Ah, a nice trip down memory lane...
I owned Final Fantasy I, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and Tactics.
- VII and VIII will always be my two favorite games of all-time: incredible music, great characters, world-building/settings are second-to-none, and epic thematic material (for a middle schooler/junior high kid at the time
). Also, both, along with Super Mario RPG, introduced me to the turn-based RPG gameplay system.
- Tactics is best, IMO, in terms of gameplay, though it's a turn-based strategy more than JRPG, but I'll count it. Still, the story, characters, music, etc., all A+ best game ever material as well.
- Watched my younger brother play through FFIX, and from what I saw, it is right there with VII and VIII as well. The art style put me off at first, but I played the abovementioned older Final Fantasies, so it grew on me.
- My stories about I, V, and VI:
- I recently gave FFI in its NES cartridge form to a dear friend and co-worker that transferred to another facility as a going-away present. My party forever will be stuck in Gurgu Volcano, trying to find and fight Kary, the Fire Fiend (never could beat that dungeon with the -1HP per move, since the tiles in the dungeon were lava or something like that).
- V and VI: I have both of these on Final Fantasy Anthology for PS1. I got to the desert dungeon in V where the sand will move you around whilst triggering random encounters. With VI, I was about to encounter Kefka and Emperor Gestahl at the point where - I think - Kefka "destroys" the world. One day, a Spring thunderstorm occurred, and lightning struck either my house or a transformer or something; the result: a black boil on my PS1's memory card. Corrupted my save files for both games. Never have tried to complete them again haha.
Also, S W LeGenD mentioned plenty more like Vagrant Story, Xenogears, didn't play Chrono Cross but have it ready for download on PS Store. Chrono Trigger is phenomenal as well. Really, anything Squaresoft did during the PS1 generation - RPG or not - is nigh-perfect (Parasite Eve, Front Mission 3, Einhander).
I could take a day to talk about my PS1 Square days, but that's enough I think. Thanks for bringing up some great memories, cdtm.
EDIT: I mentioned anything Square did during the PS1 era was great, but I know that Chrono Trigger and FF's V and VI were SNES. I ran the sentences together to where it seemed I was saying Chrono Trigger was developed for the PS1. I apologize for the confusion.
