Final Fantasy VII was my favorite of the series. Just picked it up on Steam. In the queue after Shining Force 2 is finished.
Feeling retro.
I used to feel the same way...
Final Fantasy VII and Street Fighter EX+alpha were my first two PSX games back in the mid-nineties. Couldn't believe my mom paid that kind of money... Unreal, even to this day..
But playing Final Fantasy VII was a mind blowing experience.... So yeah, it really was my favorite RPG for a few years... And definitely my favorite Final Fantasy for a good long while.
Few years later I played Xenogears, and my mindset was changed on "favorite RPG" simply because it was such a deeper game. The battle system was nowhere near as complex, and the grinding nowhere near as fun simply due to the lack of complexity. But the story and characters were more compelling if you're into games that question religion and spiritual/metaphysical concepts.
I played FFVIII around the same time, really never got into it after the first few hours. Felt that game was a huge step down from VII and suffered because of it. It's a good game in it's own right, but, really doesn't compare to VII.
Never liked IX simply because it wasn't VII, and I know that isn't fair, because IX really returned Final Fantasy to being a game that's actually more "fantasy" than sci-fi... but coming from someone who loved VII so much, it kinda ruined my ability to appreciate IX for being a really good, classic-style JRPG.
X was a game that had to grow on me... When I first saw Final Fantasy X, I wasn't interested.. Tidus, Blitzball, and really the voice-acting.. man.. I hated it. I was also an adult by this time, and just couldn't relate to Tidus... at first. I ended up with a bunch of free time and I finally just played the game without judging it. Again, the religious components, compelling love-story, dynamic characters that really grow.... I think I had to just, grow up, to appreciate X for what it is. And I know this is a matter of opinion, but I think FFX is superior to FFVII in
most ways, particularly with respect to the characters and the
gravity of the story.
It took me awhile to finally just admit to myself that X was a better game.
X has a better battle system, better game mechanics, much more fluid gameplay (particularly with respect to battle transitioning), the voice-acting isn't horrible and actually adds more to the game than it takes away. The love story is ultimately more complex, as is the story in general. The sphere grid is massively superior to anything previously seen in Final Fantasy to this point, allowing an extreme degree of customization... Oh, and did I mention the battle system?
I've sent well over 100+ hours in FFX, which is something that's just not possible in FFVII. There's a shit ton of stuff to do in this game, particularly battling the monsters in the arena.
FFXI was just whatever.. not worth discussing...
And FFXII, which was largely a combination of Tactics and XI, I think, was a game that had a lot of promise, but a huge barrier of entry for most players. Totally different than any other non-Tactics game, based in Ivalice, and with the gambit system that most players never got used to (it took me hours to really appreciate why the gambit system is
superior to anything that came before it). XII, to me, is the culmination of decades of trial-and-error when it comes to Final Fantasy/JRPG gameplay. As far as I'm concerned, FFXII has the best JRPG
all around gameplay of
any JRPG to date.
Really, XII is masterful in its execution... I mean, seriously.. This game is just a joy to play. I have it on my PC right now (PS2 "ROM" for 1440p upscaling, widescreen, shaders, etc). I have put in over 200 hours of gameplay into XII doing a very near 100% (~99%) playthrough, maxed out characters, best weapons for them, and optimal strats against the higher end monster quests including Yiazmat.
This is the very first JRPG game where I
never ever got
bored of the battles... and that's saying A LOT. Because in all of the aforementioned games, boredom would set in with the repetitive stream of monsters. In XII, that's never the case because they can swarm you and the number of monsters you're fighting while maintaining drop chains is very important so.. there's a degree of conscious manipulation going on all while managing your gambits... It's very
relaxing actually... that is, until you fight a monster that's hard as fuck, which this game has plenty of.
To me, I was disappointed that XIII didn't pick up where XII left off in terms of gameplay, and I can't really say much more about XIII, XIV or XV because this is where I more or less left Final Fantasy. XIII was such a disappointment for me... It was a day one purchase that I ultimately felt was the biggest FF let-down of them all, especially having loved XII so much.
Anyway, if you've never played X or XII, I'd highly recommend both. Compared to VII, X I think is all-around better, if you're into stories based around the love of a woman as well as stories that delve into religious ideas; which, I've found, many folks are not actually into these kinds of stories at all and find them pretentious. XII's story doesn't hold a candle to VII's, like, at all... The characters seem more complex, but really that's just good voice-acting. VII's characters are definitely more complex and ultimately more compelling in their stories. But with that said, XII's gameplay is addictive... in the dungeon-crawler sense.. It's just, a very very fun game to play.