Final fantasy is my favourite series of video games
I'm my opinion, its better than Pokemon, Street Fighter, Zelda, Mario, you name it
So since I love the franchise so much, i'm gonna do a short review on each of the Final Fantasy's on this thread
Final Fantasy 6 -
To be honest, there was only 2 things I hated about this game, and thats the speed and the graphics
Of course, because its on early ps1, you can't expect much
Apart from the 2 downsides, I loved this game
The story was brilliant, the huge number of characters was awesome and I loved the way you built them up, its just so straight forward and easy to pick up
Score on this game 7/10
Final Fantasy 7 -
Alot of fans consider this to be the best final fantasy ever and I simply cannot blame them
If you ask me, this game took was FF6 wasn't too good at, and made them awesome
The graphics where very good, I loved the detail of the maps and and appearance of the attacks.
As for the story, it was also fantastic. I would actually go as far to say that Final Fantasy 7 has 1 of the best stories in the whole of video game history
There was only 1 thing I hated about this game, and thats how long it took to level up the materia. The system itself was pretty straight forward but I just hated how you had to train just to level up the materia to get new attacks.
Thankfully, once you reach the end of the game, this downside is drastically decreased as there are areas where you can get a large number of AP in order to level up the materia, plus you could equip weapons that doubles the AP your given.
Overall, FF7 is 1 of the best and deserves all the credit it gets
Score on this game 9/10
Final Fantasy 8 -
Following the great performance of Final Fantasy 7, we have Final Fantasy 8.
The graphics of this game looked abit better in my opinion but not enough to throw a party about.
If you ask me, this final fantasy was excellent in alot of areas, but very bad in a couple of major areas
I'll cover the bad first:
1. The magic
How the magic worked in this game was stupid. You had to draw it from enemies and draw points across the areas.
This is good and all but its not done through MP. Its done like the item system, you actually stock up instead of using up MP which means once you've used up all the stocks of a certain magic, you literally lose the spell.
I had no problem with drawing the magic from enemies but they should have simply made it work like in Final Fantasy 6 and 7.
2. The Story
Now don't get me wrong, this is not on the same scale as the magic, in fact its nowhere near.
The story for the most part was very good, it's just that there are certain areas that I find hard to understand.
Not to mention they also involved time in the plot.
To be honest, the story was good and kept me interested but there was just a few areas that I found confusing
I don't know if this applies to other people but this is just how I felt.
Okay, thats the bad out of the way now for the good
The part I loved most about this game was the GF's which in this game are your summons that square enix (Squaresoft back in this age) seem to keep changing the names of.
Anyway, the GF's in this game where awesome, they where well presented and really made you feel like you where summoning a powerful summon.
As for the presentation of the magic, it was also done great, true that you can actually lose magic, but the fact that their well presentated, makes that downside somewhat tolerable.
Thats really all I can say, apart from the 2 downsides, this is 1 great Final Fantasy game
Score for this game: 8/10
Final Fantasy 9 -
Oh boy, now we come to a beyond awesome 1
In my opinion, this is not just the best final fantasy ever, its also the best video game ever
I know there are probably video games that are better but in my opinion, this is my favourite video game ever
Where shall I start? First off the story. The story was awesome. Its entertaining, its fun and its enough to keep you playing till the very end.
The only thing I hate about the story is when it ends, it just makes me wish it could just go on forever.
The best part is, there isn't even actually talking, its all done through text but despite that, its still awesome.
Now for the battle system. Finally our magic is back to what it was, the good old MP style and the battle system itself is simply fantasic. 1 thing that was a huge highlight for me was the difference between characters.
You have a total of 8 members and each of them have their own set of moves.
Your main character, Zidane, he had the commands Attack (Which is the only command every character shares), Steal and Skill. Steal is obvious, you steal items from enemies and skill is where you can use special techniques Zidane can learn. Then you have Vivi, who is your black mage, once you have mastered all of his magic's, he has access to over 40 different spells, all for you to command.
I could go over every last character but I think everyone has gotten the idea, basically character individuality is a huge part of this game.
Now for the music and oh man do I love this section. There is only like 2 songs in the whole game that I don't really like, all the others are either good, or simply breathtaking.
Now despite all this awesomeness, I have actually found 2 things in this game that I dislike
1. The Ragtime Mouse challenge
This is a very tedious task as you have search every forest in the entire world in search of the Ragtime mouse.
Once you find him, he will ask you a question related to the story.
The game itself is no problem and is actually abit fun, the problem is finding him. Its just way too tedious and only grows older with each passing hours of searching. Thankfully, once you have completed this challenge, you will never have to worry about it again so this falls into the category of "Temporary Downside"
2. The waiting time for shifting between exploring and battles. The screen does take a nice transition when a random encounter/boss battles happens. Its just abit too long and really could have been faster as random battles simply happen too often.
Thats all I can say about the downsides, this is just 1 awesome video game
Score on this game: 9.5/10
Final Fantasy 10 -
This game just slightly goes behind Final Fantasy 9. If it wasn't for a couple of downsides, it would have become my favourite video game (Even though there are several games I can say are better than this 1)
The graphics are awesome as this was the first Final Fantasy on Playstation 2. They are actually better than Final Fantasy 9 and as a result, is simply awesome in this category. The first thing I loved about this game was how much detail was put into it. Its not just displayed nicely, its also very alive and really makes you stand in awe.
Now for the story, this is also done very well, its a got a good length, its very interesting and it also seem to enjoy making the things you want to happen, really happen. Overall a fun and enjoyable story. My only complaint is the cut-scene where Yuna forces Tidus to laugh out loud, you just have to hope that nobody walks into the room during the playback of that scene.
Now for the battle mode, your characters can actually be trained to a incredible level as your maximum HP can go over 50,000! Not to mention you can also deal 99,999 in 1 hit!
My problem here is character individuality. The only thing that really sets them apart is their overdrives which is basically your limit break from Final Fantasy 7. The only other thing is Yuna is used to summon your aeons (Summons).
Now while only Yuna can summon the Aeons, they are a huge part of this video game. In previous Final Fantasy games, the summons have simply been you summon a creature, they perform the attack and then leave. In this game they actually come to fight and you literally command them and to make it even more awesome, the game even lets you teach moves to them. Sadly though, the downside of character individuality also carries across to the aeons as once you have teach'd them everything they can learn, the only difference is their overdrives.
Without a doubt, Final Fantasy 10 is 1 of the best Final Fantasy's ever and is definetly worth getting if your into RPG's
Score on this game: 9/10
Final Fantasy X-2 -
This is actually a direct sequel to Final Fantasy X, but is it a good sequel?
Okay, i'm gonna answer this quickly, Final Fantasy X-2 is nothing comparied to Final Fantasy X
The story was OK, its true that it takes place a year after the end of 10 but to be honest, its hardly connected apart from the return of Tidus. For the most part, it is pretty good but not to the same extend at 10.
Now for the battles. They are similar to the that of 10 except for the fact that the way you built up your characters was completely changes. Before you had the sphere grid, now you have these 2 new sections called "Garment Grids" and "Dressphere's". How it works is somewhat simply but can be abit confusing of your a newbie to it.
The good side to this is you can actually change how your characters are dressed during battle. For example Yuna can either fight in her gunman dressphere or she can take the role as a Black Mage.
My problem here is you only have 3 characters to control and you have all of them from pretty much the start of the game. Thats a horrible decrease, in FF10 you had 7 characters and here you have 3? Thats less than half! What a disappointment.
Now for the huge disappointment..Blitzball! In Final Fantasy 10 this was a huge mini-game and to be honest, its probably 1 of the best mini-games in video game history and what did FFX-2 do to it? They basically destroyed it.
Not only can't you control the players, you team just sucks in general. You'll know what I mean if you've played this yourself. They really should have kept it as it was instead of messing with it. Back when I was a kid, my Grandpa used to tell not to mess with certain things because otherwise, you may end up breaking or ruining it. Well that statement sure is true when it came to this.
Okay, I think i'll move on now as I'm getting tired of talking about this.
To put it simply, FFX-2 was barely decent, but is nothing comparied to FF10.
Score on this game: 6/10
Final Fantasy 12 -
If I remember correctly, there was actually quite a gap between X-2 and 12 so for that reason, I expected there to be huge improvements and did we get them? Hell no
Alot of people claim Final Fantasy 12 to be the worst Final Fantasy ever made and quite frankly, I agree with them.
The story was pure lame, it lacked any sense of creativity and half of the time, it was just plain boring.
They even named certain military warships after names of the summons! What on earth?! Thats just stupid, you even had a warship called Shiva....way too pathetic.
As for the main character, his name is Vanne and he certainly qualifies as 1 of the worst main characters ever made.
he looks like a Girl and most of the time, he's just following the plans of the other characters, so much for a main character, he just does what everyone else decides.
The battle system on the other hand was OK. You no longer have the shift screen, instead the area your wandering in IS your battlefield. Now this is a good approach as now we can actually have an idea of when a battle is gonna take place.
However, there is again 2 problems with it, the first is the gambits. These are basically auto-actions that you can set your characters to do. My problem is half of the time, the gambits kick in and your characters will do things that their not supposed to. The 2nd problem is the summons which in this game are called Espers. You can summon them and you do come to stay, just that you can't control them and some of them seem to die rather easily.
Now finally we come to a couple of good things. The first is your Quickenings, these are your limit break, overdrives, whatever and they can actually be chained together to do some awesome damage. The second good thing is the "ultimates" of your espers. They are very good on presentation and really do stand out.
Sadly, thats really it, apart from those 2 things there is nothing good about Final Fantasy 12.
Sorry but overall, this game just isn't very good.
Score for this game: 4/10
Final Fantasy 13 -
4 years actually went by before we saw the release of another final fantasy game but when 2010 came, we had the release of Final Fantasy 13.
So before we start lets look at the previous released, Final Fantasy 6 to 10 was awesome, Final Fantasy x-2 was decent and Final Fantasy 12 was utter trash.
So from the looks of things, it looks like Final Fantasy is starting to really go downhill....Or maybe Not!!
At long last, after years of waiting we finally get a awesome Final Fantasy game in the form of Final Fantasy 13, the first Final Fantasy on Playstation 3!
lets begin with the graphics, they are, without a doubt, the best Final Fantasy Graphics ever.
Just get the awesomeness of Final Fantasy 10's graphics and times it by about 10
Yeah, they are really good, the details of them are spectacular. They have a grand level which is to be expected when you consider how great the ps3 and 360 is on graphics.
Now for the battle system, my only complaint is you only control 1 character but this is ok because you can choose who that character is. For the fights themselves, its done is good way as you give certain roles to your characters and the moves they use will depend on the roles you give so you do have control of the other 2, to a certain degree.
As for the way you build your characters up, its done in a very simple way, its basically alot like the sphere grid mode from Final Fantasy 10. Thats all I really need to say.
Finally we have story, this is where the game was let down abit. The story was very good, it was interesting and makes you wanna keep playing, my problem is the length, it just felt too short.
In any previous Final Fantasy games, i've usually had to play for at least 7 days before finishing the game while here it took me about 3 days when you consider how much freetime I have.
But thats really my only complaint, and again, it comes under the category of Temporary Downside.
If you want my opinion, I see Final Fantasy 13 as "The Final Fantasy that brought it back from the edge"
In other words, myself and plenty of people I knew was starting to give up on good final fantasy games and was ready to consider it a boredom filler but thankfully, FF13 changed mine and plenty of other people's opinions once the release date came.
Score for this game: 9/10
And thats it! If you read all of this, then thanks very much as it took me almost an hour to type all of this up.
Also, I believe this may be the longest thread I have ever typed in my life
Thanks for reading
Subject: Short reviews on all the Final Fantasy's I own 
Mon Dec 06, 2010 8:56 am
