Best Final Fantasy game? (in your opinion)

[SpaceBooger]

Blitzball is only necessary that one time. I hated blitzball too.

Good to hear.

Now for my next gripe:
I love grinding. I love that I can pick up a RPG and play mindlessly for a bit when my kids are running around. I can't focus on story with a 2-year-old running around and screaming all of his newly learned words.
It seems (thus far) that FFX's battles are mostly in mid story no wandering and fighting. I only remember this happening twice so far.
Do I get to grind? Or do I just watch a movie and play some battles every once in a while?

Maybe I should play more of the game than complain but 5-6 hours in and I havent played the "traditional" FF RPG I expected.

[Gamerforlife]

Blitzball is only necessary that one time. I hated blitzball too.

Good to hear.

Now for my next gripe:
I love grinding. I love that I can pick up a RPG and play mindlessly for a bit when my kids are running around. I can't focus on story with a 2-year-old running around and screaming all of his newly learned words.
It seems (thus far) that FFX's battles are mostly in mid story no wandering and fighting. I only remember this happening twice so far.
Do I get to grind? Or do I just watch a movie and play some battles every once in a while?

Maybe I should play more of the game than complain but 5-6 hours in and I havent played the "traditional" FF RPG I expected.

It opens up later in the game where you'll have the ability to go to any location you've been to at will. That's when you'll want to start grinding as you'll have to hunt down and fight the remaining summons you don't have as well as going to a tough dungeon to fight Omega Weapon.

Then you'll be doing lots more grinding when it comes time for the monster arena battles. Most of the monsters won't even be available until you fight certain types of creatures in random encounters and kill them with a hunting weapon as I recall. So you'll be fighting over and over in some areas just to get the creatures you need to appear in order to unlock more monsters in the monster arena.

Tackling the monster arena means you'll need ultimate weapons, which are VERY HARD to get(but totally worth it) and you'll have to spend time not only moving further along the sphere grid, but actually replacing stat nodes on it with higher number stat nodes. It's the only way to really make your characters stronger. I'll give you an early tip, Tidud, Wakka and Auron will be your best team for most arena fights and you're going to wanna try teaching everyone quick hit. You'll need to customize good armor too, basically you'll want to make one with auto-potion, auto-haste, auto-phoenix and protect. You'll need Yuna for a few fights too as her summons will come in handy in specific fights

[Gamerforlife]

And one more thing, if you DO plan on doing the monster arena(which is where you'll be doing most of the "grinding" you're looking for), you WILL have to play more blitzball to get Wakka's ultimate weapon. This is mandatory, since he is the most damaging character in your party with his reels limit break attack

[Ack]

I would actually add to this, don't make your summons TOO powerful..folks that have beaten the game will know why.

[Ienzo]

I'm going to have to say FF VI VII and VIII are all tied for first in my book. Never really understood the dislike towards VIII though, I always thought it was great. I liked the school motif throughout the game.

[MrPopo]

Never really understood the dislike towards VIII though,

Squall

[nutbar]

It's a tough call. I could go with IV, VI, or VII on any given day. I would consider FFT as well even though it's not in the main series.

[Gamerforlife]

I'm going to have to say FF VI VII and VIII are all tied for first in my book. Never really understood the dislike towards VIII though, I always thought it was great. I liked the school motif throughout the game.

It's been ages since I've played FFVIII, but I remember my only real issue with the game being that the romance between Squall and Rinoa was a bit overdone and the Triple Triad card game, which I loved, got really annoying if you accidentally let the random card rule spread

Other that that, the game was excellent. I liked Squall. And although I'm not really into figurine collecting, I just happened onto a whole collection of FF8 figurines many years ago and couldn't pass them up. They're all boxed too

FFVIII gets a lot of hate that I don't understand at all. Everything from FF7-10 was great, then Square lost its mind and made the embarrassing FF X 2. I think it was about that time that they started whoring out their FF characters to the Kingdom Hearts franchise too. It wasn't until FF 12 that the series had some dignity again.

[MrPopo]

I felt that VIII's combat and growth system was interesting, but was also completely broken. I soloed the entire game with Squall on my first runthrough once I realized that you can limit on command by staying at low HP and mashing triangle. I found the characters to be a mixed bag. Squall was pretty unlikable for most of the game. And the whole GF memory revelation was kinda WTF when I saw it. That and I started screaming at the screen when Squall jumps out the spaceship to catch Rinoa, since I can appreciate just how big space is. So it failed the story test but passed the "fun to play" test.

[jfrost]

FF8 is my favorite in the series. The Junction system is very broken, but fun to use in different ways (I had fun customizing my stats, seeing the results).

As I recall, what I hated the most about the game is that Ultimecia's motivations were never explained. Actually, Dr. Odine, I think, when asked once in the game about why Ultimecia was trying to compress time, said something to the effect of: "Well, we'll talk about that later".