hard questions require hard answers whats the best rpg franchise

12 had certain things I liked. And certain things I didn’t, like the fact that every move in the game was auto-hit. They give you the option of running around in battles, but it has no effect on the outcome of anything. That bothered me a lot for a really long time. I’d say the high point of XII was the music, and the low point was the battle and character development systems. The graphics had their ups and downs. The Cerobi Steppe was great, but places like Giruvegan and the Feywood were eyesores. Overall I don’t think it came together to create the kind of magic most FFs do.

I think FFXII might be the worst game in the series. And yes, I can disagree with you.

In a nutshell: I hate MMOs. FFXII plays like an MMO. Therefore, I hate FFXII.

It’s difficult to make the case that it’s the worst in the series because it plays like an MMO and you don’t like MMOs, seeing as FFXI not only plays like an MMO but is an MMO.

To FFXI’s credit, at least it has the upside of being an actual MMO that involves other people. You can hate the grindfests that are MMOs, but they are generally more bearable when you play them with friends. FFXII is just a single player MMO.

I think he’s said that playing with other people is at least a significant part of what he dislikes about massively multiplayer games, though.

EDIT: Yep. Also, see one of my weirdest typos on the second page. Half to? What the hell? Who spells “have” wrong? Was I drunk?

I also don’t count games I’ve never played. Even though I don’t like MMOs, it would be extremely unfair for me to say it’s the worst FF when I haven’t played it.

I don’t think XII is the worst FF at all. It’s not the best by a long shot, but FFs 1, 2, and 3 are still part of the series, and they’re made of epic amounts of suck, regardless of how good they were for their time. I’d also have a hard time justifying that Tactics is better than XII.

Hah … Damn you Hades…

Okay fine so you don’t like Tactics! We get it…(Well I don’t really get it… I mean it was one of the best games ever made…)

Also I come back to the point that if all these FF games sucked so bad then what is “The best RPG franchise”?

I got about half way into FF12 then I realized how much fun I had playing it and how much I enjoyed the story. I proceeded to turn if off and play Paper Mario.

Oh, yeah, that’s fair.

I like FFI, if only because it lets you make far stupider parties than any other game. I love rolling several white mages deep, killin’ time and monsters. It’s a great way to kill time. Not a very good way to kill monsters, though.

Tactics doesn’t count. We’re talking the numbered FFs.

I actually like 1 and 3… kinda. They didn’t age well, but they aren’t terrible. FF2 has a broken leveling system, so I’m not so huge a fan of that. The thing is, I give them points for trying to innovate. FFXII was just “hey let’s take common MMO mechanics and apply them to a single person game what can I go wrong?” combined with a storyline ripped from other sources and poorly executed.

I dare you to define what ‘best’ is in a way everyone here will agree with.

Hell, you probably couldn’t even define what ‘best’ is in a way one other person would agree with. Everyone has different tastes, and some elements of a game are more important to one person than they are to another.

If you’re just going by sheer worldwide popularity, then probably Final Fantasy. Same if you just want to keep it localized to North America. But if you were to go by what’s most popular in Japan, ie the country these games originate from and the demographic their developers are most concerned with, then the most popular franchise is Dragon Quest.

I don’t really think debating which is the best franchise is the way to go, because the two biggest ones are too huge to really compare. The individual games of the Final Fantasy series can differ so wildly some of them might as well not be part of the same franchise. Dragon Quest, by comparison, is entirely set in its ways and any sign of change is usually met with a harsh reaction from its fans in Japan. You can’t really compare the two franchises, because how would you start?

Anyway, pretentious nonsense aside, I’m going to be a maverick and vote for the various Mario RPGs. They may not be epic, but they’re usually always fun.

The fun is strong in them, yes. I probably wouldn’t call it the best franchise, but I always know it’s gonna be time well spent.

*There were some not-so-interesting stretches in the original, but meh.

Developers are more concerned with Japan than a continent with almost 3 times its market size? I’m skeptical.

When I say “best” I’m talking about the franchise with the best combination of:

  • average game quality
  • series length
  • the highest highs
  • the avoidance of really low lows
  • its impact on society as a whole
  • its impact on people as individuals

While I think you can find individual RPGs that are better than some individual FFs, the last two points on the list really seal the deal for me. On top of that, FFVI is probably the greatest game ever made in quality for its time, and the series as a whole has a ridiculously high average quality, especially in the 6-10 era. The only really low lows were X-2 and Tactics, and hell, some people LOVE those games for some incomprehensible reason. The length of the series is perfect for its age; It’s not so short that it hasn’t had opportunities to expose its brilliance, or so long that it’s brilliance is spread very thin for very long. As a whole, it’s been burning much brighter for much longer than almost any other RPG franchise. It’s as much a part of gaming culture as Mario, Link, or Kirby. A lot of people like comparing it to DQ, but you don’t see posters of slimes lining the walls of gaming stores whenever a new DQ comes out, at least not outside Japan, because no one who likes playing anything exciting really cares about grindy dungeon crawlers.

Mario RPG IS fucking awesome though. I played it like 2 months ago. On an actual SNES. Good times.

I’d like to mention, in regards to you’re final too points, that Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest game releases used to be grounds for cancelling school in Japan. As a result, the games are now released on days when there isn’t school. I think that’s a pretty insane impact on a society. As far as individuals, we’re not the only people who asked for Final Fantasy every christmas for like, 4 years straight or skipped school to to zip through a game in a day.

I think it’s fair to say that Final Fantasy has to be the best. It’s the first, the longest, has plenty of awesome titles and only several that could be, compared to other games in the genre, considered mediocre. However when you compare those several to the best of Final Fantasy they are labled as poor - that, I think, is the true testament to Final Fantasy’s greatness.

That all being said, I haven’t played Phantasy Star. But honestly, I’ve never heard anybody besides Orakio talk about it (and the random few here, but really nobody talks about it), so I’ve never thought I was missing anything. The only other series I would throw in this hat would be the Heaven and Earth series (isn’t that what it’s called? IoG, Terranigma and all that?) just for it’s use of variance in the games as well the intricately weaved story. Really, that’s a series that did “loosely connected” very well.

Wait a second… did Hades and Sorcerer just agree with each other?

EDIT for content: I would argue that impact on society as a whole is really irrelivent. Impact on how other GAMES is made would be a relevant point, but it would be less important than the actual gameplay. Really, Hades, you’re making it too complex. Here are my criterea (in order of importance):

  1. Gameplay quality
  2. Story quality
    (distant) 3. Impact on other games

Obviously, these would be averaged among the games in the series in question.

If you haven’t played the Phantasy Star games, I’d say you’re not missing much. They were always way ahead of the curve in terms of graphics and presentation, but their gameplay is usually generic, and their stories leave a lot to be desired.

Phantasy Star 2 had a particularly mature story for its time (to be fair, FF2j did, too, but it was practically Star Wars in medieval times), but it also has to have one of the worst combat systems of any RPG, ever. Not to mention, the storytelling takes a huge nosedive about 3/4 of the way through.

Phantasy Star 4 is probably the best one to play if you want an enjoyable experience; it’s the only one whose gameplay didn’t age terribly. The story itself is pretty generic, though, so who knows how long it’d hold your interest?

I don’t know if impact on society is a fair measure of quality. The average member of society is far more affected by Britney Spears than Leonard Cohen, or by the new GI Joe movie than anything by Goddard or Fellini. I also don’t get why length is important; there’s a whole hell of a lot of Friday the Thirteenth Movies, and that doesn’t make them good movies. Dragonball Z is a really fucking long show, and I’d hardly say it’s one of the best television series.

Also, I don’t think Final Fantasy is the first or longest RPG series.

Ultima is probably the first RPG series (correct me if I’m wrong). I’m not sure about longest. FF may very well be the longest.

But, as you said, neither of those things are in the least important. :expressionless:

Err, Dragon Quest predated Final Fantasy by a year in Japan.