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[MaximumZero]

I haven't played it since age 10 or so, so I'm not sure as to how it would hold up almost two decades later.

[Darvi]

I remember playing 3 a year ago.

In hindsight, MoM was probably better suited to be a damage dealer than a supporter.

[GlyphGryph]

I also think 8 is unfairly maligned. The GF system was a Magical Walkway to Godhood for Fun and Profit. Man the story was awful though.

The mechanics were built around grinding. Miserably, horrible, terribly boring grinding.

That is /not/ fun.

If you didn't grind, the game was unbeatable. If you did enough, the game was a cakewalk and no fun. So not only did you have to grind a lot, you had to make sure not to grind too much or you'd be bored.

And the story being awful is enough to malign an FF game on its own, especially when, like 8, there were no redeeming mechanics to fall back on and its primary gimmick (drawing magic) was borked to hell.

[fqllve]

I can't remember an FF that wasn't based around grinding. JRPG and grind are like synonyms. Hell, in 7 you had to level up your materia! In 9 you had to steal skills from your armor and weapons, through grinding. Want to use that new staff? Too bad! You haven't learned meteor yet. If I were forced to decide, I guess would say the least grindy is 4 or 12. I suppose 6 wasn't very grindy, but I refused to face the final tower until everyone in my main party had learned every single spell...

[Bauglir]

Didn't FF8's monsters scale with party level, making grinding a largely pointless exercise unless you gamed it really effectively (since, as I recall, monster stats changed every time you moved from one range of levels to the next, so optimally you wanted to be at the high end of one range forever) or ground all the way to the highest levels to start with?

[GlyphGryph]

Which makes it all the more impressive that 8 managed to stand out.

Also, Bauglir, you don't grind killing monsters or fighting in 8. That's just stupid. You find a weak monster and spend half an hour hitting the "draw" button.

[fqllve]

Which is fundamentally different from hitting the attack button only in that you didn't get to see Squall wave his silly sword around. :p

[JoshuaFH]

I also think 8 is unfairly maligned. The GF system was a Magical Walkway to Godhood for Fun and Profit. Man the story was awful though.

The mechanics were built around grinding. Miserably, horrible, terribly boring grinding.

That is /not/ fun.

If you didn't grind, the game was unbeatable. If you did enough, the game was a cakewalk and no fun. So not only did you have to grind a lot, you had to make sure not to grind too much or you'd be bored.

And the story being awful is enough to malign an FF game on its own, especially when, like 8, there were no redeeming mechanics to fall back on and its primary gimmick (drawing magic) was borked to hell.

Oh... Oh man, I'm really sorry to say this, but you were just playing it wrong :/.

You can tackle the end boss with no magic junctioned to stats and at the lowest level possible. I've personally done it. It's easy.

It's all about whoring limitbreaks like it's going out of style. You can junction magic to stats if it makes you feel better, and you don't even need to draw any from monsters, like really, serious, drawing magic from monsters is for chumps! Just need to draw from draw points, or convert it from items and cards; and you don't even need to play the card game, you get tons of great cards to convert for free. The game is way more fun when you focus on it like that.

[Bauglir]

Oh, right. That. Didn't they have stores or something that would let you buy (relatively shitty) magic? I seem to recall only ever frequently drawing magic on the Island of Heaven and Hell or whatever those were that had the abnormally powerful monsters. It's been a long, long time, though.

EDIT: Oh, right! Draw points! That is what I did. Yeah, I tended to view Drawing in combat as a waste of turns I could use to kill things. Never had too much difficulty progressing, up until the final boss section (Griever had a tendency to TPK the party with Shockwave Pulsar). Also, Ultima Weapon took some trying, and Omega I never beat without cheating.

[The Darkling Wolf]

I also think 8 is unfairly maligned. The GF system was a Magical Walkway to Godhood for Fun and Profit. Man the story was awful though.

The mechanics were built around grinding. Miserably, horrible, terribly boring grinding.

That is /not/ fun.

If you didn't grind, the game was unbeatable. If you did enough, the game was a cakewalk and no fun. So not only did you have to grind a lot, you had to make sure not to grind too much or you'd be bored.

And the story being awful is enough to malign an FF game on its own, especially when, like 8, there were no redeeming mechanics to fall back on and its primary gimmick (drawing magic) was borked to hell.

Oh... Oh man, I'm really sorry to say this, but you were just playing it wrong :/.

You can tackle the end boss with no magic junctioned to stats and at the lowest level possible. I've personally done it. It's easy.

It's all about whoring limitbreaks like it's going out of style. You can junction magic to stats if it makes you feel better, and you don't even need to draw any from monsters, like really, serious, drawing magic from monsters is for chumps! Just need to draw from draw points, or convert it from items and cards; and you don't even need to play the card game, you get tons of great cards to convert for free. The game is way more fun when you focus on it like that.

I'm quite fond of grinding though. I'm the sort of guy who has 100 blizzara, fira and thundara junctioned to each of my character's stats before I leave Balamb.

[JoshuaFH]

And that's a valid way to play too, it just means that now along with progressing through the game, you get to do super bullshit things like beating the crap out of the Mecha Spider at each of dozen or so times you fight him, putting T-rex through the ringer way earlier than you have any right to, and one-shotting pretty much all of the early game bosses.

[GlyphGryph]

Okay, I never did grind in that game myself, because I never needed to on account of first getting stopped by a scratched disk at the end of disk one, and then realizing I gave absolutely no cares what happened by the end of disk 2, and only made it that far because I enjoyed the card game.

But back to talking about things that make us happy!

You know that the best Final Fantasy was?

Final Fantasy Adventure

(Seiken Densetsu ft happiness w)

[The Darkling Wolf]

Stupid levels of powergaming do make me happy though

[MaximumZero]

Know what entire series was completely and totally awesome? Suikoden.

[GlyphGryph]

I have /still/ not played Suikoden, and god knows why. Everyone seems to concur on how awesome it is. Adding it to the top of my to do list NOW.