Is it worth playing Final Fantasy from scratch?

[hellhamster]

I'd say what others said too, there's no need to play them in an order.

You should start with either of these: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

[Tech614]

1-3- Dated not really worth playing.
4- classic
5- meh, it's okay. It's one I would skip if you can't play them all
6- classic
7- good but overrated by nostalgia train people who played it as their first jrpg
8- see 5
9- classic
10- really easy mode game, annoying main character, linear, boring combat, terrible voice acting. In other words, it's over hyped garbage made in the mold of FF7 and 8 but failing at being a FF game. Everything you see people hate on 13 for is present in 10 but they choose to ignore it as it's older and more hip to like.
10-2- Worse then 10 but at least has a fun combat system. Not worth playing for the story at all.
12- Good, not great.
13- suffer from many of the problems of 10, but at least has a fun and engaging combat system(at end game, it's pretty terrible early on). Worth trying.
13-2- okay, improved on some stuff that plagued 13 but also dubbed down the difficulty of the game and made the battle system more about raising OP monsters then playing properly.
13-3- TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE story. Open world is nice though, as is the amount of content. Battle system is also fun.

[Miyani]

Play all of them but they may be hard to get/expensive to get on the original consoles so i recommend getting them on the 3ds and vita if you own them - can get 1 to 6 on DS and 7-10 on vita i believe, personally my fav is number 9 though and i never finished 13 or the ones after it. Get crisis core for psp its a great game! and once you have finished with FF series get the Breath of fire series which i just as good, especially BOF4 and BOF5:dragon quarter ^^

P.S. if you have a game cube FF: crystal Chronicles is quite fun to play.

[Tech614]

Play all of them but they may be hard to get/expensive to get on the original consoles so i recommend getting them on the 3ds and vita if you own them - can get 1 to 6 on DS and 7-10 on vita i believe, personally my fav is number 9 though and i never finished 13 or the ones after it. Get crisis core for psp its a great game! and once you have finished with FF series get the Breath of fire series which i just as good, especially BOF4 and BOF5:dragon quarter ^^

Mother of God, BoF4 is terrible. That series sadly died after 3.(IMO of course )

[-aiko-]

It depends on taste. I know people that absolutely LOVE replaying the classics. Quite a few of them hold up well, too, namely FF6, Chrono Trigger, Breath of Fire, and Super Mario RPG.

That's the thing though, imo. I can still enjoy the classics because of nostalgia. So can a lot of people. But if you're new to the series I don't know if you can enjoy FF1-5. I truly believe anyone with a soul can play FF6 though. And Chrono Trigger.

[Tyrgannus]

Almost no one likes them all, and almost no one likes none of them. If you decide to take part in the FF crusade you will see what I mean. My favorite is 8 and others vilify it. Many people's favorite is 7 and I thought it was cheesy. Think of them like playable books. Not everyone reads the same books.

[Tech614]

That's the thing though, imo. I can still enjoy the classics because of nostalgia. So can a lot of people. But if you're new to the series I don't know if you can enjoy FF1-5. I truly believe anyone with a soul can play FF6 though. And Chrono Trigger.

FF4,6 CT, SoM, BoF 1 and 2 and Earthbound are timeless. Those SNES rpgs can and will live forever.

[Miyani]

If you want a very classic game you can try hunt down a version of bahamuts lagoon =p

[Deleted]

My rating would be 6=7>9>10>8>5.

6 in my opinion has the best story. 7 has the best character development and the best battle system. I really really like materia, and hated the ff10 sphere for some reasons. 9 has a weird story but also really deep chracters. 7 has the best chocobo system.
Its hard for me to chose between 6 and 7 for first because nostalgic reasons.
I didnt like the ff10 story too much because I kinda knew from the first screen how it is going to end up, and the story was a bit too romantic, and easy to predict. Also, you probably heard about it but I wont spoil it directly: ff7 has one special scene which is by its own, worth the play through.

9 is kinda a mix of 6-8 , and it was also designed to be like that.
So to go back to your questions:

Pick one from 6-10. Maybe even 4-10, but I wouldnt suggest 1-3 and 10-2 to the actual date

[Dawnshadow]

Sure. They're all good games, and well worth trying, even if you don't finish them (except maybe the MMOs, because it's hard to "just try" an MMO.)

I'd suggest going with the "Dawn of Souls" GBA remake of Final Fantasy II (the one with Firion, not Cecil) unless you REALLY like grinding. The original FF2 had some very innovative and interesting character building systems that, unfortunately, never got used again. It was classless and, as far as I remember, didn't even have character levels. You cast a lot of spells on a character, that character gains magic power and MP. Get hit a lot and you gain HP. Swing a weapon 100 times and you get better with that weapon. Cast a spell 100 times and it gets stronger. But it was also very grind-heavy and unforgiving-- there were parts of the game where you could easily spend an hour in a single easy random battle and attacking and healing your own party to grind HP, healing magic, and weapon skills-- and it was all too easy to LOSE stats if you weren't exceedingly careful.

The Dawn of Souls version keeps the same basic systems, but it reduces the grind to much more reasonable levels while still retaining enough of the challenge to be satisfying-- I found it to be fun, while the NES one was more frustrating and annoying. (FF1's Dawn of Souls remake came out as a bit too easy, unfortunately. I found this mod that claims to make Dawn of Souls closer to the original while retaining the gameplay refinements, which may be worth trying.)

[Forgettable]

Can I also suggest Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance.

The first one is for PS1, the second is for Gameboy advance. They are both easy to find and play on emulators.

[Bullettime]

Almost no one likes them all, and almost no one likes none of them. If you decide to take part in the FF crusade you will see what I mean. My favorite is 8 and others vilify it. Many people's favorite is 7 and I thought it was cheesy. Think of them like playable books. Not everyone reads the same books.

Pretty much. My favorites were 9, 6, and 8 (in that order) while I know people who love and totally despise 8 and 9.

[Tech614]

Can I also suggest Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance.

The first one is for PS1, the second is for Gameboy advance. They are both easy to find and play on emulators.

I wouldn't recommend anyone touch tactics with a 10 foot pole unless they are familiar with tactical style jrpgs and/or FF terminology. That game is not forgiving at all, and not accessible at all if you don't know what you're doing.

[Bullettime]

I wouldn't recommend anyone touch tactics with a 10 foot pole unless they are familiar with tactical style jrpgs. That game is not forgiving at all, and not accessible at all if you don't know what you're doing.

I hated how you could be totally road blocked at a specific castle due to its series of extremely challenging bosses and could be near unbeatable without the right setups going in. If you didn't have multiple save files, you could have your entire game just basically halt. Awesome game for the most part though.

[Arkenaw]

Only if you care about knowing random facts like which characters are from which game. The stories aren't connected.

[Velshin]

For me personally the last real Final Fantasy was XII. My personal favorite though is V and VI. It's up to you to be honest but I have to warn you FFXIII is beyond garbage....the only good thing about that game is the graphics imo.

[ProphetFlume]

I'd say yes. I went about playing them in a roundabout way. First played 10 a couple years after it came out and loved it, followed by 7, which had a wonky story that didn't really live up to the hype but I enjoyed the materia combat system, then trudged through 12 for a couple hours before giving up. Just recently I played the GBA remake of 1 and it was great - planning on doing 2-6 in the same fashion.

[Velshin]

Also forgot to mention Final Fantasy Tactics that game is masterpiece either the original version in the ps1 or the psp both are amazing I recommend it, if you like strategy tactics game...it's kinda mix up between shining force + tactics ogre + vandal hearts.

[pathora44]

Personally I have never understood why people like 8. 8 has easily the most grinding busy work of a magic system in any RPG I have ever played having to spend all this time finding the right monsters and drawing magic from them did not feel rewarding it felt like busy work to pad the amount of time you played. I also found the characters both aesthetically and personality wise boring as all get out. Aesthetically they are all beautiful white skinned male and female characters in their late teens to their mid 20's and for a fantasy RPG, to me at least, is a huge no no because I want to have a spectrum of characters to play with. Final Fantasy 7, 9, and, 10 all had very drastically different looking characters from different races, to different species, to different skin colors, to different designs. Hell even Final Fantasy 4 where they were all human characters had characters of different ages and body types or at least armor that made them look quite different from each other. Also personality wise none of them really captured me as characters Squall, Zell, Selphie, Irvinie, etc... none of them I found to be the least bit interesting. Lastly I also just found the story to be a confusing mess that was kind of all over the place maybe if I replayed the game since it was years ago when I last played it but from what I remember it just wasn't a good story.

Of the Playstation 1 era I would rank them 9>7>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>8. Personally I find 7 to be somewhat overrated of a game over of how much praise it gets mainly because it was the first 3d Final Fantasy game. 9 to me had a great story, art design, battle system, and characters. Lastly with 10, the last Final Fantasy game I have played, while the game is pretty good and has one of the coolest characters Final Fantasy has ever had in Auron it also has easily the most annoying little shit stain of a main character they have ever put out in Tidus. Man did I hate his character from his design, to his personality, to his voice actor I just can't stand the little shit.

Truth be told if you can find it or if you use emulators play Suikoden 2 one of the best RPG's ever made that got completely overshadowed by Final Fantasy 7 coming out a year before it. The game only got a limited run and little to no press about it but it is one of the greatest RPG's you can play. Amazing story, great characters, a really fun battle system, and over 108 characters to collect to complete the game I have played the game over 5 times which I have never come close to doing with any other game. If you like JRPG's play the Suikoden series 1,2,3, skip 4, and then play 5

[Velshin]

snip

Indeed Suikoden is also one of the top 10 RPGs of all time for me. Specially Suikoden II my favorite of them all. Another great JRPG try the Tales series.