Personal ranking of the overall quality of Final Fantasy main series games. ymmv!

Those I Haven’t Played, and Why

• FF XV (The UNfantastic Boy Band)
  • I’ve seen enough at a friend’s house to know that it’s spectacularly uninteresting— 4 guys in black drive in a convertible around a very modern world. It doesn’t look or sound or play like an FF game, so I’m not giving it my precious time (there are S-tier FF games, FFS).
• FF XIII, all 3 Titles (Pink Haired Women and Hallways)
  • Similar to the situation with XV, I saw the first game in this trilogy at a friend’s house and was wildy unimpressed at how linear it is. And yes, I know that FFXIII-3 isn’t like this, but I can’t just leap into that before suffering through the first two. While these games have enjoyable music, I can’t really give them a chance based on how much I like replaying other titles in this series. I’ll certainly play FF IX before I play any of these.
• FF XIV (The ARPG One)
  • I’ve almost no interest in this title; I also don’t own a PS5. I’ve read that Summoned Monsters are a large part of the plot, so I’m slightly curious and might eventually check it out when it’s more widely available. Yet it’s not a turn-based battle system, so I may never play it as action RPGs peaked back in the 90s, imho.
• FF VII Remake (Avalanche Lives Again)
  • I don’t own a PS5. If I did, I’d give this a shot because I’m a fan of the idea of totally remaking a classic FF game like this! It looks great from what I’ve seen in videos.
• FF IX (The Whimsical Ensemble Cast One)
  • The very well-reviewed game that I intentionally skipped, back in the day… I’ve put off playing this for so long that I feel certain it won’t live up to the hype. 😿 But then again, the “Moguri Mod” makes it look amazing, and a friend of mine has hacked the original’s ATB system to fix it, so… I do have a lot of curiosity about playing it some fine day.

D Tier

FF II (Depressing Imperial Saga)

• Never finished this. Tried to at least 5 times (maybe more!) mostly with the visually pleasant PSP version. The original on the Famicom/NES is fully translated by the romhacking community, but…
  • I can’t commit to that when there’s a vastly more polished version;
  • It looks far too much like the previous game, while playing nothing like it!
• 👎 The way the heroes level up is absolutely counter-intuitive compared to every other game in the series, and extremely broken.
• 👎 The pacing of the game is very rough, it’s a step backwards from the game before which is frankly baffling.
• 👎 The characters are unlikeable to include the guests that come and go and are uniformly killed off.
• The story is absolutely one-dimensional and does not feature a mystical arc involving crystals, dragons, or world warps; it’s a boring story, to me.
• 👍 The music is pretty good, and certainly conveys the miserable and depressing vibes of the story.
• It’s a jagged, tough pill to swallow compared to every other FF game I’ve played. I doubt I'll ever make it through this.