As A Final Fantasy Fan, These Are The Games I Replay The Most

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It was the Nintendo DS version of Final Fantasy 3 that I fell in love with, and I’ve played through it many times since its release. The freedom to flit between job classes lets Luneth, Arc, Refia, and Ingus serve entirely different roles in battle each time. My favorite unconventional choice is the Viking, a defensive tank able to taunt foes into targeting them. You can then build on this with other characters whose role is to heal the the Viking, boost their defenses even further, and so on. While some party setups are far less practical than others (as is common in a turn-based RPG, things can be much tougher without an efficient healer), the freedom to experiment means that battle tacticians can have an entirely different experience each time. My favorite class is the Ranger, an unconventional damage-dealer with access to different types of elemental arrows. At approximately 30 hours for an average playthrough according to How Long To Beat, the game’s dungeons are engaging without being so lengthy as to overstay their welcome.

Final Fantasy 8

Embrace The Junction System

There are a lot of unique intricacies to Final Fantasy 8. Some, like the infamous Junctioning system, have a profound impact on how the game is played. I’ve played through this title a lot, and I find myself becoming much more comfortable with it over time. During my first playthrough when the game was new, I was floundering a bit, with an odd few Draws’ worth of different spells and no particular understanding of the difference between support abilities, command abilities, and so on.

A dozen trips through this epic adventure later, though, and I’m much more attuned to how to distribute GFs amongst my party, which spells out to Junction to which stats and the items to prioritize acquiring through Card Mod to get the best stock of spells. The story of Squall and his companions’ battle against Edea (and ultimately Ultimecia) is a convoluted one, and there are some who just can’t vibe with the game, but there’s still a huge amount of content to enjoy here for those willing to make the best of its unique mechanics. It’s another game I try to approach with a new party build every year or so.

Final Fantasy 9

My All-Time Favorite Game

Yes, with this entry, I’ve included the entire PS1 trilogy on this list. That’s because these three games, and the original PlayStation system more broadly, helped to define my childhood. It’s that intense nostalgia that, almost three decades later, keeps me replaying these fantastic games. Of course, no game (and none of us players) can age about thirty years without showing it, and they’re certainly clunky compared to the greatest RPGs and JRPGs of today. Nonetheless, Final Fantasy 9 is still my number one favorite game of all time, and I still get the same buzz from it that I always did, from the opening cinematic right through to the end of the closing one.

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The soundtrack is sublime, and the CD boxset copy that Nobuo Uematsu signed for me at a Distant Worlds concert is one of my prized possessions. Melodies of my life, you might say. There’s a kind of whimsical magic about the artwork, too, from the background scenes to the character models. As its creators envisioned, Final Fantasy 9 captures the spirit of the series’ classics, from the blue and white dialogue box options to the wonderfully melodramatic villains. It’s at once a hopeful story and an exploration of the first-hand horrors of warfare, and it also features the never-give-up protagonist, Zidane, as well as Steiner, my favorite character in the series.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line

As Much Final Fantasy Magic As Any Other Entry

Granted, this pick’s a bit of a curveball, as it’s a Final Fantasy spin-off rather than a mainline entry. The reason I’ve included it, though, is that it struck me (and continues to strike me) exactly as its creators intended: as a fantastic celebration of the Final Fantasy series and everything it stands for. As the aforementioned signed soundtrack CD probably made clear, the music of the series is one of the key elements that endeared me to it first, and this is a fantastic way to experience that music.

It’s a shame that, once again, neither Stenier nor Zell were made playable characters here, but an enormous number of Final Fantasy legends were, and the fact that they’re so different in their stat spreads and abilities makes it all the sweeter. Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is a rhythm game in which you can simply cut the difficulty and enjoy the sublime music, but you can also shoot for high scores in the harder difficulties, meticulously crafting your party down to its summon abilities and so on in order to achieve that. That’s a huge amount of depth and even more content in this excellent package, and multiplayer is a lot of fun too. There have been some excellent Final Fantasy spin-offs, but none as content-packed and replayable as this one.

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