Final Fantasy 16

Chris said:

Yes, although it tends to be in post game super boss territory and not towards the end of the base game.

But the story is also shit, so there's nothing to keep you interested until the sudden unfinished ending. The Zodiac Age version is much better.

Anyway, in order from left to right and MMOs being somewhat their own thing:
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I haven't played 2 or 15 so going off what I have heard about the games. Only played the 3D version of 3 and half of 4.

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I'd go get the Pixel Remaster versions of 2 through 4 and play them. I wish I could play any of them for the first time.

FF2 is worth a play...if it's the PR version, which fixes all of the original version's issues. The PSP version is also good, and the Dawn of Souls version is decent. The original Famicom FF2 is D-tier.

FF3's PR version is also very good, and very different from the 3D version to the point that it's basically a different game. They made the final dungeons much more palatable with autosave.

And FF4 just deserves a full run, it's got some iconic stuff.

Ritley said:

Everything about 8 was bad, the story, the characters, the shitty draw system, and the scaling bosses. Only thing that didn’t completely suck was the card game but it’s not nearly enough to save the game from being truly awful

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I gotta go with Chris on this one and say FF8 is a worthwhile game. Maybe it's my nostalgia talking. The visuals were amazing in 99, and the game was pretty well-balanced for me. Then again I never grinded draws, and I think I leveled up normally, so the difficulty felt pretty leveled-out for most of it.

On later playthroughs I grinded draws and ran from fights, which left me wildly OP while the enemies were all low-level for the whole game. That made the game completely unbalanced and not much fun. I could also see things going in the other direction, if someone doesn't draw much and grinds EXP, then has the enemies vastly outpace their characters to the point that the game becomes too hard.

Point is, FF8 can go a few different ways based on how you play it, and I can see how it could end up sucking. In my own experience, it didn't.

Lunis said:

FF2 PR version is actually pretty good. Kawazu was one of the main designers so you can see the early version of systems that would later be used in the SaGa games. If you like that series you will like FF2.

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SaGa games are the very definition of "mixed bag"...sometimes they're a ton of fun, other times they're borderline nonsensical and totally unbalanced.

Personally I enjoyed every SaGa game I ever played, to varying degrees. FFL1 and 2 on the Game Boy were fantastic, and RS3's remaster / SaGa Frontier are both a good time. RS2 and FFL3 are a bit more hit/miss. I still have SaGa Frontier 2 (remaster coming soon) and Romancing SaGa 1 to go.

I hear RS1 is completely archaic and brutal to try to play now.

However, when I hear a retro RPG is archaic and unplayable, my reaction is like

I stopped after 13, but had played every prior entry in the series multiple times. Tactics is a masterpiece but not really part of this genre. My tastes differ from most, but I think that FF4 and FF6 were pinnacles of the series. Good story, mechanics, and characters. I enjoyed 12 a lot, in fact I am replaying it currently, but the story kind of falls flat in places and the grind is kind of stupid if you want to do all the optional shit in the game. I enjoyed 8 for what it was, but I am in the minority on that and can completely understand the hate it gets. I also have to say in retrospect that 7 probably sucked worse, with the fucked up story and weeaboo fan jerkoff boss, the horrific grind to get out of the fucking city at the start of the game, and the complete downer of an ending. FF10 had one great character with a good story arc (Auron) and a bunch of cringe. FF9 was decent, but basically a kids game. The rest of the older ones were fun, but nothing I would repeat.

So for me its-
Top Tier- FF4, FF6
Great Tier- FF8, FF1, FF5, FF12
Good for a play Tier- FF3, FF9, FF7
Shit Tier- FF2, FF13

That having been said, FF6 and FF12 are the only ones I ever replay, contrasted to Tactics which I replay at least once every two years. I tried doing the FF7 original and remake, but... FF7 is just where the gay got turned up to 11 and the emo dystopia completely overpowered everything else. Its like FF6 was such a powerful story with them actually ending the world, that they just kept on repeating that same idea but in dumber ways.

Rajaah said:

FF10-2 is fantastic. I love the class system. I think I might enjoy that game more than 10-1, much like the situation with 13-2. I think 10-2 was also the last FF to use traditional ATB like 4-9.

The concert is fucking stupid but it's also like, one scene in the game that's right at the beginning. I'm sure someone at Square thought "the kids will love it" with that one.

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Barbie Dress Up dance game had a story only a fan of WB TV could get into. Plus once you had two dark knights and an alchemist, you could faceroll your way through the entire game.