Bouncing off the fan question in this week's podcast, what is your opinion on the Final Fantasy games and which would you recommend a newbie start with?

VI or VII is probably the best point to jump in, they're the two a lot of people played first depending where you're from, US got I, IV and VI which were named I, II and III, UK/EU didn't get any until VII.

The reason they're good jumping in points is because they have the simplest versions of systems to learn, VI has set character classes, VII has materia where you just stick the skills you want to use on the characters, you can easily just throw on what seems to be the strongest and play the game no problem.

I is ok to go back to but it's very simple, lots of grinding to level up and not much else really, it's actually very similar to III so you can just play the remake of that on the DS and essentially get the same experience with an updated game.

II isn't worth it, it's not that the leveling system is bad, it was just too advanced for a nes game and they fucked up the implementation of it, the best way to level in that is get in to a fight with a weak enemy and hit yourself over the head so your stats go up at the end of it. It was refined and made much better in the SaGa games, which is probably the king of nonstandard levelling systems, most of the same devs of II worked on those, the first three were actually released as Final Fantasy Legend in the west on the Game Boy, the first was remade on the Wonderswan and the other two were remade on the DS, you can get translation patches for each of them. Avoid Unlimited Saga, the systems in that game are too fucking much and there's no real reward for learning them other than not being confused, explaining the health systems alone would be longer than this paragraph.

IV is great but your party gets changed up a hell of a lot, it can be quite jarring as they have a similar set up to how they work in VI, set classes per character but VI keeps things together more. It does have one of the greatest lines in the series though.

V has the job system where you can set each character their own role in the party, VI will allow you to see what makes a good party combination and let you see each classes strengths and roles with out penalty, best left until after VI.

VIII has a unusual junction system and enemy scaling, basically the most optimal way to play is to not fight anything but bosses and keep your level as low as possible, it is not a good starting point as it's nothing like the other games.

IX is essentially a fan service/greatest hits game, it's filled with callbacks to the previous games, you'll appreciate it more after playing the rest.

PS2 games just pick whichever you want after the others, it's when the series began to fall to what it is now, X is probably the last great one, XII has a system where if you learn to use it optimally you can beat any boss by pressing attack once and watching the fight play out for another ten minutes until you win.

Of course you can just look up each one yourself and see which one stands out as the most fun to you, it's only various gameplay elements that are shared, the stories are all separate, by playing one of them you'll learn enough to help you out in the next, they're not difficult RPGs and you won't need to consult guides and such to get through any of them so there's no real bad entry to jump in to, apart from II, that's an entry for SaGa.

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