whyyyyyyyy

So do I!

At least FFXIII has characters you actually care about. All FFXII had was Balthier and a bunch of no-name cardboard cutouts.

I actually really like the narrative utility of the flashback sequences, they're quite cleverly done.
Also, I don't dislike Vanille as much as probably should, perhaps because there are moments where her enthusiasm vaguely reminds me of Pinkie Pie's. Hope, on the other hand, drives me to insanity with all his bitching and moaning. Perhaps if he had actually emoted upon the death of his mother I'd understand, but as is it's just weird to hear Hope groan his way through things and plot Snow's demise when he otherwise barely seems affected by the loss of his mother. Hopefully that changes?

Basch and Ashe were awesome.

Also?

Goddamnit I saw this one coming a fucking mile away.

I actually enjoyed FFXIII as well, but man, FFXII is still way better. Didn't mind Hope, either, 'cause in so much as he's kind of annoying he's annoying in the way that a kid his age should be annoying, all hatin' his dad and being dumb and hero worshippin' the 'coolest' party member and shit.

Also:

Man, I don't know if it's well written or not, all I know is that Serah looks super underage and Snow looks like he's like 28ish, and it gives me the creeps like a motherfucker every time anything about their romance goes on.

Like, if memory serves, they're both mid-twenties, but they made Snow look way older and Serah look way younger and it's like arrrrrgh. If they had just made them both look their age it would probably be alright, but I just can't get into a romance that looks like a 28 year old dude pining on about a 13 year old.

Also: gonna ruin Vanille for you.she totally orgasms all over her summon. Seriously, watch her animations on it. She's riding that giant gun spider thing and enjoying the fuck outta herself. Literally.

If FFXIII let you control your party during battles it would have been a much better game. I still enjoyed it, but I almost didn't finish because by the end I couldn't stand doing any random battle. FFXIII had by far the worst battle system.

Every FF should play like FFX-2.

I was unaware that the general internet consensus was that FFXIII is bad. I thought the internet liked the game, or at worst thought it was average.

Anything but. Or, depending on the website, anything butt.

FFX being the Final Fantasy game that put me off of the rest of the series seems to be a pretty unpopular opinion. As for games that most people seemed to dislike that I enjoyed, Red Alert 3 would be one of them, off the top of my head. The gameplay wasn't all that bad, and the FMVs were all hilariously cheesy.

What I'm saying is that 6 is the best, and you whippersnappers ruin everything.
 

I'm not sure why this would be true. FFX had a terrible level-up system, lousy and unrewarding minigames, and characters too irritating to be believed (Titus). And FFX-2 had a great combat system and leveling processes (and the various classes are always a plus) but took what characterization I liked about the first and said, "Meh, I'mma hate all over this stuff." while simultaneously making things even less sensible than the first... which was kind of hard to do.

Then again, I actually liked FF8, at least up until the part (near the very end) where it suddenly dropped all semblance of sense what with the hidden city and you all grew up in the same orphanage but had forgotten it (although that was slightly justified in-story) and then had to go to the end of time and... collapse time... which was just what the villain wanted to do. I don't even know.

Or FF7 in which, despite being a fun game, made you play as an annoying emo-laden (even more than Squall!) wannabe jerk of a protagonist who literally went insane and forgot that he wasn't his best friend. And also is a jerk (unlike his best friend, whom he was imitating... poorly). And also also is a creep (unlike his best friend, whom he was imitating... poorly). And also also also betrays and abets in the murder of his supposed love (which is actually the love of his best friend). Cloud's only redeeming quality seems to be that he doesn't die when he really should (kind of similar to a cockroach) and that he wields a really freakin' huge sword.

Doesn't mean I don't like those games. I can just see where people are coming from that don't. And FF8 and FF10 have both received their share of hate. And I've not played anything since FF10 either (though I hear I need to correct that with FF12 and am personally willing to try FF13, though I dread it). Which is really what I was trying to say all along.

(Also, I've yet to play FF9 - a tragedy by all accounts.)

Okay, I have to adress the whole "Emo Cloud" thing. He doesn't get mopey until after he gets mind controlled into dooming the planet, falls into the planet's core, and goes comatose. Heck, we had people like Setzer or Cecil moping around for much less. Well, slightly less, in Cecil's case.

And after he stops being comatose, he stops being a gung-ho "fuck you" soldier or emo until the end of the game.

It isn't until Advent Children that he gets really mopey, and that's because he's dying of Geostigmamagic cancer. Unfortunately, Advent Children seems to be what Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts wanted to draw from.

And I think I can forgive him for being kind of insane at the start of the game. After all, he really should have just died from that level of poison and mad science.

What I'm saying is that Cloud is stupid.
 

Hey, I'm not saying that it's a bad game, nor that the characters are all bad. Heck, I kind of even like Cloud despite his flaws (much like the game and FF8).

What I'm saying is Cloud's story, when looked at objectively, isn't very inspiring.What I'm saying is:
* Cloud was a braggart and a failure
* Cloud couldn't face his actual childhood sweetheart and own up to being the above
* Cloud instead hid in a delusion away from reality while being afraid (this is when/where he got emo/mopey in "real time", and just kept it up from there)
* Cloud didn't die when Seph stabbed him (redeeming feature number one!)
* Cloud underwent radical proceedures in which he becomes, effectively a vegetable
* Meanwhile the much more mentally stable, honest, good, genuine hero, Zack, keeps them both alive, stays sane, isn't a vegetable, and was a success when Cloud failed (the Soldier program), and underwent the exact same things. Also he wasn't a jerk or emo. Ever.
* Zack breaks the two experiments free.
* Zack breaks all the way out of the prison-town
* Zack gets them safely almost all the way to civilization, failing only when he was faced with superior numbers, more powerful weapons, advanced soldiers, and a completely terrible/inferior position, dieing nobly rather than seeing his friend suffer
* Cloud vaguely comes out of his stupor, finds his friend's dead body, then proceeds to put on his dead friends' clothes (simultaneously taking and wield the super-sized sword - redeeming feature number two!), and immediately proceeds to forget he wasn't the dead guy who he just stole stuff off of.
* Cloud never again wonders about his past, except to act far too cool and insightful while having a nervous/mental breakdown.
* Because of Cloud's many, many, many failures, his super-sensitive mission is botched, some of his new friends (and a good portion of a city) die, and in the middle of this he cold-shoulders the woman he'd loved since forever and tries to hook up with a girl he'd seen his best friend love via picture once.
* The next time the world is riding on his shoulders, he fails to protect the girl he claims to love, fails to keep himself from Sephiroth's control (delivering the doomsday device into his waiting hands), and fails to protect a town from destruction.
* He remains stupid and emo until after the girl who's never stopped loving him rescues him, heals him, and tells him to stop being stupid
* From then on he just wields a freakin' huge sword and doesn't die when he's supposed to (i.e. uses his only two redeeming features) in order to slay super-monsters
* The last thing is him destroying Sephie super-easy for no good or believable reason
* We are then led to believe he fails to get the ship to safety
* Which doesn't matter because we are then led to believe most of the earth dies 'cause the villain's plan kind of works

And in Advent Children he was dumb, but lucky.Now, in Advent Children (which I purchased even though the subtitles were terrible 'cause I was a huge fan, even after FF8 and the awful Final Fantasy Movie*), we learned that the majority of the world did not, in fact, die when the Meteor struck. But we had no way to know for sure before this. And we do know that all that shiny new construction seen in AC goes roughly nowhere, 'cause we've seen what the city looks like in a hundred years, and it isn't "rebuilt" (unless you count wild kudzu foliage tearing down your abandoned wire-frame buildings as "rebuilt"). And in it, our hero, who ostensibly learned his lesson[s] in FF7, the game (the lesson[s] being, "don't be a whiny loner, work with your friends, and don't harm the ones you love by being a jerk") has proceeded to forget all of them and become a whiny loner and a jerk who doesn't work with his friends and actively avoids talking to the woman who has never stopped loving him just so he can chase some dream of a woman who only loved him for his passing resemblance to a better hero. The worst part is that I'm not even exaggerating. He literally is chasing a literal dream of a woman who's primary interest in him was that he vaguely resembled her ex (who he had been imitating poorly). Of course this is all "resolved" by the end of it, through means that make no sense whatsoever, but hey, by that point they'd released FF8 and were on some sort of "let's pull a Deus-Ex-Happy Ending Out-of-Nowhere" kick.**

And, yeah, the Kingdom Hearts games only loosely adapt some parts of the characters of the games for vague semblance purposes.

That said, I don't hate Cloud. He's a doofus, yeah, but I don't hate him.

No, of the protagonists, I only hate Tidus. Which is a shame, 'cause I really didn't want to.

Oh, and, yeah, Cecil was kind of emo, a bit, but really he learned that he was an alien, he wasn't human, the baron he'd served for so long was corrupt and evil, and he murdered an entire village (on accident), and his best friend betrayed him (twice), and he lost his love (more than once), failed to protect a little girl multiple times by being outmatched by effective-gods, and participated in the genocide of two kingdoms (on accident). Guy wasn't so much emo as just stupidly unlucky and unfortunately aware of it. He got to fly a giant whale, though, so that's something, I guess. But yeah, not my favorite.

And Setzer was nothing like "The Protagonist" of the very ensemble FF6 (much as he might consider himself such). If anything, Terra, your self-titular Locke Cole, Celes, and Sabin would share the title of protagonist, though all of the heroes could have done so (they were the only ones to either have solitary or mostly-solitary portions of the game, or go through the entire adventure). Shadow, Setzer, and the rest were awesome, though.

* But dang, did that bad, bad, terrible film look good!
** I have to say, the other animation (featuring Zack) was pretty daggum awsome and made me like Zack even more than I did before, despite its tenuous (at best) connection to continuity, which really isn't a good thing, when I'm comparing the "actual" protagonist disfavorably to him already. What I'm saying is that the bonus cartoon was better than the movie.