Best Final Fantasy

[h0tNstilettos]

Ordering my favorites is a tough one. There is no such thing as 'best'. It's just personal preference.

My favorites are tied between: FFVI, FFIX, FFX, FFXII, and FFXIV (6, 9, 10, 12, and 14).

VI had one of my favorite job systems and character development.
And XII, while lacking in story and often put down by many fans, was my favorite for the world and boss battles. The boss battles were the most interesting, intense, in your face, and plentiful in the entire series, and had an epic feeling to them not found in any other game in the series. I easily consider it one of the best RPGs of all time going by the fun and epic bosses, but not best in other areas. The final boss was like the only one in the game that was not as epic as I would of liked.

[KylePearlsand]

Personally my favorites is 4,6,9 and 10. I also did enjoy 10-2 but only because it's gameplay was surprisingly fun and coin break was addictive.

[Lokisama]

For the longest time when I was Younger my favourite was 7 because it was the first FF I ever played and the one that drew me to the world and (fandom) or FF but over the years my favourite FF has shifted to FF9 7 being very close second

[Balipu]

Okay, let's see what the first night brought us. Well at least it was a night for me.
So, a few interesting facts for fans and devs:
Currently VIII is considered to have the best story, followed by VI and the VII compillation. IX Is the fourth and out of the main series the XIII trilogy is ranked the lowest
The best combat award is held by VI, followed by VII and IV. Apparently people really hated the combat of the original XIV as it is the 23rd out of 26.
Progression and customization: VI, VII and VIII. Surprisingly, the MMOs are farely low with XIV and XI being 7th and 11th respectively.
Soundtrack: You might be surprised to learn (I think both One Winged Angel and The Extreme beat Dancing Mad but even I was surprised) that VI is only the 4th. The top 3 are VIII, VII and IX(Uematsu's personal favorite)
Protagonists: Currently Terra is in the lead with Cecil and Zidane tied at second place and Cloud and Squall tied at third. People like to make fun of Tidus, but he only barely lost to Bartz and managed to rank ahead of Lightning and the Onion Knight. Oh, a message to the Kingdom Hearts tema: People like Roxas more than Sora.
The top 3 coolest villains are Kefka, Sephiroth and Garland. Incidentally the highest ranking XIV villain is Nael van Darnus who is far ahead Gaius and Lahabrea.
In villain fight Nael is even farther ahead, with the top 3 being Kefka, who is only barely ahead of Ultimecia and Sephiroth at third.
The most popular lady is Terra followed by Aerith and Rydia. Yuffie, who was decisively leading before the reset is now the 10th. Prishe is ranked ahead any woman from XIV. Speaking of which for quite some time now Yugiri is ranked the highest, closely followed by Yda. Most surprisignly Minfilia, queen of uselessness is ranked ahead of Y'shtola.
45.45% placed Cid Highwind at the top. so unsurprisingly, he leads with an overwhelming majority. He is followed by the original Cid from FFII and Cida Haze from FF III
And now for Gilgamesh: GREEEEEEEEEG! Yes, ladies and gentleman, the XIV version is the most popular, followed by his original appearance in V and finall VIII.

This is the current situation but it is far from conclusive. I will report again when we get several more answers.

[Stormsoul]

hmm, probably ff13 (the first one, i pretend the other two dont exist) for me. i enjoyed the combat system and the inter-character relationships quite a bit, except for vanille.

ff6 as a runner up, though it's protagonists IMO arent quite as memorable, going for the quantity-over-quality approach.

[Balipu]

hmm, probably ff13 (the first one, i pretend the other two dont exist) for me. i enjoyed the combat system and the inter-character relationships quite a bit, except for vanille.

ff6 as a runner up, though it's protagonists IMO arent quite as memorable, going for the quantity-over-quality approach.

I know, right. We have a blond girl who used to serve the empire and was saved by Locke from certain doom because she looks like his ex-girlfriend. Then we have a blond girl who used to serve the empire and was saved by Locke from certain doom because she looks like his ex-girlfriend. Locke himself is suffering from survivor's guilt as he couldn't save his ex-girlfriend. Then we have Setzer who is suffering from survivor's guilt as he couldn't save his ex-girlfriend. Shadow puts a spin on this as he couldn't save his best friend and Cyan has survivor's guilt cause he couldn't save his entire kingdom. We have 3 token non-human character members Umaru, Mog and Gau(borderline example) and all 3 of them fight with limited player input.
In constrast the 14 player characters of Type-0 are very different. Of course most of them don't get much character development and we only get a shallow glimpse into their character, but even the two smart kids (Trey and Queen) differ in significant ways.

[Miya_Carbuncle]

I haven't played a lot of the games, actually. I loved FFX and X-2, as well as XIV ARR though.

FFXIV ARR, is definitely my most favorite favorite though.

[LordHadi]

I'm sure not everyone here played all parts, and I'm one of them. So the poll system used isn't really useful. As I put my favorite FF game as number 1, it wouldn't be fair for the rest being placed in random ratings.

However, My favorite was Final Fantasy IX.

FF XIII had a great story as well.

[Soralis]

interesting poll, personally my favs are ff XIII trilogy, FFIX, FFVIII and FFXIV

[jazo]

copy pasting my reason on a similar reddit post
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only numeral, and only the ones I finished FFXI, FFV, FFVI, FFXIV, FFI, Tifa's Boobs, Lulu's Boobs, FFIX, FFVIII, FFXIII ***

*** Disclaimer, everything, even the ones I haven't finished are better than this one



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Hehe, seems like my ranking was not well received, here are my reasons

(see 7th,8th,and 9th places as a kinda tied)

To explain my PERSONAL ranking

FFXI, This is my favorite as it captures the things that I feel (like) a FF game has to have, job system, creatures, summons, expanding and explorable world, Medieval high fantasy theme, multiple stories great lore. Of course its not at all perfect, and the time it took you to progress was too much and that impacted your interest in enjoying the story, then again, you should review something according to its time, and we are talking about a game that released when people still had 56k internet, but as an online game, it kept getting friendlier and better, all things said, this game got me the fondest memories and sense of achievement that, at me at that time, justified the "I did nothing, just waiting" days (tho chatting with friends at that times helped)

FFV was that thing I liked in a FF game as offline experience, with great characters a simple, entertaining, happy, emotional adventure story and a job and battle system that you enjoyed playing around with, as it was in FFI you could try the craziest team builds and see if you could make it to the end, basically FFV felt like a FFI for its generation more flexible and with more options

FFVI is the one I will not be surprised in the least when someone puts it at the top, is obvious its a masterpiece, if someone does not have it at the top (like me) is just for personal reasons, It baffles me why there is no more merch, remakes and such of this game (I WANT A CELES ACTION FIGURE DAMMIT!!), and from an industry point of view I see why VII is more popular, but in context and as a game, VI is better, it came after some time of the console had released, with devs more familiar of the tools and resources it was basically the most the console could deliver. The cast of characters, the memorable moments, all the praise it receives is well founded, is not my top just because to me it felt like the gameplay was in the way of seeing more of the story, tho the in-battle plot development were awesome

FFXIV is the one I play today, and is fun, is beautiful, the story... is there, entertaining, the challenge is not as the one in XI that having A job at cap was an achievement, XIV lets you experiment more with the time you have, I have evaded the endgame grindings in favor of trying other jobs (as of this post only Bard left to take to 50), it has all the elements that made XI a FF, us lower just because is newer and till lacks some fixes, but for a FF and MMO of these days, is greatly executed and I am eager to see it grow (hopefully faster) like XI grew.

FFI, it would be lying saying I played on NES, nah, I was busy finishing SMB3 but when it released on GBA I played and it was a breath of fresh air, since FF somehow went all futuristic/real world-ish with its visual design getting back to the fantasy roots was nice, by the time I played I knew the story behind the franchise and all, so I was amazed by all the stuff that was packed as a start of the franchise.

FFVII, a little over--- hyped, not overrated mind you, its a great game, a milestone, the characters became icons and is the cash cow of SE because they know people will never get tired of it, but as game? its ok, the graphics are so dated, in fact, I think the PS1 generation of FFs NEED a remake (VII, VIII and IX) as much as I am against being a graphic monger, its distracting to see polygons of that era, 16 bit game age better. I liked a lot and I admit I played to see Tifa (I was 14 iirc, so puberty), but I wont play it again (there's enough Tifa's fanart around to fill the disks of the game in only image many times)

FFX, is a great game too, enjoyed the game core and the ps2 graphics age better, but its down here because I really don't like the artstyle, the visual design, is not good, sure I liked to see more colors, but... the clashing contrast, the beach-sh style, not on my tastes, that clash on technology/nature was not well done either, dunno, somethings felt off, the visual design of Lulu and Auron (as much as I like Lulu darky look) feels out of place. Again, just my taste as an amateur graphic artist

FFIX, great game, great music, classic gameplay, simple story all the stuff I like, is this low because the chibi-not-so-chibi design of characters are a little creepy, again, just artist tastes, and as VII this need a remake, is all great, just it doesn't age well

FFVIII, is a good game, it uses a little less of the FF lore as it feel pasted, but, the dual story? nice, the battle system? clunky but interesting, the characters? different, felt like an anime (take it as positive of negative as you want, for me depends on mood)

FFXIII, I pointed a lot of cons of the games I listed, but everything else is great, memorable, iconic and all, even the ones I wont play again till SE stop hating money and remake them. Now... XIII is not a bad game, I know some people could like it, It look great as is past gen, I know a lot of time and effort was invested, I even didn't mind the linearity of it, as an adult I don't have lots of time to play all the time, and seeing that HUGE adamantoises roam is a very satisfying moment and is something that would be very difficult to achieve in past consoles (and I am waiting some enemies of that size to appear in FFXIV)... BUT... The characters, their motivations, the plot, the visual design... I don't like it. It felt like a generic anime plot, with tropes overly used, and SE just don't let Lightning go away... dunno, maybe if the story and characters where when I was... 16, I would like them (as I liked FFVIII ones at that time) but now I am a veteran geek/otaku/gamer/kinda-artist and software developer, so I know a lot of effort where there, but I was not the target market anymore