Worst to Best Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy history is very vast and has grown so much since it's initial release back in 1987, both in technique and in popularity. It'd practically be impossible to find a gamer who hasn't at least heard of Final Fantasy, let alone played at least one entry in the series. In addition to the main line of games, the franchise has had spin offs, anime adaptations, even a couple of movies made from Square's graphics team themselves, not to mention more recently a successful fighter, Dissidia, which became the sole reason for most Playstation Portable owners to own the handheld in the first place.

Now, much sooner than one could hope could, the follow up to the famous fighter is coming, aptly named Dissidia: Duodecim. With the sudden rush of news about the latest in actual good products from Square Enix, I've decided this week to do something I've been wanting to do for a while now. List my favorite and least favorite Final Fantasy main franchise games and explain why I love or hate them so. Alas, while I have played and practically completed most of the Final Fantasy games, there are a few exceptions, namely Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy 5. Though I have played parts of these games, I haven't played enough of them to fairly give them fair judgement. Also, while I have mixed feeling about the game, I probably won't put Final Fantasy 11 on this list just because of how different it is. Consider these exclusions as honorable mentions. Without further ado, lets get started.

#10 – Final Fantasy 8
If there was one entry in the series that I can honestly say I hated, it was this one. To be honest, I'm surprised that this game gets as much praise as it does. Why do I hate it so? For one, all the main characters you play as are boring and overly generic looking people. I understand that Final Fantasy 8's engine was meant for a more realistic look, but in exchange for realism, you lose a sense of wonder and magic that makes Final Fantasy well, Final Fantasy.

The battle system is also something that bored me as it not only demoted the use of magic in favor of just buffing out your attack strength with said magic, but it actually promoted not healing your party members just so that you could use that character's limit break for a stronger attack. I simply don't like when games do that.

Also, an overly convenient plot twist that happens in the later half of the game makes me shake my head in why the writers thought that would be smart. Not to mention, the self fulfilling time loop ending. Though, I have to admit, I do like several theories that have spawn from this game, such as the “Squalls Dead” theory.

However, if there is something I do like about this entry, it the soundtrack. Containing some of my favorite tunes from the franchise, such as Man with the Machine Gun, Force your Way, and the Extreme, I can't deny that Final Fantasy 8's soundtrack is one that I do enjoy.


#9 – Final Fantasy 13
Next on the list is the most recent entry to the series. Yes, I'm not counting 14 yet as it's admitted to being incomplete. Now, I'll start by saying the good things this time about Final Fantasy 13. Firstly, despite it being different, I do enjoy the soundtrack for the game. I also enjoyed most of the characters and likes how in combat they had different roles a abilities. I even enjoyed the story, despite how much it holds your hand. Now after all that is said and done, there's just one major problem with it. This isn't Final Fantasy.

It doesn't feel like Final Fantasy. It just feels like some other JRPG that came out of no where and couldn't get it's own title so they put Final Fantasy on there. The linearity and how the game holds your hand for so long and doesn't even give the option to switch out characters until 20 hours into the game is distracting too. After all that is said and done though, it's hard to get attached to this world. It's hard to even care about anyone besides your own characters and even then, it's hard to do that. The only exception to this rule is Sazh because he just seems to be the voice of the player, more or less asking what the player is asking.

Oh and that brings up another point, the intro is awful. Sure, it's exciting explosions and battles and crap, but when the characters are constantly exchanging terms like l'Cie and Fal'Cie around without ever explaining what they are until several hours in, it's become very difficult to hook your players. Oh sure, the information is in text logs, but my theory about text logs: They should be for expansion of the world you live in, but shouldn't be necessary to understand the core story itself. I could go into detail about the battle system, but I'll summarize it: It's all the same. Every time.


#8 – Final Fantasy 3
Here is the first in the series to introduce the job system and to it's credit, I do like the concept of mixing and matching your party's jobs in order to become efficient in whatever task you're doing. I like the general themes of Light and Dark worlds ever competing in a struggle for balance. That's fine and dandy. In fact, it's roughly at this point where I start to not dislike the games. However, despite it's good aspects, three has one major problems. The save system.

Keep in mind that I was playing the DS remake of this title. As such, I suppose I was expecting something along the lines of updating features. However, to it's praise/misfortune, it decided to be an exact replicas, save some minor development for each character (key word on minor). What this entails is that when you go into a dungeon, you'd best be willing to push through that dungeon the entire way before fighting a boss that'll more than likely kick your ass the first time, so you'll have to reload your data from before you even entered the dungeon. This results in the player having to potentially leave a dungeon early, just to save and make sure their level ups and newfound equipment isn't lost. Long story short, to effectively play this game, you'll have to go through each dungeon twice. That's terrible.

And remember when I said I had played if not beaten most of the main final fantasies? This is one of the ones I couldn't beat. Why? The final dungeon takes approximately two hours to trek through, maybe shave out about 30 minutes if you plow or avoid your enemies, but my point stands. You defeat the boss of the dungeon and have to go to the dark realm where you fight four additional bosses and then fight the final boss, Cloud of Darkness... only for her to just blow on your party twice and your party dies. Have fun doing the whole dungeon over. Man, I can really hate this game.


#7 – Final Fantasy 12
With this entry, I'll be honest and say that this originally one of my most hated of Final Fantasies; Moreso than 8. I hated everything about it, the characters, the story, the world, the style, everything. But fast forward a couple of years, I began to think about it. The art style isn't too bad; in fact, it's rather great. It's actually rather reminincent of when Final Fantasies were set in fantasy settings as opposed to the sci-fi modern setting that's so popular nowadays. And while I've said this before, Final Fantasy 12 has one of my favorite groups of villains, the Judges, which are depicted in such a menacing fashion, like a group of Darth Vaders ready to inflict the law upon your ass.

Additionally, the music was also very good: mythical, but never overbearing. The beats and melodies fit the theme of the world the game is set in, Ivalice, from the Tactics games (which I do like very much, but aren't on this list). Overall, the soundtrack fits the world that it's in and is nice to listen to.

The characters really aren't that bad either, with the exception of Vaan and Penelo, which according to rumors were shoehorned in because of concern of the fanbase not enjoying a potential female lead (Ashe) or a older male lead (Basche). In fact, if Final Fantasy 12 was just Ashe, Basche, Balthier, and Fran on the field all the time, this game would honestly be higher on this list. It really would.The political plot also fascinates me and each of the characters are important (again, excluding Vaan and Penelo). Also, it's just a big homage to Star Wars and how can you completely hate that?

No, my beef with this title is the one very important aspect of gameplay. The main problems stem from the gambit system, which I can respect the game would be almost too tedious without it, but even then, I just felt like they didn't go far enough with it. Maybe I missed a few gambits, but I think when you have a system like that where in order to do certain setups, it's necessary to have more gambits be more easily accessible. Even with all the gambits in the game, I was disappointed to learn you couldn't combine gambits or that there weren't gambits that took into consideration the number of enemies attack. I wasted so much MP for that. Sure, it's a little complaint, but what can I say?

The worst thing about the game, which goes back to the pointless inclusion of Vaan and Penelo, is that every character plays the same. No really. The license board system practically ensures that after a certain point in leveling, every character will be similar. If we just have the other four characters out all at one time instead, the game would instantly become much better. In my mind anyway.


#6 – Final Fantasy 1
Here's a game that while the concept and system is old, it remains solid. By today's standards it might not exactly be consider elite. It remains to be a solid and steady rpg system that provides multiple play throughs, each time with a different set up or even putting a challenge on yourself with the different classes you can choose.

The plot is simple, but hey, it's the first of it's kind, and even then, it delves into time travel. If I had one complaint about the game, it's that the game can be a bit too sandbox-like, leaving the player completely lost for at least a hour every time it happens until the player stumbles upon a dungeon or town that might lead to more clues. Early on, this isn't so bad as a dancer npc tells you where to you, but after about a 1/3 into the game, this dancer decides to no longer give any hints. It can be frustrating. Otherwise, not much else to say, except that it's a solid if not too well-aging of an entry.


#5 – Final Fantasy 10
Being the Final Fantasy that first introduced voice acting, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy Final Fantasy 10. Sure, the plot was a bit linear because of the lack of world maps. Sure, the main character was whiny and at times, down right annoying. Sure, the villain had a stupid haircut, but for some reason, I didn't care about that. For some reason, all those problems seem minor and could even be explained a bit when you think about it, even if it doesn't make it better.

On the plus side of things, the battle system is definitely one of the best ones in the series, with the ability to switch out your party members mid-battle to best suit the situation and the sphere system is what 12's license board system should've been more like. By the end of the game, a lot of the characters would have similar skills and moves, but for a very long period of time, each character was meant to level in a specific way. I enjoyed that.

And as far as Tidus goes, one has to look at the situation from his viewpoint. The guy is basically a soccer player who got forced into a world of monsters and religious fanatics. It's world he doesn't understand and not to mention, he's not a pro at fighting from the get go. This ignorance also helps the game doing something that Final Fantasy 13 messed up on and provided a good way to tell exposition. The party goes into a town, Tidus sees something foreign going on and everyone else calmly accepts. The party remembers, “Oh right. You're not from here. Here's what's going on.” And it helps to explain the world better to you, the player, who is also new to this place. Overall, I felt that Final Fantasy 10 was a very good intro into the Playstation 2 era of RPGs and is what some consider to be the last good Final Fantasy.


#4 – Final Fantasy 7

First and foremost, let me say this: Final Fantasy 7 is neither the greatest Final Fantasy nor is it the worst. It is a great game that showed off what the playstation 1 was capable of and succeeding in having a good art style for being the first 3-dimensional Final Fantasy game. I loved all the characters, yes, I even enjoyed Yuffie and Cait Sith. Even if characters could play similarly with the materia system, their limit breaks were so diverse with some characters relying on slots, others being more direct damage, and one becoming a monster and completely changing his moveset. Indeed, Final Fantasy 7's group is diverse.

The story is also surprisingly complicated with little plot points that are very important that can be the subject of debate about their meaning and their place in the grand scheme of things. Each character is well developed and has their moment to shine, from a mano-a-mano duel between two gun handed rebels, to an old man's dream of going into space. The game is also notorious for having one of the most recognizable villains in a game, if not necessarily the best, Sephiroth. The guy just oozes cool yet retains creepy aura about him. Furthermore, he has one of the best themes in the franchise.

Finally, while some may consider this to be more a flaw than a boon, Final Fantasy 7 is the one entry that really introduced the game to the masses. Beforehand, the US had a total of three not-so-greatly translated entries to the franchise, but when Final Fantasy 7 was released, everyone began to take notice of it. It's the game that birthed a million Final Fantasy fans and to that regard, it has earned it's respect. Sure, sometimes the fanbase is a little too much, but the game itself is great and one of my favorites.

And the Rest...?
Now I know what you're thinking. Wow. If Final Fantasy 7 was fourth, then what comes next? And to be perfectly honest with you true believer, that is something I'm not completely sure. Which is why that next time, we'll be looking into the last three entries on the list: 4, 6, and 9 and do a cross comparison to determine which is truly the best Final Fantasy game.