The Best of Final Fantasy

[Dr. Ace]

IX and X were pretty good but the overall series is mediocre in terms of RPG.

[Archem]

FFX was awful and I hate it. The series is only really mediocre because it set the standards and held to them pretty religiously up until recently. Once the rest of the world started to catch up to them near the end of the 90s, the series began to look mediocre (of course, by that time, they started to make some iffy decisions).

[DragonBlaze]

IX and X were pretty good but the overall series is mediocre in terms of RPG.

Overall it's pretty mediocre, and in my opinion 11+ was crap, but since there are SO many Final Fantasy games, odds are everyone who likes RPGs will most likely love a few of them haha.

Come to think of it, there are only a couple of RPGs that I like better than my favorite Final Fantasy. Chrono Trigger is pretty high on the list.

[daoman89]

Each game kinda did it's own thing, more noticeable with FF7 and up.  The older ones didn't offer any puzzles or things to do outside of battle except for a few things.  Playing FFIV and just walking through places and fighting random encounters got old rather quickly as I played different RPGs.  The stories are great.

The golden sun series i really enjoyed due to the map puzzles and customization etc even though the stories aren't as good.  Plus final fantasy has nobuo uematsu (for the older ones) as i've said before.  Dude's the man.

[Dr. Ace]

Old Final Fantasy might have Uematsu, but The Last Remnant has Tsuyoshi Sekito.

The Last Remnant OST - Sword Sparks

[daoman89]

It's good, but I'm not that impressed with the song most likely cause I've heard better rock themes.  I'm gonna look this guy up however!

EDIT:

Cool, he was in the Black Mages (wish they did Dark Messenger...).  It says he did 4 bonus tracks in Chrono Trigger so I'm just gonna assume that he did the rearranged versions of the main theme and such to fit in with the anime cutscenes?

[Moosetroop11]

FF5: I kinda remember this being a disaster. In my memory I see a main character called Butz, a tranny pirate and a pervy elder who fights... Nothing.

Dude, ff5 was absolutely awesome. You need to give it another chance. The GBA version or something.

[Momeka]

Dude, ff5 was absolutely awesome. You need to give it another chance. The GBA version or something.

Agreed. FFV is the best one.

[daoman89]

im glad others agree ff5 was great. it was one of the funniest ones too.

[fruckert]

You spoony bards.

[daoman89]

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years wasn't bad at all. 

[Apex]

Wow, I have a lot to say on this subject! Unfortunately I don't have the patience to type all of my thoughts, so I'll keep it to a minimum.

FF1: Mediocre- that's fine though, the series had to get it's start somewhere.

FF2: Horrible- I have tried countless times to play through this game, and I always get bored incredibly fast.

FF3: Didn't care for it- I played half-way through the NES version, and all the way through the DS version. Story was almost non-existent and the characters felt like an after-thought. (They were.)

FF4: Great: This is where everything picked up for me. Characters are fine and the story is alright, but a lot of the fun comes from the good balance in the battle system, the game is almost impossible to out-right break like most of the others beyond this point. Music is an improvement and the story, despite being 'alright', stays fresh and throws out enough plot twists to keep you interested. Good side-quests and a phenomenal final dungeon/boss.

FF5: Great: Battle system is wonderful, fresh, and fun to tinker with. It's enough to make overlooking the bland story enjoyable. The story isn't bad per-say, just bland, although ti does improve over the course of the game, and once again fantastic final dungeon and boss! (This is important to me.)

FF6: Great: The concept of not having a set 'main protagonist' is a nice concept, but not all of the characters are as equally interesting. This was my first final fantasy. Battle system is alright, each character is more unique than in FFIV, which is nice and something that doesn't return until IX. The beauty of this game lies in two areas for me: The antagonist Kefka and the atmosphere. Prerendered characters have a lot of personality, which makes the PSX (and X to some extent.) nice to look at, but the charm of of 2D sprites and pixel art backgrounds make this game gorgeous to look at. The final dungeon is a great example of this, and would be higher up on my list of best final dungeons, but the switching parties gimmick was annoying to say the least.

FF7: DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY, It's my favorite (although not but too much, I really love a lot of the others.).  This game got almost everything right. Let's focus on the game itself and not all the spin-offs that were not good to say the least. Characters: Cloud is a good main character and is well developed, the rest of the protagonists all have back stories are pretty fleshed out as well (Except Tifa, she's just a giant pair of boobs with legs.) However, for me, I like the antagonists more. Not Sephiroth though, he's pretty bland, it's the other antagonists that make the whole experience awesome. I mean the Shinra executives, the Turks, Jenova, Hojo and even people like Don Corneo. They're fun to hate. There is never really a point in the game where you don't have motivation to do what you are doing, and the cast of villains do a better job of pushing the story than the protagonists by far. The story is good as well, it's a nice step away from the one-sidedness that all of the other final fantasys had up to this point, you had a lot of things you were supposed to be doing, and all of them seemed equally as urgent. Battle system was fun, music was very memorable (Even if you don't like the game, I challenge you to come up with a reason One Winged Angel isn't a sweet boss theme.) The graphics are fresh, varied and all have a lot of charm, I think that Midgar is the single greatest opening area of any game, and when you return the feeling of triumph and duty is tremendous. The extra challenges post game are a welcoming addition too. (Up till this point we really only had Shinryuu and Omega Weapon in V.) And finally the story had good plot twists, there were a few stupid parts, but to judge a game based on a few plot holes is nit-picking.

FF8: Great- Most people don't like this one, but I love it. The story has its fair share of stupid parts and dull moments but the battle system, menu system/junctioning, and card game more than make up for it in fun. Nothing is more satisfying than winning the Siren card, transmuting it into 3 Elemental Attack item, then junctioning 100 Pain spells to your normal attack that you guy from refining Curse Spikes and hitting every boss with poison/blind/confuse/silence 100% of the time. It's a fun game to play, and the story does have some good moments. The final dungeon is simply amazing, it's worth putting up with some of the dumber parts to get through! The atmosphere is second to none, the gauntlet of bosses are challenging and fun (you are handicapped.) and the puzzles are a welcoming touch. All of this is proceeded by a very fun final boss fight. (You might think the boss is dumb, but it's not as bad as 9's at least.)

FF9: Great- The character development is fantastic, you really get to know and like each character. The world is charming and the music is great. The story has its fair share of boring parts and slow moments though unfortunately. I'll probably get slapped for this, but the game was nothing but poor story decisions halfway through the third, and fourth disks. Battle system could have been better also.

FF10: Great- I'm fine with Tidus, his disposition is fitting considering the circumstances and he does a good job of being the 'outsider' which overall I think helps the player to appreciate the world better. 10 has an amazing atmosphere and well constructed world, the characters are honestly not stellar, but the excitement of seeing what's next in the world is thrilling and enough to make you want to see the story through to the end. The ending is very touching as well.

FFX-2: Terrible- Battle system was the only redeemable feature here. It really wasn't that good either.

FFXI: I played for about 5 hours, the servers were completely dead and empty, and by 2012 it felt archaic and hard to play. Sorry I can't give any better thoughts on it, I would have liked to have tried it when it was in its prime.

FFXII: Battle system was average, and the characters were horrid. That being said there was a TON of stuff to do and the overall enjoyably of the game was pretty high because of that. Also the final area and main antagonist were uninteresting. It's interesting that they tried to focus more on the story than the characters, but it didn't pay off for me.

FFXIII: Sorry, I didn't like it. If the story and characters had been better, then it might have been fine. It seems like they were really hoping that people would like the story and the characters enough that the bland battle system and uninspired settings would be permissive.

FFT: My favorite story, it's interesting and very brutal. Like a Shakespearean novel, everyone betrays everyone and everyone dies. Battle system is incredibly fun as well, and the characters are interesting enough.