Best FF

For me its:

FFIX 10/10
FFX 10/10
FFVII 9.5/10
FFIII 9/10
FFX-2 8.5/10
FFVIII 8.5/10
FF 8/10
FF: tactics 8/10
FFVI 8/10
FF: tactics advance 7.5/10
FFXII: Revenant wings 7/10
FFVII: Dirge of cerberus 6.5/10
FFXII 6.5/10

I haven’t played the rest.

I 6/10
II 5/10
III 6/10
IV 8/10
V 9/10
VI 8/10
VII 6/10
VIII 6/10
IX 10/10

If anyone’s interested, I’ll provide my thoughts on each.

X
IX
XII
X-2
VI
VII
VIII

FFX just pips FFIX for me due to its breadth of character development. FFIX had good development, but I often think a couple of characters, for instance Quina or Amarant, were a little neglected. However, both had an interesting cast of characters and very good, coherent plots, as well as unbroken (albeit occasionally restrictive) gameplay. Importantly, neither of those two have any major glaring flaws of the kind that both fans and detractors of the games can agree on, which is why they stand as the best two, for me at least.

XII comes next for sheer quantity and lifespan. There is so much to do in that game it defies belief. The plot is solid and interesting, there are few glaring holes, and the characters (bar one or two exceptions) develop reasonably well and all have a reason to travel together.

Granted, there are quite a few annoying/abusable gameplay issues, such as the LP issue, but these aside, it’s a solid effort.

X-2 comes fourth for me. I thoroughly enjoyed some parts of it, the battle system was (and remains) the most fun system Square has ever produced, and I liked the non-linearity of the plot. However, there are three reasons why I will never consider X-2 to be as complete a game as X or IX.

Firstly, some of the optional stuff (and indeed some compulsory tasks) was either very pedestrian, repetitive, or virtually required a guide to enable you to complete them successfully. Secondly, the length of the main plot was not sufficient for a Final Fantasy game. I would guess the average playthrough to be around 30 to 40 hours, if you do a medium amount of optional stuff. Those who do everything in sight will naturally accumulate more hours than this, but those who do the bare minimum will end up with about 20. Finally, the level of difficulty for the storyline bosses was pathetic.

VI I do not remember much of, having last played it seriously about four years ago. However, it comes ahead of VII and VIII by default. I do recall some glaring gameplay flaws in VI, some of which are dreadfully abusable, which is why it ranks fairly lowly on my list. As I recall, I did like that you had such a wide choice of characters and could use any four without restriction or having to use a designated ‘leader’.

VII is let down primarily by the plot holes and poor scripting. Although I think it is grossly over-criticised on this forum, it is nonetheless one of the weaker efforts in the series. It comes ahead of VIII for me though, mainly because the gameplay isn’t anywhere near as broken and the character development is a lot more broad than in VIII, where you basically have two characters who develop (one of which does so horrendously) and four supporting characters who get little to no attention and generally don’t have great reasons to be around. VIII’s aforementioned broken gameplay is its biggest flaw. When you can get 3000 HP at Level 8 something is badly wrong.

Quoted from another thread on the same subject in which I posted.

Believe me it has. And if it hasn’t DE GRANDE FREAK will see to that 🙁
And FFVI FTW.