Only FF game on 360 is XIII, which we have established sucks giant donkey balls. And the story of X actually seems to be getting more ridiculous as the game progresses (playing now for the first time, I'm currently on Mt. Gagazet). I was going WTF through the entire wedding thing, it literally made no sense.

 

Honestly, I haven't really enjoyed a Final Fantasy since IX. Don't have the console to play this apparent piece of shit, and I guess I should consider myself fortunate for that.

 

Go out right now and buy VII/VIII/IX for the PS1. You should be able to play them on the PS2 and I guarantee you will piss yourself with the epicness of them. The crappy graphics don't matter, the story and battle system is what's most important and I feel that those three are the height of the series (though I haven't played anything before VII, so take that as you will).

On an unrelated note, since you did in fact write that story, you now have a pokemon named after you. Congratulations.

 

I also have returned my copy of XIII before finishing it. I only lasted 10 hours or so before giving up.

FF really needs to return back to basics, IMO. They've been so concerned about innovation and keeping things fresh that they forgot their fanbase. VII, VIII and IX were the pinnacle, for me. A world map, character-driven story, non-linear exploration-based gameplay, fuck-tons of customisation, and plenty of side quests along the way.

The developers seem to have become obsessed with making the games closer and closer to real-time RPGs, rather than your typical JRPG combat. I was perfectly happy with combat the way it was before (although I did like many elements of FFXII's gameplay with respect to this, particularly being able to see monsters and engage them on the same screen as exploration).

Edit: It sounds like Final Fantasy Versus XIII is an answer to all these issues:

 

Note: The last FF I played in full was FFVIII. Besides that I've only really played X for a couple hours, so I may be talking out of my ass on this one.

From what I've heard (and partially experienced), ever since X, FF has gotten more & more linear, with less choice overall. Now, this isn't always a bad thing. However it's the crux of what makes XIII so bad to me. in other games there is always linearity, because in the end the object is to go from point A to point B eventually (besides for games like Mount & Blade).

However in XIII they take that fundamental of gameplay to the extreme. Instead of past games where if you were getting bored with the combat, you could go to a town or do some kind of alternate quest. Here it's just hallway after hallway of combat, cutscene, more combat, etc etc. That's what caused me to break and give up. The game was more repetitive than my actual job!

It also certainly didn't help that the story was pathetic & the characters were uninspiring. I'm willing to play through a bad game for a good story, but when the gameplay sucks, the story sucks, and I want to kill every single character-Well fuck you Square.

Really, I've played some bad games before, but none of them have actually made the experience so painful before.

 

The answer to their issues is to focus on one fucking game at a time. Not develop a backstory, and throw a half ass cinematic clusterfuck, and then years later fix it, write a new story using the history of the first one, and make it happen in the past, but release it as a brand new game.

Milking a nostalgic franchise like that? Who do they think they are, Nintendo?

 

Seriously, fuck this game. It could've been epic. It could've fixed everything. IT COULD HAVE BEEN FINAL FANTASY 6: THE SECOND COMING. (I know, not cruise control for cool, that's seriously how pissed of I was at FFXII, and then this shit?) Lay off it with the different job class wannabe systems! If I want awesome job class style play from a Final Fantasy I'll break out FFV or FFTactics (all hail T.G. Cid, harbinger of brokenness!) Just sayin.

 

Yeahh. I hope I'm like a bulbasaur or tentacruel (something with... appendages, and it'd fit with my avatar picture), but even if I'm not.... :banana:

Anyways, I have a friend who's told me the same thing about VII and VIII(that they're amazing), but my problem is that the PS2 is unable to save data unless you have an adapter so I'll probably have to dig out my brother's really old PS1(I think it's older than me, actually) and hope it works.

On FFX, the reason I liked it was because I was new to the whole genre of open exploration/RPG game so the linearity in the beginning was helpful. You have a ton of stuff to do later though(monster capture, tons of bosses, celestial weapons, blitzball...), when you have the airship. The whole game really opens up, and I never got all of the monsters, even after 65+ hours of playing(granted, I was around 9 or 10 at the time). Also, Sin was the coolest giant floating super powerful whale thing ever.