Final Fantasy is a series I never really got into until about 6 years ago, mainly because I was probably too young to understand how to play the games properly when the first 6 came out. The first Final Fantasy game I ever played was Final Fantasy 4, which to this day I still haven't beaten because i don't feel like spending hours leveling my characters just so I can make it to the final boss with a decent amount of healing items and magic left. My next experience with the series was the original final fantasy, which I played through and beat in about 2 days since it really wasn't that long of a game. Final fantasy 2 was my third venture into the world of Final fantasy, though I didn't much care for the changed gameplay mechanics so I never got very far in it.
The next two final fantasy games I played through were final fantasy 10 and 10-2, which were both pretty solid games in the franchise. Final fantasy 10 however suffered a bit in the repetitive battle department though, specifically along this one road in the game where there must have been about 20 battles that got tiring pretty fast. The other issue that bugged me about it is that one stage of the final boss is designed so that it's impossible for you to die, which I feel kind of removes the challenge from the game. I did however like the system they had in place for learning abilities, though they could and should have included more items to break the locks on the grid, because one wrong move and you've potentially screwed yourself for the rest of the game. I did have fun with the game however, as it did have a good bit of bonus stuff to find for those who wanted to, but there wasn't a massive amount of it. I feel there was enough there to warrant looking for it however if only to level your characters and unlock as many abilities as possible.
Final fantasy 10-2 however was the weaker of this duo of games simply for the reason that the entire game was overloaded with bonus features. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but the issue with having so many things to do is that if you do them all like I attempted to do, then you will be extremely over leveled for a while and it kind of takes the challenge out of the game later on. In particular, if you do all of the stuff available in the final chapter of the game with the exception of the really hard overpowered bosses, you will have no trouble at all dealing with the boss of the game. now some would make the argument that this was also possible in FF10, but in FF10 I didn't feel obligated to look for all of the bonus stuff hidden throughout the game. In 10-2, you feel obligated to do it to get every costume and unlock stuff hidden in the later stages. one costume in particular requires you to do everything in the first 4 chapters, including the extremely boring chapter 4 stuff where you have to look in through the comspheres on every damn city you visit multiple times just to watch certain cutscenes, most of which are barely of any consolation for knowing you just wasted a few hours of your life playing what is essentially the role of a peeping tom in a video game. The biggest issue by far that I had with the game however is the degree of difficulty for the final bonus dungeons and bosses. Even at level 88 i am no match for one of the randomly encountered monsters in that dungeon on the higher floors, simply because he hits too hard. I'm fairly certain it's not an issue with my strategy at that point, but an issue with the monsters being severely overpowered.
Moving on from there I played final fantasy 12, which for me was one of the more disappointing games of the series because the fight mechanics although innovative did not always seem to work properly. The gambits system is a pain in the ass to operate half the time and seemed if anything to be an excuse for the developers to get out of making some smart AI. basically you're making your own AI is incredibly time consuming and kills the pace of the game. This game also had a pretty steep difficulty curve, especially if you didn't have the best armor and weapons available all the time. around 5 hours into the game when I came upon the forest boss I had a hell of a time fighting it simply because it kept throwing every status ailment in the game at you every other turn, which was a pain in the ass to deal with. Basically if you aren't prepared for a particular status ailment in that game, you will get raped. simple as that. That was another game that I never finished playing because the boss of the game was severely overpowered to the point where at level 73 even I had two people constantly using healing spells on our asses while one person was switching between attacking and healing. the gambit system really shows its issues in these kinds of situations because the second all of my characters got over 70% hp everyone stopped healing and started attacking, even if the boss was charging up his huge area of damage attacks, and of course the AI isn't smart enough to stand further than a few feet away from each other so they all get hit, resulting in rape for everyone. This wouldn't be so infuriating if it weren't for the fact that I had pretty much all but killed him at the point where I finally kicked the bucket, and thus pretty much gave up on actually beating him to save about an hour and a half of my life that could better be spent doing something else.
The game also suffered from FF10-2 syndrome where the optional bosses and monsters half the time turned out to be just as hard if not harder than actual late or end game bosses. There are whole areas in that game I haven't explored because the monsters that appear naturally there are strong enough to obliterate my party in 5-10 minutes, in particular the one mine area on that floating city has an optional area that has high leveled monsters that would have murdered me without so much as a second glance had I not been around level 70 when I ventured there. This should not be happening when you're pretty much strong enough to take on the final boss of the game. There really shouldn't be any area too challenging to at least explore, and yet there are. The side missions are pretty doable early on, until you get to the later ones which half the time turn out to involve areas too dangerous to venture into or deal with monsters too strong to kill at your current level. The game also suffers from having elements of Final fantasy 2, where if you wander to where you aren't supposed to early on in the game the game will let you know by throwing in some super strong monsters to immediately rape your face and send you back to your last save. This happens frequently in the beginning because the desert area you start with is connected to several other deserts that are connected to one particular cave with level 30+ monsters where you will die if you try to venture into them. There is little good I can say about the game other than the fact that it could have been better had they taken some time to fix some of the issues it had and put more effort into directing the player towards where they should and shouldn't wander early on.
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