No.8

Final Fantasy (ps:4,7,8,9 ps2:12), less than half of the entire series, but can't be helped, I'll just speak from what I have played. 6.5/10

4: Played it as package of FF4+Chrono Trigger. More of frustrating than challenging. E.g  being boss-like enemies for normal encounters in final dungeon with extreme lack of save points. I can't understand the logic behind that, but to each his own. The story and characters aren't very interesting. I never touched it after that playthrough(yes, I completed it) and will never touch it again.

7: gets a 8.5/10 from me. Nice plot plus cast, gameplay is fine but nothing that is really new. It's not perfect, but you have to admit it's one of the games that open a new direction for rpgs, especially in terms of graphics +3D

8: I hate it, both story+characters. I will say though the gameplay is pretty decent and graphics, like all FFs, is beautiful for its era.

9: Pretty much unknown due to low profile kept during production+publication. Time-eating game with low plot progress and long battles(time-bar based). Load times also get complaints from me. Other factors are above average, thus this is overall a better game than 8 imo. Just hope I don't see too much bizzare pairings.

12: What is up with the gambit system? Not really bad. The only problem is really just one thing, without it the gambit system would be nice: obtaining gambits. Since it's part of the battle strategy, I can't understand why we have to search around dungeons and towns for different gambits, that unless a player can be very thorough, he/she will miss out on certain useful gambits. Obtaining necessary gambits should not be made to be via optional means. What is up with the license board? Using it to learn skills and so on is fine. But well, why do we have to earn a license to equip certain weapons/armor/accessories? This makes equipment of items very unbalanced because when we got the money to buy equipment or when we got a better item via the hunting quest, we don't have the license to equip it thus making it pointless, or when we have the license to equip a certain item, it is not being sold as yet. In other words, it worked the same way as in any other rpgs whereby we can only equip stronger equipment as we progress with the game, so why the need to come up with the entire license issue? In the end, that becomes meaningless.

The story  is not only less than legendary, if all war plots are like this, I'd prefer boring love stories anyday. Let's face it, there's almost no character development, the storyline look fanciful from first glance, but is all hollow inside. No one can deny that, they place too much efforts on the other areas as well as flowery speech(translation in the english version), but the story and character area suffer.

I'll give credit where credit is due though, the graphics are nice(the various cutscenes are nice, especially the ending CG is VERY beautiful and I like it a lot) and the way battles work in terms of the AI and encounters are good for a change. Some dialogue does give some chuckles and I wouldn't say it's completely boring.

It can be a great game to many, but only average to others, and maybe even bad to the rest, and it all depends on what factors are more important to you. For me, I'd go with the average group because I look out more for plot and characters in a rpg. Thus as a game on its own, I'll give 6.5/10


Fav game(of what I have played): 7
Fav character: None...really, none....okay does the 3 shm in advent children count?