Favorite Final Fantasies

I've been replaying a lot of the old final fantasies lately and been thinking about what makes the ones I love the best. So, for fun and feedback, I thought it might be cool for people to post their favorite FFs and what 3-5 things those had in common that made them a favorite.

Games: 6-10. To me, that was an era of FF, past the point of mostly dungeon crawling and strange experimentation, when the franchise was really starting to form, but before it got off track and started trying to be something else.


(1)compelling plot lines, with characters that you could understand and situations that developed from something mildly dramatic to world changing. The characters changed as your view of their world developed.

(2) engaging world. Graphics brought you in (as much as the era would allow) and learning the lore and exploring kept you there.

(3) Mini-games and exploration spaced throughout the game, with rewards that enhanced. I spent tons of time on Triple Triad and Chocobo hot and cold. And I'm sure everyone remembers spending endless hours on 7 breeding chocobos or battling in the arena for that limit break or a certain materia.

What's your list?

7 For the character diversity and open ended character development. And Zack

8 for Laguna.

I remember playing FF1 over 20 years ago, living in a tent on the dmz, we were doing 3 monthes on and 3 monthes off so my friend brought his tv and nes, I didnt sleep for days playing it, I remember thinking wow....this just changed games forever, hard to pick my favorite but would say 7 and 2 (4 depending on format) I finally got 9 for christmas and still working on that one as well as 13

I am re-playing FFIX right now. I may be bias right now because I am re-playing it and have not played the others in a while but I LOVE this one. 9 is defiantly one of the best. The thing that makes 7,8, and 9 really good is the unique ways to level up and become more powerful. The materia, junction, and item ability systems are very unique, fun, easy to use, and just plain awesome. 10 was good but I cannot say that the sphere grid was my favorite and since 13s level up system is so similar I never enjoyed it much either. I really liked 12 as well. It had a lot of content in it. That one game took me about 150 hours to get almost everything. That is a lot of stuff to do. Also the gambit system was fun but admittedly got boring towards the end. My least favorite system Final Fantasy ever made was the class change system. Unfortunately they repeated this system for both Final Fantasy 5 and X-2. I think this system was not very good and I didn't like it much. So with all that being said here is a incomplete list of the main Final Fantasies from my favorite to my least favorite. It is incomplete because admittedly I have not played them all. I did not include XI because I never played it and I did not include XIV because I am reserving my opinion for a later date. I still feel like I have not "beat" the game, as much as any MMO can be beat. I will feel that way once I have explored everything and beaten some NMs (which I have not killed any yet...) As far as storyline goes I enjoy them all but I left that out of this decision and that would probably change the order of this list a lot. I also did not include graphics because only 6 and under have graphics that make me less inclined to play the game.

1) IX
2) VII
3) VIII
4) XII
5) X
6) XIII
7) VI
8) V
9) X-2

My favorite are 10 -> 8 -> 7 -> 13

I loved all the four above the most, because each of them

1.) Brought strong and real emotion to me. Relationships were shown and characters developed throughout the story bringing a much more realistic sense of what could happen on such a long journey, while keeping it's fantasy aspect. Characters I learned to love where torn right out, bringing sorrow, and when a character was awaiting something or nervous about something it made me wonder, "what's gonna happen?", which brought a little nervous feeling to me, too. Making me wonder if the story's gonna go the I way I want it to or not. Either way, forcing a strong emotion into me.

2.) All of them also had more of a sense of diversity. You weren't always so focused on just the main character. You learned about others in the game/ your party. Yuffie and her background as a ninja type of person, her home town Wutai. The bond Lulu and Wakka formed, The hometown and old lives of Vanille and Fang.

3.) The most unique stories that are done right xD All of them have very different stories than anything I've ever seen, and they're done incredibly well. They weren't the traditional "We need to save the world!" (Well with the exception of FFVII, but it had enough twists and other reasons as to why they wanted to stop Sephiroth than just that, so it's okay!) All of them had such amazing worlds to go with the stories, too. I've never seen such magnificent worlds to match such unique stories.


Edit: And as the poster above stated, incredibly uniquely awesome ways of leveling up/disturbing your skills and abilities x)

I guess my top 3 would be:

1.) FF7
2.) FF Tactics
3.) FF10

FF4
FF5
FF6
FF Tactics
FF7
FF8
FF9
FF12

1) FFVI (awesome OST, awesome everything, you can let your friends control some party members on pad2)
2) FF Tactics ((love the story, also loved Ogre Tactics on super famicom)
3) FF VII had lots of charm
4) FFiV old school
5) FF IX

I played all final fantasy titles except the one for the mobile and Chocobo dungeons.
Didn’t like Chrystal Chronicles so much and didn’t like the FF Tactics defender on iphone.
Was disappointed where FF Tactics went with A1 and A2… awesome story replaced with 2grader kids…
With FF X-2 I started to lose interest with the series.
I pray for a nice Remake of FFVI for DS.

6,tactics,12

7 is kind of falling off my list the more i look back to it.

By and far Final Fantasy Tactics is my favorite. I love the complex political story that it told, and the job system was top notch.

After that I'd say it's a tie between 4 and 1. 4 had an excellent story, and very likable characters. 1 was interesting both for the story, and the fact that you could impose your own challenges (i.e. 4 white mage party).