Is FF8 the worst FF of Square's golden age?

And it makes him edgy for all of six minutes before he's reminded that his origin isn't the sum of his being.
Hell, do we also ignore that Cloud stops being edgy after his soul is rebuilt and his past made clear from start to finish? He's a nerd beneath it all.

The whole series has memorable villains, or else Dissidia would not be nearly as pleasant as it is.

IV has the excuse of expanding on the setup of go to dungeon -> grind -> level up and buy gear. VIII added "improvements" that no one wanted, like a salary based on quizzes, junctioning, GFs, drawing magic, and mandatory weapon crafting.

There's always a lot of back and forth over 8. There were threads on Veeky Forums last year where a majority of posters felt that 8 was one of the better ones.

>Though honestly the real JRPG kings are things with very limited numbers of sequels
I think that's a very narrow view on the series.

If Final Fantasy had stayed up to just II or III it wouldn't had produced the genuinely good games that are IV, VI and VII, for instance.
I believe that since "Final Fantasy" as a name carries so much weight nowadays, it's all too easy to find faults in the series because of how many people discuss it.
It's the same deal with absurdly popular things like D&D. The game continues to be the most popular example of tapletop RPGs, yet many would consider it irredeemable shit just because of how much exposure they get to it. Or things like MLP, Touhou, JoJo or Undertale, where people get so fed up with it because it's impossible to take two figurative internet steps without bashing your head into a stupid meme.

If Final Fantasy XIII hadn't been released under that name and had been a new IP instead, everybody would remember it as "that cool RPG with lots of graphics that was kinda linear" instead if the "one of the worst modern FFs" that it currently is.

Golden age being pre-X?

Anyways IMO V was the weakest one, good mechanics but the plot was thinner than skim milk.

VIII's primary issue comes from weird story pacing problems that stem from it's production.
Basically the entire staff making VIII was pulled from making Xenogears about 2/3rds of the way through Xenogears development (enough to finish the game but leave huge sections out which is shown in unfortunate gameplay choices), and suddenly rushed onto the VIII project because Square wanted it out on time so had as many people as possible working on it.

FFVIII has strong visuals because those got created and decided upon well before the game was even done (Tetsuya Nomura's design aesthetics are fairly consistent anyway), but the actual PLOT of the game is so undecided and kind of messy in it's execution because the writers had to suddenly shift gears and design the game around pre-drawn graphics set pieces that they had no real connection to or storyline for by the time they got there.

>kinda linear

Let's be real. It wouldn't have sold like it did because it would not have been the PS3's Final Fantasy game. It would have been forgotten about because the graphics, while shiny, were nothing casuals had not seen before.

Story-wise I'd say IX is the best.

But VII is the most enjoyable imo. The story is bad and makes no sense, but everything else is very well designed and memorable, it introduced a few interesting mechanics and the game was challenging. It also had nice side-stories and mini-games.
The graphics aged like piss though.

VIII has nice art but everything else is absolutely horrible. Even the challenge part is shit because theres no point in grinding or leveling your character since the enemies just scale to how strong you are.
VIII for me was all about the card game.

IX has good everything but feels a little uninspired compared to the previous games.

FF8's real problem was the Junction system, which is was a good experiment on paper but it in practice it just done more harm then good. Sure it can allow you customize and min max your character as you wish but, it requires ages of brainless grinding, you have to re-junction every time your party set up changes (even if you automate it), it can easily break the game if you know what you are doing, and finally it is almost completely unnecessary because GF summoning is free and does massive AOE damage to everything and the game (like most FFs) is already ridiculously easy.

The story itself isn't really much better or worse than your generic FF stories, the only big problem is that it railroads a hell lot.

This belongs on /v/, and yes. But to be fair, it wasn't that Squall was a bad protagonist, its just that his supporting cast was unlikable.

This is why Deus Ex Human Revolution is an irredeemable pile of shit to me.
It cannot live up to the mantle.

This. Squall would have been better remembered if all his party mates were Laguna tier.

I wan't to disagree but now you mention it... you'r right.

They're all cardboard cutouts, with the exception of Rinoa... she's fucking crepe paper.

Fuck yeah, those guys had more going for them than the main crew, it's a sad day when you're actually longing for the tinnitus-inducing whine of a flashback.

After knowing about Squall's past, it is not a surprise that he was they way he is even if he comes up as a jerk at the start. He was just a guy that focused on his work and stayed distant from everyone because he though that if he has no emotions that he cannot be hurt. A stupid idea yes but he is just a kid who with a shitty past that was mindwiped, his behavior actually makes sense. The other characters were pretty low tier tough indeed.

There's also the thing of production values. Perhaps FFXII wouldn't have been made in the first place if it was planned as a new IP, because doing so would involve risk. Maybe the game would have to be shorter or look worse, because less money would've been put into it.

A lot of genuinely good RPGs that weren't made into a full fledged franchises just faded into obscurity, so maybe this is all for the better. Can you imagine if shit like The Last Remnant or The Last Story were Final Fantasies instead?