Tell us your story, win Ring of Fates!
Published on March 28th, 2008 by Robert
That’s right, here’s your chance to tell us about your best/favorite/most memorable Final Fantasy experience and nab yourself a copy of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates for the DS. We have six copies to give away for the best tales of adventure and daring, so think back to the good times you’ve had and share ‘em with us! Let it be known that we did not say your story needed to be true.
Winners will be selected from the submitted comments on April 1. That’s only a few days away so get to writing!
UPDATE: Winners have been selected and are being notified. Thanks to everyone who entered!
Hmmm, most memorable Final Fantasy experience, huh? Boy, that brings up some crazy good memories.
I think my most favorite memory with the FF series was while playing Final Fantasy X (also known by my bro as FF X-tremely badass) when I finally gotten to the final boss of beating Sin. First of all, whenever my family gets a new FF game, it becomes a contest between my siblings on who can beat the game first in which new areas, new cut scenes, and new game twists becomes the next family movie night.
Well, as the battle with Sin seemed very eminent, it became clear to me that I was going to have to invest some major time in leveling up which wouldn’t have been a problem except that at the time, my brother was a day or two from moving out the college and so (in the spirit of sibling love) I became determined to kick Sin’s ass under-leveled before my brother left. I blew my money on high potions and phoenix downs (I’m not ashamed to admit that my team tends to die ALOT in major battles)
I had a team of Yuna, Tidus, and the always favorite Auron and pummeled Sin with my guardians and special attacks. It was a constant battle between reviving Auron and Tidus that almost ended in the first ten minutes when I forgot that Yuna only had an 1/8 of her health left. I used practically all of my high potions and only had 3 ethers left. My siblings and I cheered as Sin was seen to be destroyed but quickly sobered up at the realization that…
the…
battle….
wasn’t….
over….
Holy shemale, you have to fight Tidus’ flipping dad?
And….he has several forms? Yeah, I paused the game and ran upstairs to hide the tears. So much so that my big bro took over the game with a facade of conviction. Well he quickly used up the ethers and the high potions but managed to get to defeating the first form. The rest of the battle was tense as players died and were resurrected only to hit the boss once before dying again. Any congratulations or pointers towards my bro was met with hand gestures and obscenities. When we finally thought that my brother was going to die, he got enough energy to from all three team members to leash an assault of combo special attacks from Auron, Tidus, and Riku (it had to be at least a 7 combo attack, preeeeettty badass)
My bro paused the game to allow for celebration from me and the rest of my siblings (Cardinal rule of playing FF games- you don’t say a word after battles and during cut scenes, that’s punishable by Indian burns, sibling shunnary, and my older brother sitting on your back)
Yeah, Final Fantasy games was a special bonding experience for my siblings and I and that battle was sort-of the last hurrah for my bro before he left for college. Plus, it was pretty freakin’ sweet being on the edge of your seat with your party members having only 10% of their health left. <3
My most memorable Final Fantasy experience…
I was fourteen when I first played Final Fantasy VII and I instantly became addicted. My brother and I would sit in front of the computer during the story parts (I got stuck doing all of the training most of the time T_T), we would be there cheering as we won and sighing in disappointment everytime we died.
But, I have to say the most memorable moment was when Aeris died. We just weren’t expecting it. My brother and I were hooked on the screen and then Sephiroth swooped down and STABBED her!!! With his sword!!! I dropped my water all of the keyboard and my brother cursed.
And we both cried.
I mean bawled.
The whole Cloud/Aeris scene after she died…T_T…Our parents, needless to say, thought we were crazy for crying for a game character.
I ended up having to pay for a new keyboard out of my allowance. Y_Y
I think my most memorable final fantasy game experience has to be…
Me and a friend both got final fantasy 7 on the same day and right then we decided the first one to beat the game would have to buy the other a new game or give them a game of their choosing from their collection.(Must have video proof of final boss battle and ending) It was a tense fight playing as often as possible I took the path of playing more often and getting as many of the extras and secrets as possible my friend just blazed through the story trying to get to the final boss (he tried that final boss battle so many times just to die due to not having high enough levels or spells).
I had finally made it to the final boss. Setup my VCR and went to it. made it took me like a half an hour to finally kill sepiroth with (barely an ounce of life left) watched the ending cheering and just gloating. Called my friend to tell him I had beat it.
When he comes over to watch the video I cue it to the battle and right before sepiroth finally dies the tape stops. I HAD TOTALLY FORGOT TO REWIND IT BEFORE STARTING TO RECORD.
We laughed so hard it took me 5 more times of trying to finally beat him. But I did enf up getting San Francisco Rush out of the deal
My greatest experience ever came from good ol’ Final Fantasy III (VI), the first RPG I ever beat.
Now, the whole game, I stuck with the same 4 characters when I could, and only because story arcs split did other characters get leveled. So I had Terra, Cyan, Sabin, and Locke with me in the end. They were also the characters I used when I farmed Brontosauruses in the Dinosaur Forest for an Economizer, so they were overpowered.
So I am just sailing through the game, and when I get to Kefka’s Tower, I’m thinking nothing can take me and just jump right in. Well, it comes time to split into groups of three. So, without foresight, you can guess who the A Team was. B Team was decent, because they were poorly leveled characters that happened to go down the easiest path. But oh, it was the C Team, oh yes, the C Team that led me to the most intense battle of any RPG I have ever played and a redefinition of the word, ‘Ninja.’
I find myself in front of Poltrgeist. My party is horrid, I’m talking the worst of the worst. The characters you never use, and the ones you throw in there simply because they look cool. It was Gau, Relm, Umaro (w/o Rage Ring), and Shadow (thank god).
So Poltrgeist is beating me down. And I am talking a serious beat down here. Not since the open of the battle was there 4 characters alive at once. By chance, Shadow had Fire Resistant armor, so he was the one person that was not getting constantly annihilated. The fight goes on, I am barely touching Poltrgeists HP, 200 damage here, 400 there, it was horrible. I think I might have a handle on things when she enters her next phase and begins one shotting people with magic. Its Phoenix Down after Phoenix Down, chugging potions of all varieties, I downed every elixir I had (priding myself on never using them), and threw all weapons I could. So there stand Shadow and Gau, with hardly any hitpoints remaining, no way whatsoever to heal, and I got nothin’. Poltrgeist decides to randomly melee attack Gau, who promtly dies. I open up the Throw command, and start scrolling, nothing. I am about to reset the game, dejected, when I give my item list one last gander. There I see it, ‘Superball.’ I think, “here goes nothing,” and let her loose, clueless as to what might happen. 2048 damage!! The most I had done the entire fight! I see Poltrgeist disintegrate, and I throw up the controller in celebration.
Funny part, Superball is totally random, it can do 256-2048 damage up to 4-times.
Shadow, glad I waited.
goodness my most memorable moment was fighting three of Yunas aeons at the same time there was a fat dopey one a skinny flying one and a tall lanky one. im thinking to myself “ok im about to dog all three of these scooby-doo rejects” few seconds later they use some kind of attack that really “rocked my world”. i was at a loss for words considering i was at a really low level i went back for more but i kept ending up with the same results.so to make myself feel better i went to pick on some chump monsters no problem. i came back to the same place ready for a piece of action. they gave me a butt whoopen ill never forget the fat one use some water technique and sat on rikku the tall one used some fire thing and got to beating on paine and the flying one helped the fat one and killed rikku. paine was killed off the same way as rikku soon after that. i know what about yuna right? well im thinking “my little warrior priest they spared you!” wrong they beat the crap out of yuna until her health went yellow and use somthing called the delta attack on her it was a pitiful battle indeed. it was so bad that i didnt eat for about a week and had to go to therapy just kidding but it was bad.
i went to go training i got to about level 50 after 2 weeks of training in the mithien highroad and the thunder plains. “ok” i said to myself lets try this one more time! so the aeons didnt know what hit them really they tried to do the same thing but i started scope them out i had yuna use scan and they were done first thing i did was let rikku use the speacial dress sphere i started to pick on the weakest one which was the tall one after a few missles and 3 phoenix down i squashed that bug with a grin on my face. after that was the small flying one i had rikku fight that thing until she died we ignored the fat one who was weak and ganged up on the small one with an hour already gone i knew i couldnt just pause and take a break i was in the zone.
another hour went by and i endned up killing two of the three aeons
with one more left i did what any good citizen would do i ended up giving that aeon the beat down of a lifetime i mean really i took pleasure in going trigger happy on that thing i beat that last aeon with flying colors i was so happy after that battle which took 2 hours.
the only bad part was that i ended up missing 27 phone calls that day from my friends 6 were from my girlfriend who had been furious
about me playing video games all day
Being that I have played most every Final Fantasy game I could get my hands on, so it is pretty difficult to pick a single moment.
One moment that sticks out in my mind happened a few summers ago. It was the first time I had ever played Final Fantasy Tactics. I was over at a friend’s house when they decided to continue their game. I had been playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced for a few months and so I asked them if I could try it. They let me, but under the condition that I did not advance the story. So my only choice was to wander five or so spaces and fight random encounters to level the group and get used to the gameplay. They had a pretty powerful team when I first started playing. Most characters were above level eighty and their team had calculators (with lots of abilities), time mages, ninjas and a tiamat (dragon). Well, since im a video game nerd I happily leveled their characters for around two hours when they finally gave me the green light to advance some story. So I was fairly used to fighting level 85ish mobs, because in Tactics, the randoms you fight are averaged based on the level of your team. Well I move on the red story dot, and prepared to dish some stratigic ownage, when I realize that the story line opponents are around the level you “should” be for this part of the game….. Which was around level 12!
I had only seen such gross overleveling in my own games like Final Fantasy VI (FF3 in the USA) where I would just go off on a tear and level until my chracters were practicly gods in game. It’s a habit of mine in RPG’s to always figure out what the game will let me get away with.
For example, I decided to find out how high you could get an experience chain in Final Fantasy XII, so I spent around six or seven hours in the Ogir-Yensa Sandsea killing the Humanoids until it got capped out at 999.
It gots to be Final Fantasy Advent Children! Anyone seen Dead Fantasy I & II? That almost topped it off, but it’s not an official movie, just a short video done by a fan with amazing talent =). I’m a type of person that really likes graphics.
I have never seen a full length featured movie with such beautiful graphics and perfect CG quality! The first time when I watched Advent Children, the level of detail and quality was so good that it felt so unreal. Like something that couldn’t be done, but yet it was done.
The best thing of this movie was that the storyline was incredibly interesting, since it had so much build up from FFVII, the game. Of course as any FFVII fan, after finishing the game, you never stop wondering what happens next? And start pleading for a sequel. Advent Children answered to me like that. I always enjoyed happy enddings so the scene where Tifa feels kinda lonely in the bar at the beginning of the movie and calls out for Marlene was very sweet to me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters in the story, maybe I got too attracted to them, but the character designs were so cool, who can blame me. My favorite character in FFVII is the one and only Tifa, just like many many others.
My favorite scene in the movie is of course the fight between Tifa and Loz fighting in Aerith Gainsborough’s church, it was the best ever! Felt so sad when Loz started winning the fight near the end. *gets out my cursing doll, starts cursing Loz* LOL
I have never played Final Fantasy, but I would love to win a copy (which would give me an excellent excuse to but a DS), and make some memorable FF experiences.
I hadn’t grown up a Final Fantasy fan. In fact, my earliest introduction to the franchise – FFVI’s Super Nintendo incarnation – hadn’t hooked me at all. At the time, I’d been spoiled by the colorful and enchanting epoch-jumping Chrono Trigger. FFVI – a wonderful little gem I’d learn to appreciate later in life – was so radically different… It’s subdued palettes illustrating a world of technologically-enriched magic and mythology, like an Amano masterpiece come-to-life; the hauntingly melodic sounds of Uematsu; the hours upon hours of character opera… It just wasn’t my taste, at the time.
And then, there was Final Fantasy VII.
So, okay, pretty much everyone that’s ever played video games has an FFVII story. It’s that cemented in our gamer heritage. For my twelfth birthday, my parents gifted to me a console I had been otherwise oblivious to and a game that hadn’t even been on my radar at all. Final Fantasy VII, for the Sony Playstation. I set up the system, popped in the disc, and it was all over for me. The next few years of my youth, well into high-school, were spent at the altar of SquareSoft.
There was something uniquely exciting about the game from the start. Maybe it was my earliest introduction to 3D graphics. Maybe it was the tall, Mr. T impersonator with a gun-arm running up to me exclaiming “Sh*t! The hell ya’ll doin’!?” (At twelve, profanity was reserved for the playground, away from schoolmarms and moms – and most certainly unexpected in our video games.) The satisfaction in that first victory fanfare as Cloud twirls what should be an otherwise impossible-to-wield sword around his back. The hilarity of cross-dressing and the urgency these Gumby Block-Head rejects’ lives demanded. (Who didn’t feel the race-against-time to save the Sector Seven slums?) And hours upon hours spent inside the most magnificently detailed dystopia you’ve grown to love, and you’re thrust into the big, scary world and you’ve only just begun…
It’s possibly impossible to pick ‘r choose a single memory in what was my friends and my sixth-grade after-school obsession. It was a game that brought us closer together, in fact – many a late night spent coaching a friend to the Temple of the Ancients, lunch-table debriefings regarding the latest Aeris-resurrection methods, the secrets to Chocobo breeding… Cloud, the Turks, Sephiroth and Avalanche had successfully infiltrated my sketchbook; instead of writing school essays, I wrote pages and pages of fan-fiction.
Ten years later, I still pop in disc one from time to time. I smile at the “Realistic” Violence sticker on the back of the box. I talk to every NPC in Midgar and read every sign, soaking in the culture of the greenly-lit Mako metropolis. I know the land by heart, and it wouldn’t take me nearly as long to escape the city as it did… But I don’t care to. There’s something magical about those first few hours in which you dive, head first, in to Final Fantasy VII’s world. Something that I still feel every time I play through it.
My most memorable Final Fantasy moment would have to be with Final Fantasy XI. I have sat at my computer for hours playing Final Fantasy XI and loved it! It’s the ultimate gaming experience to me, you get to talk to people all over the world and play a game that you love. When I first started I had so many people who would come up to me and just help me level up until I could make it on my own. Then a group of people invited me to join their linkshell, I learned so much from all of these people in the group. A lot of them and I would get together in a party and just go and level up. We did quests together and got to know each other like we were neighbors. At present I don’t have a computer up and running at home, but I plan too, and when I do I can promise I will be back gaming with all my friends. I may be older and it would seem odd that I enjoyed this so much. But it was such a break from reality, like the title says there’s a fine line between fantasy and reality. I mean I’d get so into the game at times I just wanted to keep playing even though I was falling asleep. Sometimes the game won out, others my head would hit the keyboard and my decision was made for me.
I think these games are a great break for people who’ve been overtaxed at work or school, and just need something fun to do.
My most memorable Final Fantasy experience is when I was little, and the best game system was Playstation. My brothers had one of the Final Fantasy games at that time, and I would play it sometimes. I wouldn’t play much of it though because the monsters that you had to fight scared me. Also, whenever I tried to fight them, I would never win. Now that I’m older, I laugh at myself for getting scared at something that isn’t real. I wish I could play it now, and try to defeat the game, but unfortunately, the game doesn’t work. >.<
Hmm, my most memorable Final Fantasy moment? That would have to be my first introduction to the game, which was FFVI for the Playstation. I was around 10 when some friends and I saw this game in a Blockbuster. Atleast I think it was a Blockbuster. Anyways, one of them had heard good things about Final Fantasy games from another friend and we decided to check it out. We rent the anthology pack and when we got home we popped the Cd into the Playstation. We saw the starting scenes and just skipped them. We were more interested in playing than the graphics. Then we got to the actual beginning of the story. Biggs, Wedge and Terra on a snowy cliff. We were somewhat confused about what was going to happen next, but we patiently awaited for the action to start. We amused ourselves with how one of the characters seemed to eat the others. Then, it came. The first battle. Sure, the first battle is practically cakewalk for any type of gamer, but this was our first taste of the Final Fantasy series. We were unused to timers on attacks, and more used to fighting games. I still remember my friend, who was at the control, yelling “What do I do!?” and us responding with an energetic “ATTACK, ATTACK!” He kept on mashing the x button with the hopes that it might kill the guards faster. It didn’t, but we didn’t care, we were just having fun. I can still remember those energetic shouts whenever I play that game on my Playstation. After that experience, I decided to try out the next game that had come out for Final Fantasy. I bought a PC Final Fantasy VII only because of the name, not knowing what kind of trials were before me.
My most memorable is not a good one…How about staying up through the night trying to dodge the lightning in the thunder plains in FFX. Then losing count at about 250 and think after a while, “oh i would have 300 by now!” Of course it wasnt, and so i had to start again. This happened several times. Needles to say, i can count pretty good now.
When I was in junior high school, Nintendo had an event at our local convention center. They had lots and lots of machines set up letting people try out games that have not been released yet. The only catch was, the machines would automatically reset every 10 minutes. I saw Final Fantasy (yes, the first one. It was a long time ago). It was the only game there that was not action, shooting, or driving game. It was called an RPG. “What the heck is an RPG?” I thought. I created my characters, saw a bit of an introduction, and started talking to people around town. It was then the game reset back to the beginning. My friend and I thought it was the dumbest game ever created. Where was all the action? Just walk around talk to people. Fortunately, my friend got Final Fantasy for Christmas the year after it came out and we saw how great a game it really was. There was plenty of fighting and not just talking to people. I have been a Final Fantasy junkie ever since.
My most menoeble momment was when I just watched the Final Fantasy movie (Advent Children) and loved it! not too long later my friends and I went to a convention and cosplayed as charaters! It was so fun!
Ah, Final Fantasy… where can I start on the memories this wonderful series has provided me with? My MOST memorable moment now… I would have to say was during the greatest (in my view) Final Fantasy, FFVII. I was playing through the area of Rocket Town, visiting everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed airship engineer, Cid Highwind. Throughout the area, I was given many chuckles and chortles at his various comments. Then it happened. The infamous “Sit your ass down in that chair and drink your @#%(! TEA!” Now, I had the pre-greatest hits version, so instead of the now common “goddamned,” it had the intense cursing symbols in front of the word “tea.” It took me about fifteen minutes to stop laughing long enough to continue the conversation. I was, and am still hard pressed to think of a funnier line in any video game than the line I was treated to by our beloved Cid. I wish more of the FF games had a Cid like this one, and endless source of laughs.
Alright, so back when Final Fantasy 7 came out, my entire family had a go at it. First it was just me and my brothers. After I had finished the game, and was doing a second run-through of it, my dad noticed it and decided to give it a try himself.
Very soon he became really addicted! I would wake up in the morning to go to school, and I would see him still playing FF7 from the night before. When I came home from school, he would still be going at it. When my brothers and I would play, he would be searching the internet for information. He collected a HUGE binder worth of walkthrough, FAQs, guides, everything you can think of. Eventually he got to a point where he wanted to MAX out his characters. Now, when I max out my characters, that means learning all their skills and getting them to the highest level. My father, however, did not stop there! He decided to collect enough Source items to increase all of his stats to 255. That’s strength, dexterity, vigor, magic, spirit, and luck. For Cloud, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, Cid, Vincent, Yuffie, Cait Sith… Aeris was gone at this point d: ( And, basically, so was my father. He spent over 36 hours of battling creatures, using the Morph ability to kill them for a chance to get a source item. He did this for SOOO long, that eventually even counter had to be disabled, because it would cause a kill, which wouldn’t get him the item. He COMPELTELY MAXED OUT EVERYONE, had every materia MAXED OUT multiple times over, all the best items, he was unstoppable! He got all the way to the final boss, put down the controller, and walked away! He said that the boss would be too easy, and wasn’t worth his time! My little brother picked it up, because his save file was pretty garbage, lol. In the battle against the final bosses, the only Materia he had equipped was Counter on each of his 3 main characters. The characters were really SO STRONG that they killed the final bosses without every pressing O!
I used to be a level grinder, I loved having really strong characters, but after this… it seemed pointless. Unless your willing to get your character to have maximum stats in every single category (not just levels, hp, mp, spells), you’re not really MAXED OUT!
Final Fantasy VII was a great game. Now, when I play it, I try to see how low level I can be and still win, lol.
My greatest is during the time of Final Fantasy 7. I has been going through the game trying to finish everything. One day after a long day of work, longing to play one of the greatest games I had and have ever played, I started in again the Emerald Weapon. I was completely exhausted, but went on to play anyway. Emerald, being one of the more challenging tasks in the game, took me a half an hour to defeat. This may not seem all THAT amazing, however, the most amazing part of it is that less than halfway through the battle, I fell asleep. My fingers decidedly had a mind of their own and continued playing on. When I woke up and look at the clock at least 20 minutes had passed and I defeated Emerald Weapon. The most upsetting part of this to me was that I wanted to see how it died and was really upset that I missed it. There was no way that I was going through that again though, especially not knowing how I beat him. I then went on to later gather all the materia, including Knights of the Round and blowing Sepiroth away, all in all, one of the…if not the greatest…gaming experience I’ve ever had to date.