Weekly /r/FinalFantasy Question Thread – Week of March 01, 2021

I'd say OG VII. Since you've played the remake, you'll already know some of the story and characters, so early on you can focus more getting used to the combat, since it's different from both X and VIIR. It's also easily the most outdated of the PS1 titles, so playing it first and then seeing the improvements that VIII and IX make will probably be easier than going backwards.

I'd say just think if you want more of the same theme and story (VII) or something quite different (IX) and choose from there. Both are excellent games in general.

No, they don't work like the equipment abilities from FFX. It might be worth keeping them in case you have sub-optimal junctions, but that's up to you. It's easy enough to get them again if you delete them from your GFs, assuming you have access to the Card club

EDIT: I originally interpreted "keeping" as keeping the abilities on your GF, but upon re-reading I'm pretty sure you meant keeping active on your characters. If that is the case, no there's no point to keeping the abilities active. I usually run something like Auto-Haste/Auto-Protect/Speed +/Evasion +

Four ways to farm magic:

Drawing as you describe. Can speed up by having a high magic stat so you're drawing 9 of each magic each turn. For some magic, this is the most efficient way of farming it, especially if its monster drop is un-refineable.

Refining monster drops. This is the fastest method to farm most magic. Fight monsters, steal, and/or hope they drop these items.

Gamebreaking: Building on #2, you can refine cards into monster drops using Quetzalcoatl's Card Mod skill. The fastest method here is to play and manipulate Triple Triad rules into All or Diff to farm more cards at a time.

Gamebreaking: there's one draw point in the game that is worth farming from, which is Ultima from Shumi. You'll have to exit and walk around the map with a chocobo to refill the draw point.

You'll have to draw a bit near the beginning to start off. But once you learn your refine skills, there's not much need to draw anymore with the exception of a few magic.

In general, the "optimal" strategy is to refine cards into magic using refine abilities.

The GF Quetzacoatl will have an ability called Card, which turns enemies into cards. After learning that you can learn card mod, which turns cards into items. Then various GFs will have refine abilities (for example, Ifrit has Fire Magic Refine), which can turn items into magic. So by playing cards and carding enemies, then turning those cards into magic, you can get better magic faster than you could get by drawing, and you avoid gaining experience which makes enemies harder (I'm operating under the impression that you're already aware of this, but if not I can elaborate).

One important thing to note is that while this is the "optimal" strategy, it's not at all necessary and you can get through the game fine by just drawing once or twice in every battle, or by grinding draws in a single battle. The game isn't that hard, the only two things I would recommend not doing are intentionally levelling up your characters, which will actually make the game harder later, or over-relying on GFs for damage, which will get you through much of the game but will run you into a few roadblocks.

EDIT: The other response put this way better than I did, read their comment instead of mine.

Other people have brought up refining items and cards into spells, and that is the best way to do it.

But if you find yourself in a situation where you need to draw to stock up, like early in the game, do it with characters that have a high magic stat then move the spells from that character to whoever needs them. Don't be stupid like I was and try to have Zell stock his own spells for an hour.

I love the junction system. It made the game more challenging. I also didn't mind constantly drawing because it's a necessity especially when you can have triples, holy, Ultima and the like. Card & refine are great ways to expedite this process also. I also go out on hunting trips to raise level. Triple Triad is a great game but gets a little tricky when you're playing under foreign rules. There are so many sidequests that you should never be bored. Same with X. The sidequests are many and there are so many optional bosses that it keeps the gameplay fresh.

If you teach one character blue magic, everyone can use it. You just have to see the skill used in battle and win it (blue mage alive or dead doesn't matter) to learn it.

I'd definitely go with X. For starters, it's the only truly turn-based game you mentioned. VII and VIII basically have the same ATB system as the games you've played, though, so I recommend playing VII if that's what you're looking for. X will have plenty of characters and locations you know (and maybe love?) already since you've played X-2. It should also clear a lot of things up that you may have found confusing in X-2. Additionally, if you're playing the HD remaster version, the graphics will be significantly better than VII and VIII, if that's something you care about. Finally, while this is entirely subjective, I think X has much better story, characters, and gameplay than the other two.

As far as XIII goes, I highly recommend you don't skip the first game and just go on to XIII-2. I'm assuming you don't really care much about the stories, since you skipped X to play X-2, but I just can't in good conscience recommend skipping the first game. Many people already have trouble understanding the story of XIII-2, and skipping out on XIII certainly won't help with that. Additionally, if XIII is too hard, play it on easy mode. There's no shame in that, after all that's what it's there for. If you enjoyed the little bit that you played of XIII, though, it's definitely worth checking it out again.

It specifically does not. If you go to the ad it says you won't get the free next gen update if you claim the free PS4 version.