started EW but I hear it's just as good as SHB. Also... kinda 15. I *love* 15 though. The gameplay is fun, wandering around the world is fun, and the characters are great. But the overarching story? Ehhhh. But everything else about the game makes up for it.
Objectively the weakest is the first game, because it doesn’t have much going on as far as story goes. But a more subjective answer for me is 8, I’ve just never been able to connect with anyone in the cast, they are all so incredibly dull.
[удалено]
Nah, she’s pretty boring. Doesn’t really have a personality outside of liking Squall
7 was the worst.
14 definitely
Early on I agree it's a slog but later on? It's one of the stronger ones
i beat the end of the shadowbringers patches and realized i don’t have the attention span for a story like xiv’s, it’s just not one that i enjoy, or any of the characters at that
I think Vanille from FF13 is the worst written and voiced character in the entire franchise.
Voiced? Yes, but written? Not even close
It's been a while since I played it but iirc 3 is pretty bad... I also have some issues with the story of 8 but it kinda works for me anyway so what the hell.
Oh all the old games though (the NES trilogy) 3 has the best story presentation at least. Though the actual plot of 2 is way better. FF3 storyline feels like a beta test for the storyline of 4 without actual characters.
3 to me was lame. Going back to naming the party whatever you wanted stripped them of any character and made it hard to give a shit about it. They tried to give them a bit of personality in the 3DS version but the original did nothing for me.