anyone have distinct memories of their first Final Fantasy or how they got into the series? share them!
as a kid, my parents sent me to live with grandma in Charleston SC every summer. there was an older boy that lived next door, met him while he was fishing in the lake behind my grandma’s house. i don’t know how it happened but i asked him “do you like games” and he, of course, said “yes” and we went to his house, up to his room, and he showed me his collection of PS1 games. i must have been 10 or 11 at the time.
anyways, he had FF8, which didn’t look super interesting to me, but he came over to my grandma’s house one day, brought ff8, and he played it on my grandma’s huge old-fashioned projector TV (pictured); i remember being immediately entranced with the music; specifically Balamb Garden theme, and my interest in the series immediately increased.
that was my first “experience” with Final Fantasy, later during one of those summers my friend’s friend lent me their Game Boy Camera to “play with for the week,” and I subsequently traded it at the local Babbages for in-store credit (i was a psychopathic kid); these events were significant because thanks to that in-store credit, I was able to purchase a used copy of Final Fantasy 7; and at the time, my brain was immediately drawn to the spiky-haired guy holding a big sword on the cover. i spent the rest of that formative summer playing Final Fantasy 7.
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All my friends were playing ff7 and raving about how awesome the game was. I had a PlayStation console but my parents could only afford 1 Platinum game a year (aka when games were severely discounted).
I saved my birthday/Christmas money and by the time I could afford it, Final Fantasy 8 was coming out. I bought it on launch and absolutely loved the game. I was playing it all the time. Got all the cards and completed all the side quests. I know the junction system is flawed but it’s still my favorite game of the series and I often replay it for nostalgia value.
I didn’t play final fantasy 7 until I was in my late twenties, I wasn’t impressed.
i prefer 8 over 7, as well; the junction system may be “flawed” but it’s a unique take on character customization and progression.
I appreciate the idea, I really do. Attaching fire magic to your weapon to counter enemies was cool. I just hated the “This boss has Regen, guess I’ll draw for at 30 turns before I even attempt to kill it” experience.
yeah, every time i play FF8 the beginning experience is usually “draw 99 of every magic as i find it” lol
God bless the speed multipliers on the Steam version xD
I did a whole run where I could only ever draw ???, meaning only magic I’ve never owned before and only once. So basically I got a handful of useful magic, like Aura or Demi, and that was it (through drawing). It was freeing and a bit eye opening.
I went to a Go Kart place and for some reason they had second hand games in there. I saw FF3 for SNES and for some reason just wanted it.
A little before that a friend had lend me FF Mystic Quest which was my first ever RPG and liked it.
So I end up purchasing FF3 expecting something similar to MQ and as you can imagine I was blown away by all of it. That intro, the graphics, the story, characters.
FF6 remains my favorite game of the series because of this and have enjoyed every release since then.
FF6 is a great choice; you can see a lot of Final Fantasy 7 & 8 elements budding up, like the “equipping espers” being a precursor to materia or junction system. has some of the best music in the series as well, including one of my favorite boss themes “Decisive Battle”
Your experience was almost identical to mine. I was probably 10 or 11, my friend brought over FFVIII and it blew me away. The summons, the cutscenes, I’m still amazed at what they did on the PS1. It’s still one of my favorite games of all time.
I got all of the games available on PS1, but I didn’t really get into another Final Fantasy game until X.
FF on NES: Rented it for a weekend. Had a friend stay over. Played it practically non-stop. Had to return it. Mowed a bunch of lawns and stuff over the next month and a half or so. Bought it. Played it and replayed it with different parties to level 99. One-shotting Chaos w black belts was pretty cool.
Played a few others (2 & 3, I think) on Super Nintendo, but never played any of the newer ones. By then, I was dating and working jobs and moving out and whatever. When I got back into video games a bit, later on, I wasn’t into JRPGs anymore. Still remember the first one fondly, though.
As a kid, I went to the local Target store and saw, in the electronics section, a demo for a new game called Final Fantasy VII. It played an ad for the game, then let me play a little of the intro. It was the coolest thing I’d ever seen! But I didn’t own a PlayStation, so I never bought it. I eventually watched a friend play through most of it at his house, and he let me play a bit every time I came over.
When I was a teenager, a friend gifted me Final Fantasy VIII for the PC and it was my first time actually playing through a Final Fantasy game. I’ve since gone back and played a bit of the older titles, and I’ve mostly kept up with newer releases since. When I was deployed to Africa in 2005 with the US Air Force, Final Fantasy X kept me entertained. That, Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War, and the .Hack series kept me going through that deployment.
thanks for your input and service; i had a similar “in store ad” experience with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. the ad played on a display in the electronics section of a store called “MEDIA PLAY” and it blew me away, was the coolest thing i had ever seen at that time.
My first experience with the series was the original on NES, though I didn’t get into it until Final Fantasy IV on the SNES a few years later.
The first one came from a rental shop, and I simply bounced off it. I remember being really annoyed by the four character name length and having attacks wasted on dead targets. Playing Destiny of an Emperor later turned me on to the party system and the first Ys was my first real introduction to great video game music.
A friend brought over his SNES and FF4 and I immediately fell in love. It looked so vibrant, the animations were fluid, there were tons of sound effects and the music! That would end up being my favorite regular battle theme for years, only until very recently. It took me longer than I wanted to get my own SNES and a copy of the game, but I ended up playing it a ton along with the other Square RPGs on the system.
I on’y played FF 1 2 3 and finallly the best. The 7 !!!
