Final Fantasy players here?

I played it for a while, unfortunately the economy system was fairly annoying, the game was a tad buggy and on the whole it just wasn't a ton of fun to play. Not to mention half the player base is Japanese and you feel like a tourist in Japan just playing it. Things might have gotten better since I played it years ago but from what I remember the Japanese players treated English speakers like garbage (JP ONLY!!!! is a pretty common sight).

The upside is the combat system has some pretty cool features like an advanced combo system that (when you could get a good enough group of people) was deffinitely one of the strongest parts of the game.

I played on and off for a couple of months, but only reach level 18 or something. As I was a low-level thief most groups didn't seem all that interested in letting me party with them - I think that class was only really of great use when at higher levels. Anyway, for the most part I just ended up going solo, and due to that I was kind of stuck at around level 18. When you die you lose experience points, which can make it possible to actually LOSE progress while you play. There were several times I'd get taken down by something and go down a level, and due to that give up for the day. After several days of being a lower level than I had been a few days earlier, I decided to call and end to it.

Its the only MMO I've really played, so I can't really give any comparisons to others, only to say that I really wasn't keen on the losing experience element. If it hadn't been for that I almost certainly would have given it more of a chance.

i definitly dont play final fantasy *twitches*

I've only played two.

FFX - Currently taking Yuna to see Semour in some snowy area but I find the game rather boring. Haven't touched it since.

FF3 (Snes) - Now this is fun, a bit stuck at the moment and haven't played in a while but so far it's my favorite.

I still want to pick up FF7 cheap somewhere.

7 was probably the one that I liked to watch the most. The story was great

Quote from st0lve

7 was probably the one that I liked to watch the most. The story was great

I liked both 7, and 8. Not many people really enjoyed 8 - but at number 9 is where I fell off the boat. 10 was suprisingly decent, as is the new one (12). With the new one they revamped the combat, and I thought it was pretty neat. I'm like 16 hours into it.

I love the Final Fantasy games but I was completely put-off by Final Fantasy 11. Mainly because as a feature you couldn't actually pick a server with your friends, you must level and get a world pass and then you can switch over to ---oh wait, they're all higher level than you now, whoops! That and it's very Everquesty with an emphasis on catass and monster variation being mainly palette swaps and making things larger.

That, and the grind is worse than a perfect weapon in Disgaea 2.

Though calling it a competitor of World of Warcraft is stretching the meaning somewhat.

On the other Final Fantasy games, I haven't played twelve yet because I'm an idiot. I own a US PS2, so God knows why I decided to wait another 6 months to play it. I actually liked 10, people complain it's linear and just a story... err, that's Final Fantasy. The problem is it's linearity is much, much more obvious when there's no world map and you never revisit anything until you hit the additional content (and if you have the EU version, "additional content" means going back to Besaid and being raped by a Dark Aeon in 1 move).

I can't wait until they get hold of blu-ray and make their ultimate game: 40 hours of cutscene without having to rely on battles to extend the game time.

FF7 remains one of my very best gaming memories. I've beat it twice on PS1, and was able to get it for the PC years later, and replayed it 3 times.

FF8 however sealed the FF fate for me, I couldn't get into it, then got interested in other things mainly PC gaming, and I never tried any other FF game since.

Final Fantasy V and VI are the best ones imo.

I still believe to this day that pokemon is a rip off of the "trainer" class from FFV that thew silver balls at monsters to capture them and release them as attacks.

I dont play the MMO because everyone who does laments over its horrible level grind

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- if you play other FF games but haven't tried FF XI, why not?

Changing this quote to "have played FF games", I would answer that I simply don't have the time to play a game for that long (or any other game). The problem with it, which I first discovered with FFVIII, is that I will always try and find all the cool little stuff. And that takes time a high school student may have, but no longer a working young lad.

mh yeah i play ff, but not onlne - Final Fantasy 7 - TEH_BEST - ... but i always remember this

im a wow player, level 60 woot woot. so i think FFXI is indeed the anti-christ thats my opinon and its right.

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- if you play other MMOs (like WoW, EQ, etc) but not FFXI, why not?

I play WoW casually (wheres its faster to level up by just doing the right quests then to grind), theres no way I'd commit to the grind-a-thon that is FFXI.

Take the warcraft out of WoW and you still have a fun game. Take the FF away from FFXI and you have something that looks like dozens of other MMOs

That was definitely the case in FFVII and VIII. Anyone who tried to beat the Weapons in VII will know just what I'm talking about....

The grind in FF Online is really bad, and as I understand it you basically have to take your character on that treadmill multiple times. One of the reasons WoW was so successful was it reduced, or at least disguised, its leveling grind, trade skill grind and all manner of other things ending in “grind.” It did have a rather hardcore reputation grind but this was addressed in the expansion.

FF Online also only has a few classes that can solo content effectively, some just have absolutely no chance. Whereas people can, and usually do, level themselves to max by themselves in WoW, instead of needing the holy trinity (tank, healer, dps) to do anything - which adds a ton of tedium to the already tedious grind.

FF Online also lacks dungeon crawling content and most of its PvE content revolves around one of the biggest 4th wall breakers of a consistent world: respawns. You kill a thousand mobs and hope they respawn as bosses. And then quickly kill them before someone else, who are of course camping the same area, jumps on him (there are only 6 bosses that aren't instanced in WoW, so you don't get this problem – or if you do it's a big deal and leads to drama).

But the thing is while FF Online has a more hardcore leveling and training process, its end-game content isn't hardcore at all and it's relatively sedate. It seems once most people have played at max-level for a while, they start over. WoW's end-game content is epic, you're killing massive dragons, gods and elements, who are not scaled up mobs with a few stat tweaks. They take strategies and days of learning to kill. There's certainly no equivalent of the The Four Horsemen, C'Thun or even Patchwerk. If you check a FF Online data-mining site you'll just see the bosses get things like “he has these abilities and this much HP.” You certainly don't have to dance.

If you go back to my earlier post and follow the link, there's an interesting site showing the various facts and figures of MMORPG's available right now. FF Online really isn't that well, especially compared to the behemoth (*g*) of WoW.