Day 5 - I'll always love Cid from FFVII, Cid from FFIX was pretty cool, being a Oglop and all.
Day 6 - I would like to live in the IX world, it just seems a bit more lighthearted & less chaotic of a world or the world of WoFF (lol no pun intended), that would be freakin cool, almost being in the pokemon world & yet having many Final Fantasy worlds come together with heaps of the awesome peoples!!! That would be cool!
Specifically her Savior/Equilibrium garb. That look is the perfect fusion of functionality, badassery and sexy. It is without question, my favorite play arts kai figure and the one I sought after the hardest.
Honorable mention goes to Cloud's AC outfit, a nice badass look for Cloud post FFVII.
....And KH Sephiroth because it's so hilariously, jaw-dropping extravagant and silly that it circles back around to badass. Only Sephiroth could wear such an over-the-top evil Halloween inspired outfit complete with red-trim, bat shaped arm wings, and still look intimidating and badass. When I saw the full render of it on the KH Final Mix website, I was simply amazed at seeing him in updated graphics with such an over the top outfit and I just thought that it was da' bomb. It still amuses me to this day and it's my favorite Sephiroth play arts figure I own to date.
But I’m going to have to go with Lightning. Simply because my life goals are to make her real and put a ring on dat finger. I just remember playing that game for the first time and being astounded that a video game character could be that hot!
Oh look! A non FF7 answer! Good job on the questions Cid condom!
Day 6. I would like to be a merchant or a hunter in Ivalice. It 'a world that fascinates me a lot, full of races and magnificent places .. I would open my shop in Bhujerba!
Day 7: Edea's got style, but AC Tifa's costume is fantastic, it's a perfect balance of style, comfort, and functionality, and feels like something she would actually wear.
For me, Seifer's gear looks good, there are no obvious logistical issues and I love his coat.
Day 7. Oh man this is a very hard question. Kain, Faris, Locke, Setzer, Rufus, Squall, Seifer, Freya, Balthier, Fang... my top 10 costume designs I think. I gotta go with Fang for the best simply because her cosplayers always look good (cannot say the same for anyone else) and if I could wear someone's get-up I'd wear Balthiers. So snazzy.
FRAN! The combination of the black armor with the long white hair and bunny ears is siiiiick. Can't say it's a very practical battle outfit but y'know Vieras are probably very adept at fighting in heels. Is it perverted to make her party leader for the sole purpose of watching her run from behind?
All right... Days 1 - 7.... And yes, most of these are probably going to be FFXIV related...
Day 1 - Favorite Character
I really like the character arc Alphinaud goes through in FFXIV. He starts out as an idealist and is a bit too arrogant and subsequently is too prideful. He takes a really bad fall because of that and has to do a lot of soul searching. He comes out of it a lot better. Comparing him at the start of 2.0 to where he is throughout the rest of the game is really fun. He's grown a ton.
Gaius van Baelsaur
He's probably my favorite sympathetic antagonist character from the series.
I tend not to find the main villians of FF games all that interesting. Most of them get Fraudian Excusses for why they do what they do and that's about it. They usually don't change over the course of the game they are in because they've already had all their character development by the time the player runs into them.
Gaius van Baelsaur isn't like that. For starters, he's playing the role of "bad guys are people too" and "not all the bad guys actually hate the people they are fighting" right from the get go. In fact, he's a foil for the 1.0 villain. They are both Garlean Legati bent on conquering Eorzea, but the other one is the Sephiroth of FFXIV and wants to call Metor down and destroy Eorzea. Gaius doesn't want that because he actually cares about rueling people well to the point that he isn't racist. Which is very different comparied to the Garleans we meet later down the line. It's to the point that he eventually starts passing information to the Eorzeans so that they have every chance of stopping the other legatus from totally destroying them.
In 2.0 he's more of the traditional villian, but even then he's never portrayed as a monster. He really does care about rueling well (however hypocritical that makes him at times) and pobably the biggest reason he wants to conquer Eorzea is because he thinks their current rulers aren't doing a good job of it. Which... given what we see in 1.0 was a pretty accurate read of the sitiuation back then. His reaction to finding out that he was manipulated by the actual bad guy is probably the angriest we've ever seen him. The way he loses again us is also one of the most gracious ways anyone loses to us in the series. And then he's dead right as he was admitting that yes, we really can rule Eorzea well...
The reason why he's interesting just from that is because the Garlean Legati we meet after him get less and less complex as characters. They feel a lot more like traditional FF villains where they don't have a lot of character development after we meet them. So finding out right from the get-go that there are Garleans that aren't total monsters was interesting.
Of course, the more interesting part was when it turned out the Gaius actually didn't die at the end of 2.0 (we never actually see him die, just the area he was in explode). In 4.3, an expansion in a half later, we meet up with Gaius again. Only instead of being the Legatus of a Legion, he's half-way around the world hunting down the people who manipulated him in 2.0 in a place we can't get to in the game yet. He ends up voluntarily giving us a bunch of information about them we didn't know yet and also tells us that he's not planing on going back to being a Legatus and is more interested in making sure his home country doesn't get manipulated either. From the sound of it, he's almost glad that we gave him the opportunity to find out who the real enemy was. Basicly, he's pretty much doing the same thing we are, just in a place we would have a very hard time getting to.
So yeah, Gaius is probably one of the most complex characters in FFXIV. He's certainly one of the more complex... antagonists... in the series. He's got a lot of motives that do line up with what we want and some the don't. He's also got one hell of a character arc and his arc isn't even done yet. Seeing what he ends up doing next FFXIV expansion is on the top of many people's lists of things they are looking forwards to.
Day 2 - Favorite Limit Break
I like FFVII's limit break system the best.
The limit break I had the most fun with what Rinoa's Angel Wing limit break. I like how it conveyed how the Sorceresses were not in complete control of their powers. However, it also gave a way to control it if you figured out how it picked what magic to cast. If you did figure it out, Rinoa turned out to be one of the best damage dealers in the game.
Day 3 - Most Shocking Plot Twist
The second-to-last cutscene of FFXIV 4.4. If you've played up until then, you know what cutscene that is. I am not spoiling it.
The cut-scene pretty much called for a reevaluation of the Garlean Empire as a whole. And there's never not been a time they haven't been a threat in the entire game...
Day 4 - Best Storyline
Heh... ironically I can't say FFXIV in this since it's story isn't done. And the story of the next expansion looks like it's going to be a dozey.
I like FFXII's story and how in manages to combine both mundane politics with fantasy elements. It exemplifies both the fantasy setting and the mundane going-ons of society very well. FFIX did this too, but I didn't connect as well to it for some reason. Probably because a lot of FFIX's enemies were a tad too cartoonish in their execution.
FFVII is good too, but you could tell a similar story in a a sci-fi setting with no magic and it would work just as well. The "fantasy" aspect of it felt like a hand-wave for "lets not have to explain sciencey stuff".
Day 5 - Favorite Cid
Cid nan Garlond from FFXIV. He's the Cid I'm the most impressed with when I look at his backstory and see where he's coming from. And how far he has come from then.
This is a guy who was a child genius when it came to technology and didn't really care what his government was having him design (mainly war machina). Until his dad was killed from experimenting with what was essentially a superweapon when the superweapon went off and obliterated the entire metropolis his government funded lab was in. That woke Cid up to what he was really working on and he decided he didn't want to be working on war technology anymore. Only problem was... the Empire he (and his dad) worked for wanted him to continue the experiments his had been doing when he was killed. And they wouldn't take "no" for an answer.
This resulted in Cid making an airship and feeling the Empire to Eorze. Only, he didn't flee them by himself. He took all of his assistants who didn't like working for the Empire with him and together they founded the Ironworks. In addition to making airships for the Eorzeans, they also specialized in making non-military technology and dealing with whatever anchient advanced tech they came across so that it wouldn't be misused. And all that happens before the game even starts!
Once the game does start, he mainly servers as our tech support and helps us figure out how the more technological threats we face work. This is too the point that he's willing to get the plans to the superweapon that killed his dad and re-purpose them into something we need to take down one of our enemies (in it's own pocket dimention). From how he describes how he feels about that, he's dealing with a lot of guilt and PTSD at the time from how his dad's obsession with technology was what killed him. And yet he's still willing to face that to help us out.
Day 6 - FF World I want to live in and how would I live in it
FFVIII. So long as you aren't stupid, you can have a pretty peaceful life most places. I'd probably want to work at a weapon shop or something where I could tinker with making the best use of monster parts as weapon components.
FFXIV gets mentioned because there's a lot of opportunity to have a peaceful life, it's just not the focus of the story. I'd probably be doing something with the Archanists guild and doing research into arcane mathematics.
Day 7 - Best Character Aesthetic/Outfit
There is a saying in FFXIV that "Glamour is the true end-game". And that really wouldn't be possible without having some great outfit designers for all that armor we wear. This especially goes for the later job specific gear which has stopped being based on the traditional FF job gear designs as time has gone on.
Some of my favorites
Outside of FFXIV... Tifa and Cloud in ACC have some of the best designs that mix the feeling of fantastical clothing with something that actually looks like you could wear it in real life. Edea's design in FFVIII also feels very different compared to the way most of the villians have complicated looking costumes. FFVIII also has some great character designs that while they look generic, they stand out compared to the other FF character designs feel. You can almost always tell when a character came from FFVIII.
There are so many hilarious moments of Final Fantasy that I would make far too long a tl;dr trying to list the ones that are memorable to me.
But one thing for sure is that anything with Gligamesh and Snow is comedic gold.
So I submit exhibit A.
Like, this is just too hilarious. Celes between Snow and Gilgamesh is just... I was in tears.
Next I submit exhibit B.
The entire fanservice intro for the Colosseum of FFXIII-2 that's just. I can't. It's too much hilarious awesomeness. John DiMaggio's voice for Gilgamesh is my favorite, personally. This had me laughing and hyped in equal measure.
So yeah. Snow is just full of so much hammy hilarity that he just makes pretty much any game he's in fucking hilarious. And combining him with Gilgamesh is just lols all around.
And another hilarious moment in Final Fantasy deserves to get special mention.
This. From Final Fantasy XI.
If you refuse to pay Shantotto's fee of 5000 gil for helping you in your quest?
She murders you for wasting her time.
You are literally killed in game by her.
There's something horrifying and hilarious about that. And that's why she's one of my favorite characters too.
EDIT: And holy shit. I nearly forgot.. The most badass moment with Shantotto....
One of my favorite moments in fucking Dissidia ever.
This moment here puts Dissidia NT's story above the last one, no doubt. I fucking love the character interactions in that game but this?
This was magic. A truly awesome spectacle. Words cannot describe the hilarity of seeing Ultimecia's face shift from amusement to rage as Shantotto just burns her. Just... Omg.
Funniest for me is FFIX Disc 1 Steiner, and Quina all the time.
Both are funny to me for the same reason: fanatically obsessed with a singular motivation to the point of utter obliviousness. Steiner’s lawful-stupid paladin trope is executed perfectly - whoever they got to translate nailed it. The comedy also comes out of the poetic irony of the situation — we know that his belief in Brahne is misplaced, and we know that other shoe is gonna drop on him sooner or later.
Steiner eventually trades in his yucks for character development, but Quina remains an aloof chaotic-neutral Id machine through the denouement. S/he’s with the party because s/he believes they will lead him/her to yummy yummies, and as soon as s/he thinks s/he can find them on his/her own s/he bails. S/he has zero investment in the story and that doesn’t change, s/he’s too frog-brained for that to be even possible. And the party has very little investment in her, and they don’t care when she gets lost. For me it’s non-stop hilarity.
Quick suggestion, can we get like a masterpost of all the days on the first page?
Day 1: My favorite all time character is obviously, Cloud. My reasons for him being my ultimate bias has changed throughout the years, but the one constant reason he is my favorite is because Cloud has fucked up a lot of things, and a lot of fucked up things happened to him. But unlike the typical plucky protagonist who would man up and face their personal trauma head on with a smile, Cloud's past failures and flaws haunt and debilitate him so realistically it just makes him so...human.
And off course, how Cloud eventually finds the strength to overcome his problems is just inspiring.
Other characters that are my favorite:
Noctis -- how he struggles with responsibility is too real. Also, his struggles with waking up and wanting to sleep in forever is also too real.
Lightning -- I love the classic anti-hero who cares jackshit fuckall nothing about nearly everyone who eventually warms up to other people and start caring for them. It's so great.
Squall -- You'd think I like him for the same reasons as Lightning, but nope! ...I mean, I do, but I like Squall more than Lightning for the following reasons: Too many people scoff at Squall's lone wolf schtick and at his reasons for keeping people away at an arm's length because he's afraid of the pain of getting close to people and losing them, and it's a fear that I strongly relate to, because people are fucking bitches, that's why.
and off course, Ramza. Ramza's my favorite, but I also think he's the best character of all, objectively. I just...love everything about him. His journey from being a sheltered, naive son of a noble to a vigilante heretic who never stops fighting for what he believes in is extremely inspiring. (I just wish we could get more of what Ramza is thinking at certain parts of Tactics, but sometimes it's fun to leave stuff to speculation.)
Also, Ramza has the finest ass in all of Ivalice. Fight me on this.
Also also, Ramza is like the best support unit in FFRK.
Day 2: Cloud's Omnislash Vr 5+6 and Lightning's Army of One are really cool to look at, but I think Noctis's Armiger Chain is my favorite -- because you can control it in battle!
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