» Fri May 27, 2011 1:34 pm
FFVI, FFVII and FFXII are my favorites. They are games I've played thru multiple times, especially FFVI which I think is a brilliant mastepiece.
Not excited about FFXIII at all. FFX is, in my opinion, the worst FF game and I find the similarities that FFX and FFXIII seem to have discouraging. Although that's no surprise, I guess, seeing the both games share a lot of key developers. FFX is also the only FF game I stopped to play before I finished it, after 15 hours and nothing fun had happened, I just didn't see any reason to continue as the game just bored me, because of a number of reasons.
20+ years ago when I played http://www.mobygames.com/game/phantasy-star (my first JRPG) I didn't mind random battles at all. Infact, I felt they were rather cool, but gameplay evolves and then http://www.mobygames.com/game/chrono-trigger arrives which managed to be a JRPG without random battles. I then felt random battles was an old less fun gameplay design that didn't really belong anymore when the hardware was capable of more and belived random battles would be gone in a couple of years. But not so, it's still here 15 years later and they bore me more and more for each passing year. And FFXIII decided to go back to that after the refreshing FFXII.
A game really need a good interesting story now to make me continue to play a game with random battles, like the http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/suikoden-series. But FFX doesn't fit in the 'interesting story' bit for me. I don't care about the kid who keeps whining about his father and none of the other characters grab me either. For some reason saving the world simply just don't feel important enough in FFX for me.
And neither FFX or FFXIII (from what I've read anyway) really offer any kind of exploration, it's just a very linear path from point A to point B all the time, no world map like in the other games. Now, JRPGs are pretty linear by definition but these games take it to the extreme, heck FFXIII supposingly don't have any towns in it either, it's pretty much just dungeon, cutscene, dungeon, cutscene and so on. So FFXIII decided to go back to that after the refreshing FFXII, again.
FFX also had an annoying amount of cutscenes, and most cutscenes doesn't move the plot forward either, they seem to be designed with "LOOK AT OUR GORGEOUS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS!" in mind, and I find it rather annoying. I never liked cutscenes, though, I don't want to watch a movie, I want to play a game. There are games I stopped to play just because I felt they had too many cutscenes, like Metal Gear Solid 2 and Xenosaga.
And now we are spoiled by western RPGs in a sense that we actually can make choices and change things, while JRPGs in general http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ButThouMust. The only JRPGs I know of were one can change stuff in the story are Suikoden V and Steambot Chronicles. And they are both excellent, probably my favorite JRPGs of the PS2.
Another thing I miss in the newer FF games is the comedy stuff, with realistic models the charming comedy is gone. Like Barret's temperament, how he shoots his gun at inanimate objects, throws Biggs, punches people. You can't have a realistic Barret punching people. Barret is a loveable dude, but not if he breaks someone's nose or just punches them and knocks them out in a realistic manner. I would like to see a game with a design similiar to FFIX instead of the realistic design the current games go for.
I just feel that games have evolved a lot in the past 20 years, with larger worlds, non-random combats and player choices. But JRPGs in general are still playing on the same basic gameplay formula they did 20 years ago. They are have a prettier shell now, and this gameplay is starting to bore me.
IV, V, VI i've played, but only VI was any good (dodges rock). 
That subtitle was a quote from the end of FFIX, if I remember correctly. My favourite FF is both FFIX and FFIV, with FFV and FFVI right behind. Sure, FFVII is really good too, but I played the rest mentioned here before FFVII, so I never had that much love for it. 
