When Did the Final Fantasy Series "Jump the Shark"?

[kupomogli]

There were no sharks to be jumped. They just got progressively worse until their swan song (FF9). SNES was the peak of the series, with FF3 the worst of the early games.

Fixed. FF2 is one of the worst, sure, but FF3 is such garbage in comparison.

[Tanooki]

I think that would depend on which FF3 you did (Famicom or the DS-DS ported to mobile, etc platforms.) I've never played the Famicom release so you could be right, but the remaster giving the characters names, stories and personalities is pretty nice.

[Rickstilwell1]

I think that would depend on which FF3 you did (Famicom or the DS-DS ported to mobile, etc platforms.) I've never played the Famicom release so you could be right, but the remaster giving the characters names, stories and personalities is pretty nice.

I don't know I greatly prefer the original III to the original I and II. If you played the remakes of I and II then yes III for NES will look like crap, but if we're talking about original releases here III is so much better and was the first in the series to introduce the Godsend that is auto-retargeting.

[kupomogli]

Final Fantasy 3 on the NES and the DS both are a massive grind. The first and second actually had a reasonable difficulty without too much grinding required. Pair that with the extremely slow speed at which battles progress and Final Fantasy 3 is just a massive annoyance. The job class system was pretty garbage as well. Once you've received a new set of job classes, you usually switched to the next class as it was almost always a better version of something you received earlier in the game, but not only that, you were actually forced to use specific classes as you progressed and if you didn't use the exact classes the game wanted you to, you wouldn't be able to progress. After playing FF13 and FF13-2, it's no longer my least favorite in the series, but before that series released it was the worst imo.

[Tanooki]

Good point rick and that's for damn certain with the auto-target as that was just plain awful fighters in a party would see a target die and just go 'whatever' and pick their nose instead of hitting something else that's attacking them. I always hated that.

I've never played more than an hour of FF3 Famicom translated, but I put down most of the DS recreation of it and I found it pretty enjoyable and nicely designed.


kupo I've head people like you say that before but I honestly will never comprehend how someone would find FF1 on the NES not a colossal slow and painful grindfest almost from the beginning. Maybe it's the party I use with the fighter, b and w wizards and the thief(or monk) but it would take so damn long to buy those stupid spells and gear because of the crappy little drop value of GP from fights. I welcomed the recreation on the PS1/GBA era because they upped those values and removed that lame limited turn magic system too. I found FF3 the least grindy, not by much but I do, but I also am not all wacked out needing to level up each job class either especially to the max so maybe that's why. FF2 on Famicom was bad having to beat on yourself or only do this or that to raise stats due to no XP system, and FF1 just had an awful payout on everything. Funny you should rip on FF13. It may be linear, but I really dig that game and got into the story on it, but I haven't tried FF13-2 yet, but I will once there's a deep enough cut steam sale on it.