Some comments on the Final Fantasy games that I am familiar with.


Final Fantasy VI is my overall favorite. It's the only game in the series that I never get bored of and have played multiple times. My ideal version would be the SNES version, which got released in the United States as Final Fantasy III.

The only bad thing I have to say about FF6 is that every remake has done this game no justice. The PSX port added loading times plus a CG intro that adds nothing to the game. The sprites on the mobile remakes can be a bit blurry, more so on larger devices.

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Final Fantasy IV is the game that should have been great, but the SNES version we got in the United States (releases as Final Fantasy II) had some serious translation flaws. Apparently there was an entire section of the game that wasn't translated and therefore just left out, resulting in some weirdness when a couple of characters are seemingly killed off then later shows up alive with no explanation. Additionally, there was a massive aversion to acknowledging death to the extent that you would get a message that someone "fell down" any time they would actually die as part of the story plot.

Still I could see that there was a great game hiding out here. I'd also love seeing a restored SNES version ported to PC here. By that I mean, no more falling down messages and add back in that part of the game that originally got cut out. Give us the SNES version that we really deserved.

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I have a love-hate relationship with Final Fantasy X. I liked the game enough that I named a cat Rikku (after the blonde girl in FF10, not the guy in Kingdom Hearts.) At the same time, I hate every single mini game in FF10 to the extent that I consider all of the FF10 mini games the absolute worst aspect of any Final Fantasy game. I didn't think I would like the whole sphere grid system, but it ended up being an interesting way to customize characters. I thought Rikku was this weak characters at first, but her Mix ability can be a bit overpowered. There's some things about this game that were suprising in a good way.

My issue with the FF10 mini games is entirely because the game's plot has the greatest amount of urgency. You have a scene early on where Yuna is sending off the dead from a Sin attack, which only adds to the sense of urgency about needing to get to all the temples and Zanarkand as soon as possible. Don't be dillydallying about as this will only mean that Sin destroys another city and more people are going to die. Okay, that's never actually going to happen because there is no time limit (fortunately.)

I still feel a disconnect with this and the fact that you could waste time playing an entire season of blitzball, dodge lightning bolts, or better yet, go catch butterflies. Yes, I said butterflies. So what if another city gets taken out. There's butterflies to catch. I'm convinced that the real reason that must summoner journeys end at the Calm Lands is because of the lady that makes you race chocobos against her. No, really. You have to drop everything and race chocobos if you want to go any further, which would be fine if there was a sequence like FF7's motocycle chase involving having to run through an area riding chocobos, but there isn't. There's just no reason for it.

While I would rather play FF6 or FF4, I will still take FF10 over any of the games I mention next.

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Final Fantasy VIII is the one that I couldn't get into after seeing a friend playing it. He was just about to enter a boss battle against Edea... but let's not do that just yet. Instead, he has Squall challenge her to a round of Triple Triad (the card game that shows up in FF8) and wins a card from her. Then they fight, and she gets away for no reason other than so that she can show up later to join the group as a party member like nothing happened. Huh?

The only thing that keeps me from rating this wackier than FF10 mini games is that I encountered FF8 before FF10 came out.

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Final Fantasy VII manages to be less appealing. I've only played this one to somewhere less than halfway as I never got to the Aerith and Sepheroth play date scene. 99% of the problems that I have with FF7 are caused by Cloud Strife and his non-existent personality. I get it that they were going for the whole silent protagonist thing, but other games have done the silent protagonist thing significantly better in that the character still has a sense of personality to them.

The other 1% of the issues with the game are primarily things like how poorly balanced the characters are. There are some that you want in your party all the time, and others that you should just have on the sidelines from the moment you meet them and never use them once. While other Final Fantasy games have less than ideal characters, the situation isn't nearly as bad as with FF7. Realm is a less than ideal party member in FF6, but I never felt that Realm was ruining my character party by being in it.

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I still managed to dislike Final Fantasy X-2 more than FF7. My issue with this game was that it felt like it was focused entirely around shoving as many mini games as possible into one game.

Mystic Quest!

Well I also have FF6,7,9 on Steam too.
Old versions, no pixel remasters (not yet).

10 was an odd one. Smooth and good fast snappy battle and it's solid, but it also feels like it was rushed. Course with the PS2 coming out they had to have a game out as soon as possible to show off the enhanced visuals, full voice acting and FMV. But as big as FF10 is it feels so very empty.

The theme, the feel, the lore are all off in the game. Switching jobs/classes was certainly different but you only had the 3 characters. At one point when maxing the gun class out i had all three wielding guns and pinging the enemies to death, but once maxed out i never touched it again, else the other classes wouldn't advance.

Yes a lot of mini games, many that didn't mesh well with the engine. I heard X2 was intended to try to appeal to girls more, but things like the forced dancing scenes were just... abhorrent. Heal the world by putting on a concert, very off, felt like a child wrote the script. Of course there's certain instances where you can only get one sphere or the other so you have to play the game at least twice to fully beat it. (And getting 100% completion is annoying apparently for a useless 10 second scene)

But most of the mini games are optional if i remember right. Not that i ever understood them.

I got stuck on disc 2 or 3 when i had to get to 'Central' and i hadn't a clue where that was or how to get there, and i visited everywhere. Dropped the game multiple times.

Overplaying your favorite characters rather than building everyone up. I knew there was something of an issue with that with FF12, so i'd have a group of 3 and equipment so even the non-players were getting license points or something, then after 10 levels swap them all out. (5 levels behind, to 5 levels ahead). But FF7 there isn't much in the way of healer options. I mean sure there's materia, but Aerith's overloaded ability for free healing meant you had her on hand and when you were hurt use her to heal everyone vs having your limited slots used for healing.

FF7 i found annoying a bit where the overworld and town sequences you have 1 set of 30-polygon models that were hilariously simplified and looked like bobble-heads, while in combat you had fairly high 500 polygon characters. Even the video sequences sometimes had the simplified characters for certain scenes.

Everyone (at least i assume) wanted a FF7 re-release on PS2. That's just higher models, fix a few bugs and maybe upres the videos, that was it. But instead they dilly-dallied and i'd given up on the remake. If they did it for the PS3 you know it would have been an instant system seller. But that isn't how it is going.

FF7 was also too heavy on minigames. (This is especially an issue if you're playing the old PC release without a gamepad, where you have to memorize the new controls for each minigame.)

Incidentally, the minigames make the game feel less serious and less epic than its predecessors. Furthermore, the reduction in party size (previous FF games had 4 character parties, except that 4 had 5 character parties, but FF7 limits the party to 3, which just isn't enough) also made the game feel less epic.

I could accept this sort of thing in games like Chrono Trigger (because it didn't have the FF label) and further in Super Mario RPG (because that game wasn't meant to be a serious epic quest), but it feels out of place in a mainline FF game.

Healing is basically a non-issue in FF7; in fact, I think the earliest option you get is *too* powerful.

In the very first dungeon, you get a "Restore" Materia, which allows the use of healing spells, starting with Cure, which is actually pretty strong at that point in the game, and quite efficient even later on. (If you need to restore HP but don't want to use up that much MP doing so, Cure is perfect.) Note that you can't actually equip this Materia until the tutorial comes.

In the Tutorial, you get an All Materia. This Materia allows the linked spell to be cast on multiple targets, at 2/3rds power. Anyone who has any reasonable amount of RPG experience will know just how useful multi-target healing is, and (unless doing an intentional challenge) is going to equip that particular materia combo, and will probably leave it on somebody all the time.

It may take up some of your limited Materia slots, but what else can you spend them on that would be more useful?

Also, there's other healing options. Regen, from the Restore Materia (so you don't need any extra slots if you already have it equipped for Cure/Cura/Curaga), is quite strong in FF7. White Wind is available via Enemy Skill, and there's even Angel Whisper. Also, don't forget that Yuffie and Cait Sith have limit breaks that c an heal. It may not be as diverse as FF5's options (since FF7 has nothing like FF5's !Mix), but there's still some decent options.

(One other thing that might be worth knowing, particularly if you've been spoiled: There is never any situation in the game where the game permanently takes away Materia (though there is a time you lose it temporarily, but the enemies there drop X-Potions). Even if a character leaves the party for good, the game will give you back the materia that character had equipped, along with (IIRC) the equipped accessory, but not the equipped armor or weapon. (Then again, the weapon wouldn't be of any use because, for whatever reason, the developers decided to make every weapon exclusive to a single character.))

FFXII is my personal favorite, but it strays quite a bit from the 16-bit era games that most people associate the series with.

There is no world map, instead there is a series of zones that connected to one another. I personally like this since it gives the illusion of one large world. With some exceptions, treasure containers respawn and yield random loot, it's mostly mundane consumables but occasionally skills, spells, or equipment that cannot be bought from stores.

Instead of random encounters with a separate battle screen, enemies roam around and fight in the same environment. Some people have compared the combat to that of an MMO (I don't play MMOs myself). Similar to Dragon Age: Origins, you can set your party members to automatically perform actions when certain conditions are met, such as using a healing spell when an ally's health is below 50%.

Characters with grow in stats through leveling up, but what really defines a character is through the license board. Licenses unlock abilities and equipment a character can use. In the original version, the license board was identical to all characters, thus everyone will have roughly the same abilities by the end of the game. In the Zodiac versions, the available licenses are restricted by the 12 possible jobs.

The PC release is based on the Zodiac versions, with all the graphical enhancements and gameplay tweaks. Furthermore, there are quality-of-life improvements such as auto-save and fast-forward feature,

I thought Cure/Cura/Curaga was a thing they stared doing since FF8, before that they used Cure, Cure2, Cure3 or similar.

I do remember using Cure All quite a bit, but often after battle if i needed it. Hmmm. This just says i haven't played the game in 20-25 years and my memory is a bit rusty, though i still seem to remember quite a bit with clarity.

Maybe in regard to leveling characters, we just got our favorites, didn't want to move materia around, and we didn't realize how much they'd force us to use unused characters later in random spots of 'oh these three are busy, let's fight without them' scenarios.

FF12 is when they introduced Gambits, which only seem to exist in that game. It's basically a number of slots in which highest priority that qualifies activates. This means you can effectively program how the AI is to act, so long as you can specify the condition and action properly. I think you can get 10-12 slots for each character, allowing a lot of customization. Though past level 60 in the tower i remember having a lot of trouble.

And that part which I bolded is most likely the entire cause of the issue. My opinion of Final Fantasy X-2 (as someone with lady parts) is that X-2 is flat out not even remotely fun.

That 100% ending is another thing. Slogging about through all those mini games just to get the perfect ending gives you an extra bit that implies that Tidus may fade away at some point. If you just get the good ending without the 100% completion bit, Yuna and Tidus are just reunited. This means that the non-100% good ending is technically a happier ending, especially since it also has more uplifting music than the 100% ending.


The inconsistent models really does make the game look like it was rushed out to meet some arbitrary release date. I think I read somewhere that they changed the battle system with the remake, when there really wasn't anything wrong with the battle system itself and should have been left as it was. They really only needed to fix bugs, upgrade the character models so that they are at the same quality level, and rewrite some of the dialogue as it was awkward in spots. That's it. Based on the screen shots that I've seen of the FF7 Remake, it really does look like far more time was spent ensuring that Sephiroth wins the fan service race than anything that would be a meaningful improvement.

Seems like my response is either too long, or containing a word GOG blocked :/ I'll split it up and see how it works... There is no "best Final Fantasy game". They're all very different from each other and I love them for various reasons. My favorites are: VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2 and XV and I (<- me, not the first Final Fantasy^^) replay them quite often. I tried the older ones, but I couldn't really get into them.

Before I start explaining why I love them, let me rant a bit about FF XIII. If you want to skip the rant, just scroll down a bit.

Final Fantasy XIII is a weird case. There isn't anything that goes completely against the "Final Fantasy formula", but they somehow managed to mess it up completely.

You've seen people talking about how XIII is nothing but an endless corridor? Well, let me tell you a secret: Most Final Fantasies are an endless corridor! You're currently playing VII. Where did you have any "freedom"? In Midgar? Definitely not! The world map? Well, yeah, you can walk around in a small area between some mountains. But there's nothing, except a small town or a cave connecting the part of the map where you are with the next part of the map. All Final Fantasies are corridor games. XIII just managed to sream "CORRIDOR, CORRIDOR, CORRIDOR" so loud that it quickly became annoying.

The battle system? Let's be honest here: In most games of the series you just hit the OK-button to perform a standard attack. Summons, magic, menus... It all takes too long. Just hit attack and you'll win 99.9% of the battles. When you get the 4x-Cut materia in Final Fantasy VII, or break the 9.999 damage limit in FFX, you'd be totally stupid to do anything else than attacking with your weapon.
Introducing a system where you basically confirm that your main character does whatever she wants, was a pretty honest thing to do in FFXIII. It should've been a great idea, because instead of seeing the same lame attack all the time, your character suddenly threw in some different moves. Great! Just that it somehow felt completely boring :/

Then there's the story and lore. Time for some honesty - again. Final Fantasy was always pretty weird when it comes to the story. It's known for having huge plot holes. Honestly: Do you really know what's going on in Final Fantasy VII? Sephiroth? Cloud? Jenova? Vincent? Hojo? Aerith? Maybe you think your answer is yes. But if you're lucky and do a certain thing for no obvious reasons, you'll learn something about a guy called Zack. There's this long cutscene that you can easily miss, because to see it you have to go to a place that you already visited and where's nothing to do anymore. That cutscene is essential to understand what's going on with a pretty important character. It changes everything you thought to understand.
No, the stories of Final Fantasy games were always weird, so Final Fantasy XIII shouldn't suffer from a weird story.

Final Fantasy XIII even has a pretty easy to understand story. It should be one of the game's strenghts. Just that the game totally forgot to explain to you what the heck is going on. Instead, they implemented some kind of encyclopedia in your menu. After every single piece of dialogue you had to open it and re-read what you just saw. That was the only way to develop an idea about how the world and the characters work. I still don't get who thought that this was a good idea...

Another strength of XIII should've been that the characters aren't really a team. They work together because they don't have any choice. There's a lot of potential for interesting conflicts and great character developement! And yes, there are a lot of conflicts! Just that it's presented so bad and the characters are so annoying, that it isn't fun.

I probably played XIII for more than a hundred hours, because I really like how it looks. But I never finished it. I couldn't. That game is crap.

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A word or two about Final Fantasy XII. It isn't on my list of favorites, but it is a good game. I liked it a lot and you should definitely play it. I just didn't mention it because I never replayed it. I replay the others often, but I never feel like playing XII for a second time. I don't know why this is.

Final Fantasy VII - I'll keep it short since you're currently playing it and seem to like it (otherwise you wouldn't ask about the others). Its biggest strength is the variety. Midgar, small towns, mini games, cutscenes, optional content... It never gets boring. The story is okay and there are some decent characters. But there are definitely better games in the series!

Final Fantasy VIII - My second favorite in the series (behind FFX)! Its strengths are how everything goes from a "down-to-earth" setting into a weirder and weirder mix of fantasy and sci-fi. Without spoiling too much, the game goes from you being a student in a mercenary academy of a believeable world to "witches in space".
Characters show some good developement. There's only one annoying girl: Selphie. And yes, she'd totally have taken selfies all day long when smartphones would've been a thing back then - that's how annoying she is!
The love story developing during the game did touch me. Can't get into it without spoiling too much, but it really gives you a reason to do things (besides saving the world). I even cried a tear or two.
Triple Triad is another strength of the game. It's a card game you can play in the game. When you know what you're doing and invest a few hours into playing cards, you'll become totally overpowered, because you can convert the cards into items and spells.

The biggest strength of the game: The junction system. It is the replacement for FFVII's materia system. Instead of putting colored pearls into your weapons and armor, you get Guardian Forces. They're your summons and you have to assign them to your characters. Each G.F. (Guardian Force, not girlfriend) comes with his/her own set of abilities that your character can use. One of the basic abilities is "Draw". Draw is how you collect spells. There's no MP in the game. Instead, your character can draw spells from enemies and store them (max 100 of one spell). You can either use the spells, or boost your stats with the junction system - basically connecting spells with your stats. You use a spell? Your stats go down a bit. You store a spell? Your stats go up. The junction system is so powerful that your characters level doesn't matter at all.

Later on you can erase abilities from G.F.s and train them new abilities (there's a limit on how many abilities a G.F. can hold). To do this, you need certain items. And there's a few optional bosses, great optional content, two islands with pretty tough enemies where you can get some very powerful spells and so on. FFVIII offers a great "endgame" with lots of stuff to do. Back on the Playstation 1, I found that pretty awesome.

Final Fantasy IX - Now, THAT'S a weird one! I really, really, really had problems getting into that game. It has some of the most annoying characters ever! It feels like it was made for 5 years old kids. I seriously hate looking at some of the characters in your party (Steiner and Quina) and I don't really like that two other members of your party are little kids. And I don't like how you learn new spells and abilities. They're tied to equipment and each character has to wear that piece of equipment until he gained enough AP to learn the ability. So, if you're like me, you'll find yourself grinding AP every time you find something new, until every character learned what he needs.

Why do I like FFIX? Because of three reasons:
1. The world it is playing in. It is one of the most beautiful Final Fantasy games ever made! The soundtrack is great, too and really supports the feeling the world is giving you.
2. The lore of the world.
3. It easily is the darkest game of the series. Don't let yourself get fooled by the weird characters of your party. The game looks like it was made for kids, but... it's offering a lot of depth, sadness and moments that make you step back and think about it.

Yes, there's optional content like bosses and stuff, but I skip most of it when I'm playing FFIX. So I can't really comment on it that much. I see it more like a piece of art instead of a game O.O

The Cure 2 versus Cura difference is a translation artifact; I believe that, in Japan, the spell name is the same in both games. (You can see this with more recent translations of the earlier games; the GBA games, for example, use the Cure/Cura/Curaga/Curaja convention for the entire series (Curaja only in 1, 3, and 4).

The only Japanese FF games, to my knowledge (in particular, not going past FF10 because I'm less familiar with later FF games), to actually have Cure 2 and Cure 3 are FF2, where spells level through use instead of having tiers, and FF4 EasyType, which is more like the SNES "FF2" (but not actually identical) in terms of some names, and the spell names are an example of this.

FF4 EasyType is, as mentioned, not the same as FF2 US. There's some items only found in FF4ET (and possibly the bonus dungeon of FF4 GBA/PSP), like the Coral and Piglet Swords. Also, ribbons make elemental attacks heal the wearer. The final boss of FF4ET looks like the "EG" version of the boss from the GBA version's bonus dungeon, and has a different attack script, so that fight is different.

With forcing you to use unused characters, at least it's not as bad as one part of Breath of Fire 2, where:
* You're forced to solo with a character that you likely haven't been using (and unused characters don't earn XP).
* Once you enter this part, you can't just leave.
* If this character's level is too low, you might have a hard time winning battles in order to level up.
* The game, IIRC, provides no warning that this will happen.

(Oh, and in FF7, Cure+All works great against the ghosts that haunt that one train early on. It does *far* more damage than any other spell you have at that point. Also. did you know that you can force the spell to be single target, I believe by using the shoulder buttons (like in FF6), even if the materia is linked to All?)

Continuation of this post.


Final Fantasy X - My personal favorite! The story is okay-ish, the characters are okay-ish, world feels a bit empty sometimes, lore is good. The presentation is great, though! The big strengths of the game are the huge amount of (1.) "endgame content", (2.) the battle system and (3.) the puzzles. So... While I like most of the other games for their worlds and stories, I love FFX for its gameplay.

1. There are so many things to do, you can spend dozens of hours to collect stuff and to improve your characters. There's a crapload of (repeatable) optional bosses, each one requiring a different strategy, rewarding you with very powerful items. The leveling system is giving you a lot of options to develop your characters (and it truly kicks off later in the game).

Getting each characters best weapon is... difficult. REALLY difficult! It isn't just "Go there, beat that enemy, collect that item, done". It is a real challenge that you can't beat by just leveling up your characters. It requires skill and can sometimes even become frustrating, making you want to break stuff and destroy your computer/console. But it feels rewarding when you finally manage to pull it off. That's something completely new in the series.

2. The battle system went away from active time battle and now is completely turn based. I prefer that a lot. You can switch characters and equipment during a battle, which is something new and interesting to play around with. Some abilities come from the equipment you're carrying and you can put abilities in empty slots of your equipment (you can't change it as you wish, so you have to think about what you're doing). And it finally makes sense to do other things than to just attack (at least when it comes to support spells/abilities - best way to kill something is still to spam standard attacks). It's my favorite system across the series.

3. The puzzles really took a step forward in FFX, compared to earlier games. It changed how the gameplay feels. In earlier games you basically were walking from A to B, interrupted by random encounters. Now you have something to do that isn't just walking around. You suddenly have to think. I really liked that (I can play the game blind nowadays, so the puzzles kind of lost their charme).

Final Fantasy X-2 - It is... very different. And probably a game that you either love or hate.
I love FFX-2 because of how different it is. In all the previous games you went out to save the world. There always was some evil person/thing trying to kill everyone for no real reason. In X-2, you already saved the world. And you feel the difference you've made!
Without spoiling anything: Life for the people in FFX wasn't easy. Anything that makes life comfortable and fun was forbidden and the people lived under the constant threat of getting killed (or worse). You changed that. People are free now and they're enjoying life. There's no evil to defeat. The one big goal in the game is to find someone of your party who disappeared in FFX.
The tone of X-2 is pretty lighthearted. Your party is... well... a freakin girl group! It's like "Spice Girls going Final Fantasy" xP The game even starts with you giving a concert.

As I said: It is a game that you either love or hate!
There isn't really much to say about the story. It almost feels like a collection of optional content (which means that there's often a somewhat higher difficulty, because lots of stuff really is optional). The whole point is "A girl group on the search for a missing person". Three friends having fun while they're looking for someone. You're meeting people from the previous game, seeing how their lifes have changed.
Gamplay is fun. They changed the whole battle system and character development. You're now wearing costumes, defining which abilities you can use. Changing a costume during a fight gives off pretty strong Sailor Moon vibes. I like it. I just wouldn't really call it a Final Fantasy game. More like "A game playing in a Final Fantasy world".

Final Fantasy XV - This one is a mix of Final Fantasy X-2 and "Final Fantasy XIII done right"! You're not playing as Spice Girls, but as a group of boys on a road trip. It's a bit like in FFX-2: there isn't any huge threat that needs to be dealt with immediately. Yes, there's a war going on. But you're not out there to fight. You're a prince who's going to marry the princess of another kingdom. So you and your best friends jump into their car to get you to your wedding. Yes, there's a darker story developing during the game. But for the most time it feels like a road trip - including camping with your buddies, cooking and talking about the food...
Just one example from the very beginning of the game (which is driving tears into my eyes - won't explain why because of spoilers) to give you an idea how different it is. The game basically starts with you pushing your car along the road because it broke down. The song you're hearing isn't anything "Final Fantasy"... It is Stand By Me.

While we're talking about music: Music is a huge part of the game. You can buy new music in some shops to listen to while your driving around. You and your buddies will make remarks about the music, which is kinda funny when you bought a soundtrack of one of the previous Final Fantasy titles.
Sitting in your car, driving around, looking at the landscape, taking photos (*fighting off tears again*) - that's another huge part of the game. You'll watch your party chatting and having a good time. The whole game basically is about friendship.

The battle system is completely different from the other games. You only control your character (as in FFXIII) and it is in real time. There are a few different ways to attack, magic doesn't play a huge role, you have to evade attacks, counter them and try to time your attacks, depending on what your buddies are doing. And they'll do the same! Depending on what you're doing, they'll try to support you. It's all accompanied by banter between you and your friends (there really is a stupid comment around every corner) and - again - taking some photos (yes, in the middle of the fight!).

What makes FFXV special is how stunning it looks! It is one "Holy crap, look at that!" moment after the other. The landscapes are really great to look at and... giant enemies are... gigantic!
Have you fought Adamantaimai in FFVII? The huge turtle? Well, there's Adamantoise in FFXV. Earth starts shaking, people are scared, you look outside and... between the mountains you see one mountain raising its turtle head! Of course you go there to fight it, but... once you're there, you'll ask yourself what the hell you were thinking. You'd need a group of construction workers with jack-hammers to even remove the dirt under Adamantoise's fingernails. That thing is so huge, you could take a nap on one of his eyelids!

How the game looks and what it feels like is really, really special. But Final Fantasy XV has one HUGE downsite. Square Enix somehow decided to cut out a part of the game's story and to make a movie out of it. You can play FFXV without having to watch it, but you'll miss a huge part of the story. I still don't get that decission. If a publisher thinks that a game should cost more money, then they should simply sell it for a higher price. But selling a game at full price and then telling people that they need to buy a movie to understand the story? That's... I don't even know what that is. I'm still disappointed and angry.

FFXV works well as a game about friendship, though. It definitely is worth playing, even if you don't plan to get that mediocre movie. It is a very emotional game and it even is worth it to play it twice in a row. On your second playthrough you'll see things with different eyes and always think about the special bond between you and your buddies. Great game, really.

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Dammit, seems like I wrote too much. It's just that I'm a hardcore fan. These games are their own genre (they aren't typical JRPGs) and share some similarities in how they're built, but are all very different for very special reasons.

I haven't played or even seen videos of the FF7 Remake, but I get the impression that it's an entirely different game that just happens to be based around the plot of FF7's early game.

Damn, thanks a lot for your reply! Is the game mechanic used in FFVIII (the one where no MP is present and how the magic revolves around your characters storing spells from your enemies and drawing them as a means to fight) implemented in the later FF games as well, or is it only unique to that game?

* That character's name is actually Relm.
* Relm has the highest base Magic Power stat. This means that, if you're playing with natural stats but not natural magic (in other worlds, avoiding Esper stat bonuses), Relm is going to be your most powerful caster once you teach her some good spells. (Also, it feels like the game was balanced around natural stats. Interesting to note that Sabin is not the best character to use Phantom Rush (Bum Rush in older translations) with these rules.)

By the way, my personal rulesets when playing through certain FF games are as follows:

FF5:
* No throwing money at enemies. (This ability, from the Samurai job, is clearly much stronger than it should be, allowing you to do 4 digit damage as soon as yo u get the job.)
* No targeting enemies with the Blessed Kiss mix (Maiden's Kiss + Holy Water). This particular mix inflects Berserk, ignoring immunity, which can trivialize boss fights and even break enemy AI scripts. (Using this on *allies* is allowed (and actually useful) under my rules, and I note that there's a superboss that isn't immune to Berserk in the first place.)
* No changing a character's job to Freelancer or Mime, as I find that, once you've mastered a few jobs, they make the endgame a bit too easy. (Exception made when mastering every job, since I do need to learn Mime's Mimic ability.) (Note that, when a certain character joins later as a Freelancer, that character doesn't have any benefits from mastered jobs when they first join.)

FF6:
* Natural stats only. Avoid leveling up with an esper with a stat bonus equipped. (If leveling up that way by accident, this can be fixed by game overing before the next save; you'll keep the level but not the esper stat boost.)
* No Ultima, as that spell is too powerful, obsoleting both Flare and Meteor. (This spell really shouldn't have been defense ignoring.)