Final Fantasy V is my favorite by a wide margin. The awesome job system alone puts it over the top for me.

The first three (the NES ones) aren't terrible but they've aged poorly which makes them difficult to play. Final Fantasy VI is so boring I sometimes play it at night to help me fall asleep. And Final Fantasy IV is quite possibly one of the most awful games I've ever played.

Out of the ones that I've played, I actually enjoyed XII the best. The story and characters sucked, but the gameplay and the environments felt refreshing in a way.

Legendaryscmt

I agree with this except for the part where the story and characters sucked. Because they don't. Final Fantasy XII is great in every way.

As for the ones in the poll, VII is good but not nearly the best, IX is just okay, VI is boring, and IV is a strong contender for the title of worst Final Fantasy.

My ranking of the ones I've played, from best to worst:

XII > X > VIII > VII > V > IX > VI > III > II > I > IV

Left out X-2 because it isn't technically part of the main series but if I had to I'd put it between X and VIII.

I consider anything to the left of VI on this scale "good" or better. VI itself is playable but kind of boring. I, II, and III fall under the category of "may have been fun twenty years ago but not so much today". And IV is just plain bad.

XII is my favorite. No random encounters and no separate battle screen help to keep the gameplay flowing smoothly, and gambits alleviate the tediousness of no-brainer battles against weak monsters without killing the fun or strategy of the more challenging encounters. Also, the world is beautiful and interesting and really draws you in. And I for one liked the story, despite all the negative comments people tend to make about it.

You're exactly right. I do read quite often. However, I find it much easier to lose hours upon hours of my time playing a video game then reading a book. Being only 16 years old, I'm much more drawn to the technogically driven world of today. Yes, a book does gerenally have a better storyline and more fleshed-out characters, but how many stories can you be actively engaged in and, in most of the games I play, have a direct and definitive result of the outcome? It is almost as if you are given the creative license to write your own story, choosing what quests you do, the people you want to be at the end and those you don't even down to your character's personality. It is things like this that you cannot do in a book, and is what so greatly entices me about video games.

And yes, you are correct about gameplay being the only truly important aspect of a game, this is a question about your favorite. What stood out to you the most at the end of the game, and a good story is just something that really makes me look back and say: "That was really a great game.", or the opposite, if true.

I hope this cleared up any confusion, and thank you for being inquisitve.

I_haz_teh_gamez

For the record, there are books that allow you to decide how the story goes. They're called Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Anyway, the idea that any game actually lets you write the story your way is kind of silly to me. You're not writing anything. The story has already been written. Every possible branch that the story may take, every possible ending, every possible piece of dialogue, has already been written. The quests you choose, the characters you take with you, the personality you create for yourself, any other decisions the game lets you make, none of these create anything new. They just lead you to different branches of the story that has already been written. Much like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

And because I wasn't very clear before, yes, gameplay is my favorite aspect of gaming. All of my favorite games have one thing in common: I can lose myself in them for hours at a time purely because they are so much fun to play. I simply don't care one way or the other about the quality of the story in the games I play, or even whether there is a story. I guess that's at least partly because I'm a grumpy old fart (comparatively speaking) and the games I grew up playing often didn't have stories at all, and when they did it rarely went beyond "the President has been kidnapped by ninjas".

For me, I'd have to say the storyline and characters are what draw me into games. They are the core of the gaming experience, and the actual things with which you can relate to in the realm of video games. The best of characters are seem almost real and make you wonder maybe, just maybe, you can be like him or her.

I_haz_teh_gamez

I have to ask, if the story and characters are the primary reason you have for playing video games, why are you still playing video games? It's a lot cheaper to just go down to the local library and pick up a few good books, and as an added bonus you get much better storytelling and more interesting characters than you'll find in any video game.

As for me, I believe gameplay is the only aspect that really matters. I've played and enjoyed games with no story or characters. I've even played and enjoyed games with no graphics or sound. But I've never played a game without gameplay.

That's not to say that a good story, graphics, etc., can't make a good game better. It can. But it can't make a bad game worth playing. And a bad story, graphics etc. can't make a good game worse. Unless they're getting in the way of the gameplay.

Each generation of Pokemon games has been better than the one before. Which of course means that my favorite is the current gen (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/Heart Gold/Soul Silver). And I hope the next generation follows this trend.

Numbers 1, 2 and 3 right here. No contest.

Or is this cheating?

I'm pretty sure it's a bad idea. All the instruction manuals I've ever read warn you to never immerse your game or game-related product in liquids of any kind.

http://wiki.qhimm.com/FF7/Technical/Customising

Plenty of useful stuff here. Most importantly, the FF7 OpenGL Driver, which fixes pretty much everything that doesn't work (including 8-bit paletted textures) and allows for high-resolution settings, among other things. It's what I use to play FF7 PC and it works great for me. Make sure you get the latest version (0.7.8b I think, follow the link to the project forum to find it). Also the official 1.02 patch which I believe is required for the driver to work. Hope this helps.

Sometimes it seems that every Final Fantasy fan hates at least one Final Fantasy game.

I for one hate Final Fantasy IV. It is a terrible game with no redeeming qualities and I am always perplexed and a little scared when people actually believe that it's good, or worse, that it's one of the best games ever.

Also, VI is boring beyond belief, and I, II, III are showing their age in a bad way.

The rest of the series is fine, excluding XI and XIII which I haven't played and won't talk about here.