FF8 got insanely hard if you got everybody to 100. I'll agree they did a good job at making the game harder than most RPGs. Mostly RPGs are rather easy if you overlevel for stuff. Do that in 8 and you're fucked lol.

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I happen to think the characters (exception: Quina) and plot in FFIX were quite well-developed, once again, thanks to the excellent localization job of the game script. Dialogue in particular was excellent, and really gave a sense of depth to the characters of Freya and Amarant, in particular.

It was more obviously a pure love story than most other Final Fantasies (10 excluded?), so maybe that put you off. The chocobo game was excellent, the environments beautifully rendered, battle system a nice throw-back to the older installments in the series (a bit slow, perhaps, but god damn if I wasn't ecstatic to see four members in the party again), and OMG, an option to SKIP LONG BORING SUMMON SEQUENCES. That's like +10000 right there.

Freya was one of the better characters in 9, sadly I never had her in pt because I felt forced to stick with the basic viv/steiner/zidane/garnet pt, but they fixed that in FFX by giving you the switch option and making you use everyone, which rocked, and no I wasn't put off by the straight up love story, 8 is my favorite and that one's a fairly basic love story. In fact I thought the love story was kinda minor in 9. The way I saw 9 was that it was about finding who you are and where you belong, the whole story involves people who don't know where they're from, know where they're from and it's been blown up, or could never find a home. That's great too and I wish it was executed better, but something about 9's story just wasn't compelling though. In some parts the story is really strong though, (Zidane going back to save Kuja stands out) but for the most part all I saw was a 4 disc long chase sequence, always hunting kuja and just missing him, or completely randomly placed throwbacks and references. The last straw in making FF9 a piece of crap was the last boss(who was never mentioned in the story until that very moment) quoting fucking Yoda. Wtf is that? I understand FF is full of references and thieveries from Star Wars and Tolkien but was it necessary for the last boss to give the "Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to hate, Hate leads to suffering" lecture? lol

I have a good feeling all my resentment for FF9 stems from the sluggish battles making everything take 5x as long as it should.

I bought and sold 9 but later bought it again once it was greatest hits price and still own it now.

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Some stories can't be told with words, some legends are meant to die

i think the best battle system was easily our beloved ffxi. hands down.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

Mmm I think FFVI takes the battle system cake.

the reasons i don't choose ffvi are:

all characters eventually start to even out and become similar, especially with magic
enfeebles and enhancements don't mean anything
only 4 characters per battle



but i still love ffvi. i love having all those chars on a flying boat. each character having a skill is cool (even tho theyre pretty weak). some memorable characters too. locke, terra, celes, shadow, edgar, sabin, cyan. i might have some names wrong; it's been like 12 years since i played it

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

My RL friend thought Zidane's brother was a girl and called him hot.

and



No way. Try upgrading 2x-cut to 4x-cut, put it on Cloud, and watch the 9999's roll out. You can't do that with anyone else. Cloud, if anything, excels at everything more than everyone else.

In 8, yeah. Everyone pretty much had the same melee overall. I kinda like how they added the "trigger" to Squall so when you hit, if you press R1 at the right time, it does more damage. But still, he was the same as everyone else. Except Zell, Zell sucks. Oh yeah, Selphie blows too. God I hated her. Oh and Rinoa, she's useless. Wtf is that? A frisbee? Jesus christ. Quistis has a whip... I guess that's cool. Irvine is a hippy in disguise, and took like 5mins to get the balls to shoot that one chick, so he's a loser, too.

What's that leave us with? I think just Squall is left now. Well, Seifer if you want to count him, because at one point he -was- in your party.

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[DRK]75 [BLM]75 [WAR]75
[San d'Oria] Rank 10

Best5 battle system hands down was final fantasy 7, even though I still blame that final fantasy for the "jump on the bandwagon, hey I'm a rpg player now" shit that happened with ever inner city kid that could burn a copy of the damn game for the psx. Regardless of what happened, its still an awesome battle system which they have yet to surpass.

Best Battle system = materia slots and tactics of FF7
Best Battle = Kefka fight at the end of FF6
Best Lead character = Terra FF6
Best Romance = the love triangle thing in FF7
Best CGI sequences = FF10 obviously
Best "Tear Jerking" moment = General Leo dies FF6
Best Surprise = Aeris getting shanked by Sephioroth
Best "Boo-Yah" moment = FF1 when you get the airship. Mind you, imagine if it was the first one you ever played back when it first came out. Getting that airship was the shit.

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Warlock's are not OP, maybe if you stopped running around like frightened little girls you'd be able to beat me...

I never beat FF8 due to a technical error. I was in the Lunatic Pandora and couldn't get out. The mobs there only gave 1 exp for some reason, and I needed to level a few more times to be able to kill Adel because one of my main strengths was summons and that obviously wouldn't work on her. So yeah, don't spoil the ending or something lol.

this thread makes me wanna go back and play all my ff games through from the start again

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If you stuck at the end or near the end of ff8, you can use a simple and really cool trick to get past it with almost no problems at all.

There was an ability to convert cards into items if I remember, if you convert the bahamut card you get 100 megaelixers or something like that.

LoL every other round have one of your party members use one, battle done.

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Warlock's are not OP, maybe if you stopped running around like frightened little girls you'd be able to beat me...

That happened to me, I think. I recall there being some stupidly hard boss, in an area I couldn't get out of, where the monsters were near non-existant in both numbers and exp so I couldn't level up.

I ended up restarting the whole damn game a week later. =\

Best Battle system = 11>4>7>9>5>T>6>10>3>1>8>2
Best Battle = dragons of ff7
Best Lead character = whisp. jk, gotta say Cecil
Best Romance = um. murph and althena obviously, ff11
Best CGI sequences = FF10
Best "Tear Jerking" moment = Scyth quitting ff11 omg
Best Surprise = Golbez is Cecil's brother WTF
Best "Boo-Yah" moment = hitting level 75 on ff11, second would be hitting level 75 again on ff11

Best Quality = 6>T>4>7>5>11>9>3>10>1>2>8
Most Fun = 11>4>6>5>9>T>7>3>10>1>8>2
Most Original = 1>4>3>T>6>11>7>2>8>10>5>9
Best Story = 6>4>7>10>8>T>5>11>9>1>2>3
OMG FF 12 WHERE WILL YOU LIE ON THESE SCALES OMG

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

From the demo, I can safely say it'll be last in Battles system lol.

Whisp, how can you put 11 in front and 2 at the end for the battle system when they're pretty much the same? Besides 2 not having job classes. And I don't think you can count 11 since most of that was player driven and not really something about the production value of the game

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[In Yarr we trust.]

how can you say that? ff2 you dont even really level up. the crappy gain-by-use wasn't even balanced well. any game where you beat yourself makes for bad gameplay (except ... ). ff tactics had this problem too, but was an otherwise excellent game. ff2 had nothing going for it.

what i liked about the battle system of ff11:
-long battles
-for the first time, enfeebles are meaningful
-dynamics, like how giving up kill speed to kill the most mobs per hour is more meaningful than killing 1 mob as fast as you can (all previous ff's you just spam attack and drink potions after battle)
-teamwork
-challenge
-balance
-tons of spells and abilities
-various combinations of jobs determine the gameplay
-ability to reposition camera perspective
-first use of a real tank
-limitations on each job keep each job in its place
-outside factors like aggro
-positioning is important
-balance of hate
also skillchains, magic bursts, and exp chains


i loved the ff12 demo, personally. and i can't wait to play the real game.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

ff4 and ff9 were the only two games that had sufficient character differentiation. ff6 had it to start, but lost it by the end

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

OMG people 11 is like the red headed step child of the Ff series, its garbage compared to the other ones. Stop saying it has an awesome battle system, it blows!

EDIT: I refuse for now on to even recognise 11 as having a battle system, it has a "click on something until it dies" system.

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Warlock's are not OP, maybe if you stopped running around like frightened little girls you'd be able to beat me...

ya, i dont think 11 should be put in this comparison because that would be sayin like "character depth in super mario brothers is better than in mario kart". sure it has the name Final Fantasy on it, but it really is a completely different type of game, even if it is a RPG.

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i feel like ff11 is the first time they have ever gotten it right. to the point where i can never replay an old ff again. hopefully 12 will be like 11's battle system with 4's character development and 6's story.

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

FF11 was sufficiently successful at really making your avatar feel like the star of a Final Fantasy game (as well as interacting with other characters). That was definately one of its defining qualities, although on the other hand it caused your play experience to vary greatly depending on who you interacted with and how many contacts you made.

Tracezero you could put that materia on anyone and make them a wrecking machine, and if you mastered it to gain a second then you'd have 2 wrecking machines lol. By the end of 7 everyone deals 9999 every hit, magic becomes mostly pointless, it's kinda bleh, I just kept cid and barret in pt for multi hit limits. 8 same thing, I just kept the guys in party for multi hit limits since everyone is 9999 all the time.

For battle system crap, yes I really like useful enfeebles and hate control in ffxi. Playing FF4 again now I look for cecil's voke every fight and don't find it, luckily his cover is friggin kickass and he saves anyone who's in low health.

I always had a sausage party in FFVII, which usually consisted of Cloud, Barret, and Cid/Vincent. I could never pull off 9999 hits with anybody but Cloud. Vincent for sure cannot hit 9999's with 4x-cut, I'm certain about that; Barret, maybe if you got him to 99, but I'm still doubtful, Cid, haven't played the game with him in so long, dunno. Cloud is just an overall hardass that pwns the most face.

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[DRK]75 [BLM]75 [WAR]75
[San d'Oria] Rank 10

I am 40 hours into the game now...I must say..its the best battle system I have seen for an FF game so far.

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-_- o m g

I've not played FF12, but i've read enough and watched tons of videos of boss fights and stuff online and imo the FF12 "ADB" battle system has got to be one of the best they've come up with yet.

FF12's is a lot like FF11, except you control the whole party indirectly, which you weren't allowed to do in the demo. You control your party members with "Gambits", which is like a very simple but effective AI programming system. You basically set up "rules" for each member on how you want them to fight in battle. Example, you might have two gambit rules as follows:

- Attack Leader's (your) target.
- When Ally's HP is below 70%...

You get hundreds of these little rules. And how you play them on the Gambit menu can have different effects because of priority. Using the two above, if you placed those gambits in slot #1 and slot #2, and set the second Gambit to use a Potion, the character will fight anything you fight, but after the battle they will heal people who need it. If, however, you reverse the commands so they're the other way around, healing takes priority over fighting, so if someone needs curing mid-battle, they'll stop what they're doing to heal, then go back to fighting.

These gambits extend to all sorts of things, from doing things under different status effects, to doing different things depending on the weakness of your enemy, to even using special items and abilities only when fighting bosses, etc.

I had an awesome article on the FF12 battle system and how it's been totally under hyped for what it is. People who complain it's crap either don't understand how it works, or don't realise you can just set it to "Wait" mode which makes it pretty much like every other FF in existance.

In summary, if you liked FF11's battle system, and would love to see how that played out in a single player game, FF12's is right up your alley.