Final Fantasy series

[The Bastard King]

Zidane might be the goddamn best Final Fantasy character to ever. Not to be anything anything specific, but simply to ever. Add anything to the end of that, and it will be so. Seriously, not only is he the first Final Fantasy character to not only not be an actual prescribed drug for anti-depressants, but he's cool. Seriously, let's look at the progression of most FF characters.

FF - FFIII = there is no characterization.
FFIV - FFVIII = character starts of perpetually emo, finally stops being an ass towards the end (Bartz might edge out of this category).
FFIX = first main character to actually turn head to watch female NPC's when in towns.
FFX = HA HA HA HA HA.

Zidane is what you get when you take a Sayian, and combined it with a womanizer who actually succeeds.

[flapjack]

a year ago some WoW raid compadres and I got bored with WoW and went to FFXI; having a set group of friends and playing with them 16 hours + a day really made the game interesting. We got to lvl 50 or something i think and then a new patch came out for wow and we went back and never returned to FFXI. in the small time i played i really enjoyed the MMO and cant wait for FFXIV. but the tales series is my favorite line of rpgs and i haven't played any final fantasy rpgs, so i guess i can't say tales of symphonia or vesperia is better than any FF game.

[Sachi]

FFIX = first main character to actually turn head to watch female NPC's when in towns...

Zidane is what you get when you take a Sayian, and combined it with a womanizer who actually succeeds.

Haha, yes! Zidane is one of the few (if there are any others) FF characters who doesn't have problems, and in the brief moment that he does have an emo phase, it lasts five minutes until a hot chick tells him to stop being emo.

EDIT: I'm also slightly disappointed to see that the word filter on 'emo' has been removed. I'll miss my Bosnians.

[Teague]

Love FFVI, although I fear my perception has been skewed by self-induced memetic mutation...need to play it again to make sure

[ZapX]

I never said 9 wasn't good. On the contrary, FF9 is awesome. Still, if you look at the sales figures and fan discussions, 6-8 are the most highly regarded of the pre-PS2, numbered, FFs. The hate FF8 gets totally unwarranted, though. It's definitely one of the better games. Most people who hate on it are either too lazy to learn a gameplay system or that hear other people talk about it and repeat it without ever playing the game.

[NemZ]

Oh please, the system in 8 was weaksauce. The junction feature meant that the most efficient way to play the game was to draw 100 of everything and just slap it in a slot, relying on limits and summons to carry the load amidst a metric crapton of button mashing. The presence of so many items with spell effects (and card refining to get more of them) was there to enable players to work around the problem that casting your spells actually makes you weaker... not that any spell besides Aura was worth casting anyway.

It's a damn shame too, because the fundamental idea of characters getting their abilities by partnering with summons is a very good one... I just didn't like the execution. Maybe if the GFs became exclusively bound to specific characters (as chosen by the player) and both the character and the GFs were changed as the game when on by the development of this partnership, say as some sort of hybrid between ff6's esper system and the dragon evolution system from Bahamut Lagoon? that's somewhat what I had in mind in my earlier comments.

[WonderBug]

Yeah, perhaps. I recently watched the trailer on my Xbox Live account, and it actually looks playable. The characters seems a lot more awesome than the characters in XII. I might check this game out when I have the chance.

I just got it yesterday, and I would definitely recommend picking it up. They are absolutely more interesting than XII's characters, although listening to Hope pity himself is like pulling teeth.

[Iron Rooster]

When I first heard FFXIII's lead was going to be female, the first thing I thought was "so after the last two male leads acted like vaginas, they're finally gonna just give the next lead one?"

Regarding FF8, I felt like it was an amusing experiment in gameplay mechanics. I thought it really set itself apart from the other Final Fantasy games I've played.

I also found it very amusing how easy it was to abuse the limit break system in FF8 while in FF9 it was annoying to get your characters to trance when you wanted them to. FF10 and FF12 felt pretty balanced. It wasn't too easy for the most part, but it was still tough enough to trigger or had a strong enough detriment (i.e. you lose most if not all your MP) to keep you from spamming it.

[The Triforce Fighter]

Does anyone know why the awesome victory theme isn't in FF13? And apparently there's no Moogles in it either.... I know there's Chocobo's so thats good (Nothing can beat a baby Chocobo!) and Cactaurs too. Also apparently there's no such thing as White Mages but instead there's 'Healers'.
Maybe I'm picky but it just doesn't seem the same without those lil things....

[WonderBug]

Play the old games then?

[Teague]

FF12 felt pretty balanced. It wasn't too easy for the most part, but it was still tough enough to trigger or had a strong enough detriment (i.e. you lose most if not all your MP) to keep you from spamming it.

I didn't like FFXII's Limit Breaks...in the end, it basically came down to "'flip five coins, flip all heads again. Continue until all tails. If the number of heads>enemies HP, you win."

It was really an all or nothing gambit, not even a desperation tactic since if you had the MP to use it you had the capacity to keep on fighting anyway.

[Sachi]

I didn't like FFXII's Limit Breaks...

I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to use them the first time I played through the game, so I kinda ignored them every other time I played.

Gawd, all this talk of FF makes me really wish I had brought my PS2 down to Monteray with me. I'm particularly in the mood for FFXII. Though, I suppose I could always buy XIII while I'm down here.

[Iron Rooster]

I didn't like FFXII's Limit Breaks...in the end, it basically came down to "'flip five coins, flip all heads again. Continue until all tails. If the number of heads>enemies HP, you win."

It was really an all or nothing gambit, not even a desperation tactic since if you had the MP to use it you had the capacity to keep on fighting anyway.

Now that I think of it, I never really used the Quickenings at all once my characters reached a certain point. I didn't use them at all for the last groups of marks. Running out of MP around Yiazmat would've been suicide.

[WonderBug]

I can't even remember XII's Limit Breaks. Like, at all. They must have not been too important.

[BrikHaus]

XII was terrible, although not as bad as X, which is by far the worst game in the entire series.

[supershinjiasukashipper]

id say yuna was a redeeming quality. (yeah, im kinda smitten.)

[DIDDY]

There were just too many goddamn characters to keep track of.

Don't play Chrono Cross.

[Teague]

id say yuna was a redeeming quality. (yeah, im kinda smitten.)

I'm curious about your opinion of her character in X-2.

[WonderBug]

XII was fine, I just didn't give a fig about any of the characters. And I loved how crazy open it was. I would argue that VIII is the worst unless you subscribe to the "Squall is dead" school of thought, in which case the plot slightly offsets the terrible gameplay and just about everything else in that game. X is a close second (although I can sort of maybe see why people like it).

[NemZ]

Don't play Chrono Cross.

lol, good advice in any situation.