KJ

sathari asked for my thoughts on the Final Fantasy series, including a few specific titles.

I came to the Final Fantasy series, through my husband, T. He had started playing with FFVII, before I met him. Not long after we got together, he bought FFVIII, and he would sometimes play it when I was around, and I was interested to realize that there were video games in which story and character had so much importance (before that most of my experiences were with arcade and arcade-type games, and Civilization/Sim City/other world-building type games). FFIX came out after we moved in together, and I watched the entire time he played, like watching an 80 hour movie, and I got pretty invested in it. Finally, with FFX, for the first time he handed me the controller, and I was hooked: on FFX (which to this day remains my favorite game, not just in the series but of all time), on the Final Fantasy series, and on RPGs in general.

I love the same things about the series that most of its fans love: the characters, the settings, the stories they tell. As a newbie gamer, I appreciated being able to ease into combat via turn-based systems, and that my hand-eye coordination was not often tested (I'm better at that now, though still not great). I've played most of the numbered installments, although I'm still missing some earlier games and haven't ventured into the MMOs -- my biggest gap is FFVI, which I've started several times but never finished. Someday.

( Thoughts on specific games behind the cut. )

I wasn't planning this, at all, but then lassarina was talking about getting set to replay on moogle_university and it came up that it was available for download on the PlayStation store, and I haven't played it in forever, and one thing led to another, and now I'm well into Disc 2.

Although this wasn't the first Final Fantasy game I played (FFX receives that honor), in a way it was the first I experienced, because I watched T play the whole thing from beginning to end. So even though I never held the controller, I still learned the story and got to know the characters. Then I played it for myself in 2004 and had so much fun with it. It is without question my favorite FF game of the PS1 era and among my favorites of the series. However, even the replay was before I got into fandom, so I've never written fic for it or otherwise gotten involved in the fandom. We'll see if anything catches my attention on that level the first time through.

But oh, I adore it still. You know how sometimes you turn on a game you haven't played in awhile, and loading screen pops up and the music starts playing, and you feel like you're coming home? Yeah, it's like that.