Hi all... Long time ff player, first time poster! :awsm:

First played ff7 back in '98 when it was originally released, absolutely loved it, in fact, that and resident evil 2 have to be my fave video games of all times.

I've just finished ff7 again, every character lvl 99, level 4 limits ultimate weapons, all weapons beaten, gold chocobo, all master materia, the works... And it's gotten me in the mood for A dabble in other ff games.

Question is which one? As I said, I love ff7, have played ff8, got upto the final boss, got bored of leveling up and sacked it off unfinished, played 9 and hated it, played and finished 10, massive dislike for the ending and that damn blitzball, played 10-2 for a couple of hours purely in a bid to find out what happened after 10, didn't get on with it, and vaguely remember playing 12, but it's left no lasting effect on me.

My question is... Have I judged other ff games too harshly? I feel none have lived upto the story or 'playability' of 7 (I put over 60 hours into it on my last play through) who out there classes other ff games As genuinely top quality games?

I know nothing about 11 as I assume it's online only, how about 13 and 14?

All opinions welcome!

Cheers

XIV is online as well- I've never tried that one

XIII isn't that bad, it's very linear and I found it quite difficult. I've never completed it, though I did complete XIII-2

XII didn't leave an impression on me either, in the beginning. I gave up very early on and sold the game. But I bought it a year later, and I couldn't put it down. It grew for me from a weird game with a difficult battle system, to one of my favourites. I would suggest giving that one another go.

I had the same problem with VIII, played it right through to the end, never completed it. I really like it though. The problem with that game is that the enemies level up with you, so the higher level you are, the more difficult it is to complete the final boss.

X-2 is a bit of a cheesy game, but I really like it. It's my go-to game when I want a game that's not too challenging mentally- I found that I didn't have to concentrate on the storyline too much to understand the storyline. Getting 100% is a bit awkward, I admit, but I found that this was enjoyable, trying to get everything done.

I disagree with you on IX, I don't find that one boring at all. I think that it's a game that a lot of people seem to have dislike for, but I love it.

Hope this has been helpful, mainly my opinion, but that's what you asked for :D

Cheers for the reply buddy, that's actually the exact sort of thing I was after, always good to get other people opinions on games!

I think I'll steer clear of revisiting VIII, I do remember that card game being incredibly annoying and as I've already played through it once I can't see it being enjoyable a 2nd time round.

The more I think about XI the more I think I was a little harsh using the word 'hated' I haven't touched it since 2000 and can only remember that I thought the male knight character was rather annoying, (can't even remember his name) not sure how much of an impact a disliked character would have in regards to enjoying a game...

I've recently seen XIII-3 (lightening returns or whatever it is) in the local game and I quite liked the look of it, would it be worth going through XIII and XIII-2 first or are they totally separate stories?

I haven't got Lightning Returns yet, but I will say that I played XIII-2 without completing XIII- there were spoilers for the end of XIII, but it is pretty much a separate story to XIII. I can't really whether LR will be difficult to follow without playing XIII or XIII-2. Perhaps there's something that'll give you an idea about that in the XIII and XIII-2 section of the board?

Lightning Returns is okay, it's much better than the first FFXIII, but is nowhere near as fun as FFXIII-2 ironically, mostly because of the timed gameplay - although you have freedom somewhat where you go, you only have a limited amount of time to accomplish the objectives of the storyline - if you fail to do that by the end, it's game over whether you like it or not and literally have to start from the beginning of the game - as you can only save the game in one save slot. If it didn't have this stupid timer and progressed time by accomplishing storyline objectives, it would have been so much more enjoyable.

Getting onto your original question, if you really only liked FFVII, then the best I could recommended would be one of the Compilation titles (ala, Crisis Core or Dirge of Cerberus, although it should be noted both games are totally different genres (CC is an action RPG set some five years before the events of FFVII, and DoC is a third-person-shooter/action RPG hybrid set three years after the end of FFVII (and a year after Advent Children. DoC was okay, but just retconned too much storyline, but CC was really fun, even despite the fact much of the storyline was just filler leading up to the Nibelheim incident and the inevitable resolution. It was still was really fun though.

The only other FFVII Compilation title, Before Crisis, sadly isn't available outside Japan, and was a mobile phone game featuring the Turks, but was a traditional RPG much like FFVII itself. It would be very difficult to track down though.

Well there is ff7 crisis core very sad and worth playing if u like doing missions, Speaking with Aerith... (like a date) and getting the feelings of the characters and the story line which is cool.. tells u all kinds of events leading up to ff7, I bet u wont be disappointed.. well besides its on the psp lol