I want to get into final fantasy but don't know where to start...

Idk, I mostly just think a lot of the art direction and music is cool plus a lot of people keep saying that they are good. I just finished all of the yakuza games and before that all of the metal gears so I'm honestly just trying to find a new series/franchise that I know nothing about to finish. I played VII before but only for like an hour because it's usually considered "the best"

6 and 7 are the best ones. Don't play any after 7 though, that's where the series died and started being about ladyboys and romance and waifus and fashion and hair cuts.
>I'd say FFX is a good place to start.
How could you do that to someone?

The DS version is different, but I think it's the best one, mostly for being more challenging.

Also, I don't think FFI is worth playing on GBA or PSP, since those versions have all the archaic repetitiveness of the original game, but with all the difficulty taken out, which makes the game unbearably boring

Just do what I did and start emulating them from 1.

VI would be perfect for experiencing the art and music at their best.
Emulate it on SNES

>. Don't play any after 7 though, that's where the series died and started being about ladyboys and romance and waifus and fashion and hair cuts.

>9, 12

Ayy fuc u

Shit, Mediocre

12 is where being shit started

Don't listen to all of us useless faggots about what's a "real" ff, where the series "went to shit", and other insufferable shit like that.

Look at all the games. Decide which ones look interesting to you. Pick one of those to start with. If you don't like, choose another. If you still don't like, repeat until you're out of entries with curb appeal. By that point, you're almost guaranteed to not like anything in the series anyway.

Choose something from 4-9. Don't go above.

Pretty good advice.
Although I would've said don't go above 12 but that's just me.

that's honestly fair too.

they're all different from each other that's the point.

people who don't like x are retards. it doesn't have to be your favorite but it's pretty good, and fwiw it's the favorite in riceland by a factor of 2 or 3

12 and 10 are the best of the 3D FF's

7 and 8 are too old to get into at this point unless you really like retro games, and i've never played 9.

as for the 2D ones, i've heard nearly universal praise for 5 and 6, with 4 coming right after(but being hated by many) 1-3 don't seem to be very good, but #1 has a unique and interesting story

13 is trash, 13-2 has a shitty story with better gameplay, 13-3 is more of 13-2's madness.

15 isn't out yet and may suck so don't expect the masterpiece that was final fantasy 12 IZJS (japanese updated version with an english patch on the internet)

I am curious to what a completely new FF player would think of FFXIII.

Why don't you try that first user. Then Emulate the earlier ones up to NINE. And when your done, come back and tell us what you thought of them.

probably the same thing that people think of the order 1886

normal people, ff fans or new alike, though xiii was awful because the story is a mess no matter where you're coming from. the characters are contrived and unrelateable, the story is not structured, makes no sense, and is fake-profound.

he's not gonna tell us anything we don't already know

gonna argue with this dude for a bit. 7 isn't too retro for a normie to enjoy. I'd say that starts wtih 6, because the story is incredibly thin at that point.

7 has good character development and is only slightly thrown off by videogame pacing.

Play all the them in order,the numbered ones and the spinoffs, Kingdom hearts too. Don't care if it takes you 2 months or 20 years. Just do it, you wont regret it.

>gonna argue with this dude for a bit. 7 isn't too retro for a normie to enjoy. I'd say that starts wtih 6, because the story is incredibly thin at that point.
>7 has good character development and is only slightly thrown off by videogame pacing.

i'd say that for people who aren't used to playing older games it may be hard to adjust to the graphics and technical limitations of a PS1 game. this is assuming he isn't just going to emulate it at 4k with mods and tweaks to mitigate those issues.

naturally a good story never ages, so if he can get past the whole "ps1 game" aspect, he'd love it.

i don't know if it's just me, but i feel like SNES games have better graphics natively than generation 5 games do, early 3D looks horribly off putting to me so i find it difficult to enjoy games of that era despite them being so good.

I can agree with you. The story line was a convoluted mess and had some annoying characters.

So what would you think of the SNES Final Fantasy VI. I beat that back in the day and loved it.

Op here, I play retro games pretty regularly mostly because they are free and there are a lot of good ones I didn't play when they were out. Also I'm only worried about starting at I because I tried to get into smt with the first game but it turned really miserable after the nukes dropped and I gave up. Right now I'm leaning toward IV based on what has been posted

ff6 the backgrounds were just tilesets and the characters have zero dialogue

ff7 the sets are all designed pretty well, and the angles/choices of shot convey scene extremely well, imo. one of the only things I didn't like about x was that they didn't think very hard about set piece design except for a few places, such as zanarkand, and besaid, or the sin fights.

every scene in ff7 is set up pretty well, in comparison.

the graphics are kind of ugly, but I think the things that dissuade people are paper thin or bad plots, or annoying random encounter rates

4-10 is generally a safe bet

I like six. it's light on the story, which is both good and bad, but the gameplay is more fun. I don't have the patience for anything before it, though.

that's just imo. I think OP should probably play 7, 10, tactics, in that order, and if he still wants to play the rest, he can just do whatever if he has the spare time.

>Recommending X
>Ever

So, you wanna get into FF eh? Always, always, start with IV. Not only is it the game where the plots started to be good, but, it's one of the more beginner friendly games in the franchise. You've got a lot of version to choose from
You can go with original SNES, the PS1 port, GBA port (adds some content, and, I personally feel the translation is best in this version), the DS version (note, this version is incredibly hard), PSP, or, iOS and Steam. The iOS and Steam ports are ports of the DS version, but, you can choose the difficulty. The DS/iOS/Steam version also has voice acting.

Ok, I see your point. 7 seems like a very cliche choice since its the franchise darling.

My all-time favorite is and will always be 11. I had some really great times back in the early 2000's.

Those three are easily accessible too.

youtube.com/watch?v=sOzM4ClFG1o

x is srs pretty good though. if you didn't like it, it was either because of the voice acting quality, or the fact that you're a manchild. in polls the japanese rank ff in the same way that we do, except that they switch 7 and X.

you might note that immediately after xii they started pandering exclusively to manchildren because they noticed that the manchild market couldn't relate to a chad like tidus (I'm a bit of a chad, sorry, guys.)

I not going to suggest with which game you should start, but a will give some suggestions, try to play most game in the series, each FF have their own charm and theme.

I would recommend that you play the 2d games first, mostly the PSP remake of FF1 which had a very good story and set big part of the lore of some of the games, after that try the remakes of 2 and 3 if you want. 2 had some problems but some of the remakes fix then, and 3 if you want to get familiar with some of the mechanics that later game flesh out.

After that play the rest in release order if you can since they're great> in their own regards, don't listen to people that say what games you should skip since they put their own opinions above everything just look what you interest the most, also play the PSP remake of FF4 since it's the best way to experience it and avoid the steam versions of 5 & 6.

Later try some of the other games in the series like tactic which is probably one of the best in the series, and Dissidia 012 a crossover fighting game which is very related to FF1

VII is one of my favorites but I wouldn't recommend playing that one first, it's got a less traditional level/stat system than the others and it might put you off to the rest since most people don't like it.
10 also had a different type of growth system but I don't hear as many people gripe about 10, but I still wouldn't start there either.

1 (the psp) version is pretty good if you want a straight forward hardcore RPG. It's fairly challenging too.

2 has it's charms, but it's pretty wonky, with some strange mechanics regarding how you build your characters.

3-4-5 I don't have much experience with. Though I'm told they're pretty good.

6 is excellent. Great story, great soundtrack, fun characters. May be a good starting point.

7 and 9 are two of the PS1's must plat RPGs. 7 is much heavier in tone, and the materia system is really cool. When building skills in 9, you equip armor and grind out points until the armor with the skill/ability you want applies that spell/skill to your character permanently.

10 and on is really not worth your time to be perfectly honest. 12 might be different, I never played it.

7 is probably the most accessible on most fronts, and even though I personally like x better, it can be hard to go from full voice acting and cinema direction to poorly translated wordboxes.

7/x are the darlings because they're just plain better. the other ones have pretty big flaws/frustrating things about them that might sour someone to the series. 9 is slow as fuck and the ending is awful, 8 is 8, etc.

>if you didn't like it, it was either because of the voice acting quality, or the fact that you're a manchild.
Combat was shit (entire reason to swap was ignorable near 100% off the time)
Story was shit
Most of the cast was shit
Yuna was the worse heroine of the series, bar none and Tidus was hit/miss and only gets worse when you get the whole "big reveal" about him.
Post-game and the grind required sparked the cancer that plagues the series to this day
Getting half of the celestial weapons was absolute ass and the worst of them are especially bad because those characters are worthless in post-game

The music is good, and even that is hit and miss at times.

I really enjoyed and would recommend Tactics/tactics advance(if you enjoy that genre),4,6,7,9, and 10.

Awful post

the first games are horribly dated, and dissidia is autismo level in terms of story

another reccomendation for OP is to watch the opening cinematics for the ps era games, or read the backs of the boxes and see which one seems coolest

fuck the responses in this thread, just play the best of the series in any order: 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12.

11 is good as fuck too but its an MMO so can't really be recommended even though it has a great story

I meant VIII sorry.
VII is solid because I think it's really accessible compared to some of the others (3d games).

Oh make sure you play FFT too OP it's very good.

If you like fantasy tropes, FF9.
If you like sci fi, FF8.
If you like bullshit FF10.
If you want a good game FF7

I say go 9 and don't regret it.

this is pretty accurate, but I might give worst heroine to rinoa, and I love FF8

the story was simple. just because it wasn't full of "I'm the grandson of sephiroth after he had sex with sonichu, and I'm inbued with super special materia powers, nothing personnel kid" anime bullshit, doesn't make it bad.

If you can't sympathize with yuna, you're a virgin neckbeard. she's easily one of the most likeable heroines along with tifa.

>judging a game on its postgame content
shiggyscoobydoo

>I tried to get into smt with the first game but it turned really miserable after the nukes dropped and I gave up

oh SMT is easy there's a handy image: i.imgur.com/zJcYpuE.png

personally i went into SMT blind with nocturne on PCSX2 and i managed just fine. fun game for sure. i started persona with 4 equally blind.

>the graphics are kind of ugly, but I think the things that dissuade people are paper thin or bad plots, or annoying random encounter rates

annoying random encounters are par for course with any turn based game i'd say,

i always thought the biggest things to disuade someone would be bad graphics/bad technical stuff or old/dated gameplay.

things like FF8 that had crappy plots probably weren't considered great at the time either. i thought final fantasy plots stopped being paper thin with the SNES games (4-6) but i don't remember those games too well.

final fantasy 8.

better just to start and go in without knowing much.
youtube.com/watch?v=4ttszlyonn8

I don't deny they're horrible dated, but bad for a new guy which isn't familiar with the franchise? That depends on him, at least if he really wants to get familiar with the series he will eventually try then so why the fuck not try the first in the whole franchise first before playing something like 6 or 7 and see how the rest are subpar compared to then, and as much autismo is dissidia story it would be confusing as fuck if he just avoid everything else before hand.

True, and I will also think he will like the minigames in 7/X.

I started my journey at 1, way too long ago. It's been a long strange trip since then.

Also, if he has a DS or 3DS, FFIV really isn't that bad either. OP will probably go to steam and buy 7 tonight. Either we will see a post tmrw saying, "I don't know why you all like this game" or "This is the betht game evah!"

Yeah, no.
Rinoa had character and development.
Yuna was a fucking blank wall and basically has to be pushed to do ANYTHING that isn't muh death journey.
I was wrong though, Lightning is the worst heroine, then Yuna, then Aeris. Yuna and Aeris at least have no personality, Lightning is just cancer personified.

Trying way too hard.

>hit and miss at times

I felt like X had a few good themes that were really great/special but 90% of the ost was forgettable.

yeah, he could do that, or he could just drop the franchise completely because the first 3 are pretty static experiences. I started with 6 and can't bring myself to enjoy anything before that.

if you want to know why 13 failed, it's because they took the anime 7 style plot and cranked it up to 11, full of anime influenced nonsense and bullshit.

x was a lot simpler. it doesn't appeal to fedoralords as much because there wasn't enough tweest and angel wings, but then again, you guys are hard to please.