Gurps: Final Fantasy

[Blood Legend]

I know a lot of you hate the games, I know a lot of you love them to death. I'm not here to say this one is better than that one or the plot in FFA sucked compared to FFB. Lets strip away what made any one individual Final Fantasy game bad and what we are obviously left with is the good.

It's usual turn-based almost non-tactical style of gameplay - Gone
Square Enix being in love with amnesia - Deleted.
Guys that look like girls - Woosh!!

And what are we left with? weird weapons, adorable monsters, amazing realms of strange mysticism, great legends buried through time and space (sometimes literally), powerful gods of decisive natures, strange aircraft, and an easily imaginable blend of sword, magic, and technology. It's a very fun world.

I want to rip out the essence of Final Fantasy and twist it into something remotely Gurps. I've never played DnD but I can tell right off the bat that it would probably be suited to play Final Fantasy way better than Gurps can without some heavy tweaking, and world specific rules in the form of advantages that are there 'just because.' Water boils because it's hot. People survive meteors crashing on them from space because ...shutup! Problem is, I don't have DnD, so make due with what ya got and since I'm making due with one of the best gaming systems evar that shouldn't be to bad.

Here's what I've grabbed so far:

• Cool Weapons
• Summonable Allies
• Rigid Magic System
• Cute Monsters
• Airships (All shapes and sizes)
• Unique Bad Guys
• Limit Breaks (Overdrive, Trance...)
• Strange Lands
• A saught after, precious, or dangerous material (four orbs of power, mako, mist)
• Metaphysical World-Ending Disasters
• Strange new sentient races (Like the Shumi, Moomba or Ronso)
• The 'Weapons' (Ultima, Ruby)
• A Forgotten Civilization
• Eccentricly Stylized and Obvious mages.
• Dark Knights/Judges (in one way or another)
• Evil Empires

Aside from recurring characters, what else?

How do I make this Gurpsy? What's a good power level for the players? Low-end supers or high powered normals? How do I prevent severe amounts of generic damage in a videogame from instantly and irreversably destroying my players without bending the rules at all (period) or hand-waving the spells/summons? Let them buy high levels of HP, maybe a typified damage reduction? What would be appropriate without destroying the game-feel of surviving massive explosions? How do I pull of limit breaks?

Also Note: I still don't have Martial Arts which may or may not help this project but if you want to PM me with any completed ideas or mechanics you think would aid Final Fantasy and tell me how to use them in a running game I'd be greatful. I am also aware of the 'Common Elements of Final Fantasy' wikipedia article and have read it.

[GhostInTheMachine]

Oh heck yes! I've been looking at doing something like this for a while...

As starting chars I'd put a start @ 300/-50 pts. Martial arts wouldn't be too much of a big deal (oh and for a lack of turn based combat see FFXII) unless you are using a straight up Monk or Hand to Hand type. The only real use for martial arts would be for getting the weapons listed therein.

WEAPONS: Should be VERY ornamental. Elemental damage and "magical" enchantments should be everywhere and common at higher Pt Levels. The enchantments should give bonuses to ST, DX, etc. If you have a soft spot for FF7 it would be easy to use a plug and play Mako Stone system this way.

HIT LOCALES: Leave only a torso. Leave out hit locales everywhere else.

HEALING/SPELLS: Should be cheap and easy. Give anyone a certain MP score (FP Usuable only for Spells from Powers). The Genericness of GURPS should be lost. Cinematically man handle the spells into an elemental mash of upped power levels. Potions should be abundant and useful (Potion=1d, High Potion=2d, X Potion=3d, Elixir=Full HP[1 PC], Megalixir=Full HP Whole Party, Copy this w/ Ethers and the -e, -a, -ga, -ja spells).

SPELL NOTE: Be careful when randomly using spells from a variety of FF's. They change from game to game.

MONSTERS: The face melting part. There are A LOT OF MONSTERS IN FF. Fortunately for the programmers sake and yours they repeat in and throughout the FF series. You may have a cheap lil 2 Pt frog in the beginning, but later on change the name and color of the thing and up the stats of the thing. BOOM. New monster. Make only as necessary.

VEHICLES: The easy part. Toss in a few Chocobos and go. Although the later games seem to have more vehicles most can be hand waved (trains, subways, etc). The few you do encounter probably are too high powered for the PC's anyway, but they should be kept in mind for The Final Battle.

RACES: Rigid and simple, but numerous.

ARMOR: Treat Like weapons only slightly uglier. Enchantments galore and your average high Pt Level Leather Armor gives +20 DR. Throw in Gear slots and ignore Encumberance to a minor degree and you can have your players avoid getting killed by a swarm of angry Cactaurs.

COMBAT/"DEATH": Should be simple. Crippling and low HP/FP mods should be ignored (unless under Immobilize, Stop, or Slow!). At 0 to -1 HP keep the HT saving throw to avoid KO. At -5 HP the PC's are KO'ed instantly. If the whole party is KO'ed everyone dies. Monsters are pacifists that way. So Revive spells galore and Fenix Down. You can treat combat how you want. The monsters should steadily up the power level unless the PC's go into somewhere they quite obviously shouldn't.

SUMMONS: Should be hard to get, cost tons of MP, and be flashier than Vegas at night. Depending on how you want to do things they could be a one hit Innate Attack or a Temporary Summonable Ally capable of acting on their or your accord.

Stick a fork in me. I'm done.

[Maz]

A really integrated part of the FF system is a class system. Or at the very least a rigid advancement table (compared to GURPS) that forces people to take advantages that matches a class.

People are "white mage", "Black mage", "monk", "thief", "lancer" and so on. Even in FFX where they do not have classes in the same way, they still fall into the same roles: Lulu is a Black Mage, Tidus is a Thief, Kihmari is a Blue mage/Lancer and so on.

FFXII is perhaps the most free of them, you can really pick and chose using something resembling CP. Although you still have a prerecs for stuff. So in order to be a really good healer (White Mage), you have to focus your points.



But I agree with your list, although a few of them is up to the GM's play style and doesn't have anything to do with what rules you use. Such as:

* Cute Monsters
* Strange Lands
* A saught after, precious, or dangerous material (four orbs of power, mako, mist)
* Metaphysical World-Ending Disasters
* Strange new sentient races (Like the Shumi, Moomba or Ronso)
* A Forgotten Civilization
* Eccentricly Stylized and Obvious mages.
* Dark Knights/Judges (in one way or another)


So that leaves us with the following to come up with:

Cool Weapons
This is only true for the newer FF (FF7 and up). In the older a weapon was just a weapon, it wasn't unique to a character and it was just a normal sword or bow, although sometimes they were linked to an element.
In the newer ones I would call them 'weird' weapons instead. And I would handle them using Innate attacks/gadgets and so on.


Summonable Allies
The name says it all. They would have to be pretty limited in order to not be too expensive though. Stuff like "limited uses" or "cost (a lot) FP", "Reduced duration" and maybe some sort of "uncontrollable" (that means they can't control the monster after they summon it) and so on.

Rigid Magic System
In general there is Black Magic (damage and some afflictions), White Magic (Healing and remove afflictions), Blue Magic (Stealing abilities and using them against the monster) blue could be left out IMO.
Red Mages cast a mix of Black and White but also sometimes have unique Afflictions/heal affliction. But they are not really a 'class of magic'.


Black Magic is based on opposing elements. In some FF games there are over 10 different elements, in FF8 I cant' even remember how many there are. But mostly it's down to 4-6 basis ones: Fire<->Water, Lightning<->Ice and Light<->Darkness.
The attack spells are build like powers and usually have about 3 levels, named as the base spell but with a new ending: Fire-Fira-Firaga or Thunder-Thunda-Thundara and so on.
However the spells damage is based on the casters Intelligent stat, which raises with levels, so the damage improves slowly until you get a new 'level' of the spell after which it increases dramatically.

Also almost all monsters are vulnerable to one type of element and protected (or even gains hp from) the opposite element. So figuring out what element a monster is, is always a big tactical success.


Limit Breaks (Overdrive, Trance...)
There are many different ways these build up. It can be when you do damage or when you receive damage or even when your companions take damage.
In the end you get a 'super attack'. And it starts recharging again.
As we build each character with Innate attacks (either in the form of an item or in the form of spells) the easiest way I can think of to do this would be to give some temporary CP that can only be used for boosting your ability for a single attack. Inspired by the section in Powers about temporary boosting abilities.

Strange new sentient races (Like the Shumi, Moomba or Ronso)
MOOGLES!
Those are the only constant race throughout the series. But they are rarely a player race. You are right, there is often others, but they differ from game to game.

The 'Weapons' (Ultima, Ruby)
Super strong dragon-like monsters. This shouldn't be hard to stat up.


I would also like to add:

Unique abilities
FF is full of unique abilities like Blood Legend also states. This is really the place to go wild with Powers. Many are 'spell like' costing mana points. But others are just innate abilities.

[Blood Legend]

<_< >_> I hate moogles so much...

They're in my game of course. I just despise them. They really do nothing and they're like this big...fat...sore thumb in a beautifully crafted excellent universe. Like putting a red dot in the middle of the mona lisa. But they'll be in there too. Can't have the classic mascot squad of monsters (chocobo cactar tonberry moogle) without moogle.

Summons: I'm on the fence for 'huge innate attack' or 'summonable ally' Summonable Ally with a huge innate attack seems spot on, but mechanically lengthy and pretty pointless to boot if the players are only going to use Bahamut like a cannon (as they should ;D).

Limit Breaks: I was thinking of doing them as a series of innate attacks that can only be performed when the hero is reduced to 0 or less HP, making the Limit break a sort of "...alright, I'm barely hanging on to consciousness, time to pull out all the stops or I DIE!" But how much do I price the limitaiton. And is it an Accessiblity or a Trigger of some sort.

Unique Skills: There is one that I can think of off the top of my head right now. Darkness. You sacrifice a chunk of life to get a great deal of extra damage out of your swing. I was thinking with a follow-up attack with (Cosmic-50%; damage is applied before DR), but is this use of Cosmic ok? Or how about loads of Arm ST that costs HP to use once per swing. What would you price that at? I'm definitly adding in the classic Dragoon 'Jump' ability. What were some memorable skills from other games in the series? I hear Samurai have some sort of weird skill or two..

I'm also going to rip from Final Fantasy 8's draw system for blue magic, the spell being only as powerful as the lower of the player or the original monster's magical ability, whichever's worse (leaving this mechanic out on certain unique spells.) And how do I build the Scan spell? Detect: HP & Weakness?

I've even gotten a small backstory cobbled together that's sort of a rip on every final fantasy ever made but I have to clean it up and leave out certain bits so players can't read.

I suppose I could fnord it ..

As for spells, I'm going to be using pretty much any spell I can from any game that doesn't cross its wires and use the name of one spell for something else (this will give me something like one and a half to twice as many spells as the standard Final Fantasy Spell-List). Time and space magic will be forbidden arts since if anyone can recall, screwing with Time used to be this big central plot in Final Fantasy 1 and 8 and Space in Final Fantasy 7, and I sort of wanna make summoning meteors crashing down into the planet a big thing again.

Rivals!: To quote spiderman, "Everyone gets one." Don't know why I didn't think of that before. Killing Sephiroth meant something to you because he was your rival. Seifer was more appealing an enemy than Ultimecia ever was. Rivals all around!

Classes: I played Final Fantasy in this order: 8, 10, 1, 7, 9. Classes never took a prominent roll for me (though their skills were cool). These strike me as more of letting the characters build what they want to play then giving them a title without adhearing to much of anything besides social standing and normal cultural attire. Sure Zell could have been called a monk, but he really only beat the ever living snot out of everything. Tidus could have been called a warrior if he wasn't a preppy backstreet boy...

Edits made

[Blood Legend]

WARNING - MEGA-FNORD AHEAD - DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE NOT A GM: Psuedo-Story: Local head of Religion-A has gone crazy nutso and has taken off in search of the four guardian crystals of Local-Religion-A's apocolyptic lore. The four crystals when placed in an ancient temple will open a path to the lifestream, when touched will supposedly turn someone into an immortal god enabling him to bend the world to his whim. This temple was guarded by a race of ancient humans baring Angelic wings when the followers of the great 4 demons, Behemoth (Ice), Tiamat (Fire), Manticore (Earth), and Hydra (Water), attacked the temple and stole the crystals. A great many wars were fought to retrieve the crystals, neither side holding on to any of the four crystals for very long. But time wained on and eventaully the angelics lost their great temple to the beasts, the remaining crystals soon after. The four inexperienced demons began to tamper with the lifestream, fighting and bickering all at once for control. In the chaos, Ultima was born, he smote down the demons and locked them away inside the crystals. What was left of the angelics brought him down while he recovered his strength, sealing him in the tomb of the lifestream, knowing they were safe because a pure creation of the lifestream cannot effect the rest of the lifestream. The crystals were inevitably retrieved. What few 'angels' left decided to seperate the crystals to prevent them from ever falling into harms way so easily ever again. Their final act was to lift their great temple into the sky and hide it amongst the clouds. They turned to the lifestream once more and remade their once glorious race, sewing the memories of their ancient gifts into every living soul (what we call magic) but decided to remove their wings in hopes that no one would ever tamper with the lifestream ever again (since the temple is in the air). The weirdo-religious-leader-nut intends to locate the four crystals, regain his lost wings, locate the invisible flying temple and open the gate of the lifestream, unleashing Ultima onto the world to obliterate everything so he may rebuild it all in his own image. He plans on controlling Ultima with ancient texts describing the methods the angelics used to control the lifestream. The world is already heavy into bending semi-forgotten ancient clockwork technology and magic together and their faith in the various religions are dying, so no one really takes the senile ravings and lunatic actions of an unceremoniously forgotten religious head seriously until a high-scholar of the local king enlists a reward for any group of warriors who will put a stop to him after his affairs cross into active terrorism levels of random violence against key towns as he searches for and uproots the crystals. Disturbing the crystals unleashes the evil hidden within them to the surrounding area, unleashing terrible beasts that destroy whatever they see fit. When the high priest is exposed directly to the crystals, they severely warp his mind. This makes him increasingly psychotic.

The players must defeat each great demon as it attempts to possess the high priest, warping him into some neo-existance of the demons. They defeat the demon, he escapes, rinse and repeat 3 more times. At the temple it is revealed that the demons weren't destroyed, they merely retreated, weakened, back into their crystal prisons. When they are alligned and the lifestream gate is ready to be opened the high priest steps forth speaks incantations in languages forgotten for thousands of years, and instead of opening a gate to immortality, he unleashes the demons from their permenant prisons where they immediately possess him all at once. This turns him into the dreaded Omega. A powerful being of absolute chaos. The players defeat Omega Lord of Chaos and in his death-throughs the demons reveal the true words to open the lifestream, as such it does, releasing Ultima who instantly opens the scene by blasting the remnants of the four demons and the ever-mortal high priest into the Aetherverse. And then the final fight for the world begins as a being of Pure Essence and Singular Thought who's first experience with life was a sudden, violent and cruel episode, continues on its hellbent path of destruction on the planet. Can the players defeat him? They must unlock the secrets of the Engelion (throw-away name for the angelic beings) to find a way to destroy Ultima. I'm still pondering how to work Time into this campaign. Maybe Ultima isn't the end of the campaign and the players must go back in time and prevent his creation.

Pardon the typos and sloppy writing, I was brainstorming all night and have yet to sleep. It's 9am now. I'm trying to slam as much Final Fantasy as I can get into one campaign. If you want to add something to this, fnord and post. I want to expand on this as much as possible.

There's also going to be a roaming pack of knights who ride chocobos that are both incompetant and socially awkward trying to take down the high-looney-toon while the players 'interfere'. (Though I may be confusing anime troupes with Final Fantasy Troupes, so their irritating quirks might get nixed) They'll be boasting such claims as the best equipment and steeds in the land while sourly lacking in the skills to use them to their fullest effect.


ANYWHO does this strike you as Final Fantasy'y?

[kdtipa]

I guess the proper procedure is to call "fnord" and alert readers that I'm responding to a GM only piece...

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So in response to the idea of the incompetent but well geared roaming band of chokobo riding knights...

I'm not entirely certain of the role they'll play. Are they opposed to the player characters? Do the player characters fight them to take their good gear? Are they just a second group of people trying to do good in the land? I'm just a little fuzzy on that point.

My first reaction to reading your idea was that it seemed like a way to have cool gear ripe for the taking by the PCs. Just it seems a little too easy if the knights are incompetent.

To increase the Final Fantasy flavor... I'd make the knights a mystery. You don't know who's side they're on. They are privvy to some piece of information that they act on. Maybe they know that the hated emporer is not actually at fault for the major evils in the land, but some person in the shadows is, so they seem to be working against the players all the time when the players try to take out the emporer, but at some point in the campaign you have this big epiphany moment where the players realize what's really going on, and the knights end up becoming occassional allies... maybe even willing to help supply the PCs.

Just my initial thoughts on it.

[Blood Legend]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

I guess the proper procedure is to call "fnord" and alert readers that I'm responding to a GM only piece...

Try highlighting the text. ;)

>O>/) I summon; WALL OF TEXT!

Originally Posted by kdtipa

I'm not entirely certain of the role they'll play. Are they opposed to the player characters? (Yes somewhat) Do the player characters fight them to take their good gear? (Not really, the players may realize they're just bragging) Are they just a second group of people trying to do good in the land? (Also Yes) I'm just a little fuzzy on that point.

To increase the Final Fantasy flavor... I'd make the knights a mystery. You don't know who's side they're on. They are privvy to some piece of information that they act on. Maybe they know that the hated emporer is not actually at fault for the major evils in the land, but some person in the shadows is, so they seem to be working against the players all the time when the players try to take out the emporer, but at some point in the campaign you have this big epiphany moment where the players realize what's really going on, and the knights end up becoming occassional allies... maybe even willing to help supply the PCs.

Just my initial thoughts on it.

Oo, good point that. Ima toy with this.

[Joel]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

ANYWHO does this strike you as Final Fantasy'y?

Fnorded: Seems pretty FF to me, although it seems one thing that usually comes up in the games is that the real enemy with weird magical/metaphysical goals is usually revealed in passing after going up against a more down-to-earth enemy; Sephiroth who's trying to become a god while fighting Shinra who are just your basic greedy evil corporation in fantasyland, Kefka while fighting the empire, Kuja while fighting Garnets evil powerhungry mom etc., these people often have interests actually working against those they appear to be allied to. In your story, the priest seems to be the obvious bad guy nr. 1 from the start and demon possession notwithstanding he stays so just up untill the end.

This is just an idea but maybe the priest is working in the shadows in and behind some (criminal or enemy nation) organisation with more earthly goals for causing trouble, who are being tricked by the manipulating priest?

[Blood Legend]

Originally Posted by Joel

Fnorded: This is just an idea but maybe the priest is working in the shadows in and behind some (criminal or enemy nation) organisation with more earthly goals for causing trouble, who are being tricked by the manipulating priest?

I'm specifically avoiding that.

If anyone played FF8 you'll know how irritated you were to find out that the super-evil badguy that instilled fear into millions (that hypnotizing charimsa thing she had going on was just creepy as all hell...) was barely anything of the sort.

---
>O>/) <_< Finally! I've come to defeat you! THIS ENDS NOW!
>_> <O< you bet it ends now! I'm not really the bad guy!
>-> <_<
<o< <_< son of a [BEEEP]
<_< <O< The real bad guy is someone we're going to introduce in the last 10 minutes of the game! You've seen absolutely none of her abilities or what makes her this big scary threat 1000 years in the future!
>_> <O< Infact you have little reason at all to care about this new threat!
>_> <-< ...
>O> <_< YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! I SHOULD TAKE CARE OF THIS MENACE! Lets team up after you've turned my rival into a deadly enemy and attempted on several occasions to kill me and my friends without restraint (IE Icicle to my friggen HEART lady.)
---

Now this secret organization thing is the same thing. The players will be all hellbent on destroying this great high priest throughout the whole story who is directly causing them everything between Inconveniance to Death only to find out near the end that "Lol someone's pullin muh strings!" No....a million and 6 times no. But thanks .O.! Keep contributing.

Originally Posted by Surllio

If you are doing a Final Fantasy game, the question first becomes what magic system will you use.

FF 1, 3, 4, 5, and 9, spells were class based.
FF 6 and 7 the spells were gifted by items (Espers = 6, Materia =7)
FF 8 Spells were stolen from enemies and spell points.
FF 10 and 12 anyone could technically learn anything, but ultimately 10 was class based.

The fun thing about a Final Fantasy setting is just that. The setting.
1, 3, 4, and 9 were Medieval Fantasy (TL 3/4 - High Mana)
6 was Higher Ended Steampunk (TL 5/6 - Low Mana)
7 was Modernish (TL 8? - Low Mana [spells REQUIRE Materia])
8 and 12 were Futuristic (TL ? - High Mana?)
10 was simply post apocolyptic (TL 4 with shreds of 8/9 - High Mana)

Starting character points? 150 - 250 sounds good to me. 300 to be safe.

I completely agree. No called shots. It should be very hack and slash (I swing, I block, I swing). That also means that items shouldn't have HP. How often does a shield break in a Final Fantasy game.

I'm not sure how I would do Limit Breaks/Overdrives. Maybe a stylized, customizable Technique. Perhaps building it as an innate attack with a trigger or emergency only (character still up after hp 0 or less). Each player gets to design what they do, however usage should be very limited. Perhaps a once a day limit.

One thing I think you need to stress is diversity. Each character should be a different class type or set up. It is even more final fantasy like if you force them to specialize in different weapons. Maybe even have Signature Gear for a chosen weapon or armor.

It needs to be highly cinematic, and highly stylized.

Rivals and Enemies are needed!!! Crazy, over the top, save the world storylines are good, but need to progress.

Magic: Using all of them. Anyone will be able to use magic, but only true mages and wizards will be able to use them super-effectively. Items will grant spells or have spell like enhancements (Spellswords) and I'm using the draw ability from 8 as a temporary form of Blue Magic.

Setting: Again, all of them. It'll be a sort of TL8 Steam Punk+Magic setting that's crawling out of an apocolyptic incident that occured 1000 years ago. This 1000 years ancient past will have technology up the yin-yang and will be extremely relevant when the characters get thrust into the past to destroy Ultima instead of letting the Angelics locking it away (letting it recover and come back 1000 years later in full force). There will be a small handful or religions, one of them being abandoned. The "old-fashioned people with outdated views" shtick. Which is where the psychotic high-priest comes in. Which means there will still be a good deal of Chivalry, honor, and what have you, including a good deal of younger people instilled with the tendencies and views of their elders.

I really should call this Gurps: Final Fantasy; The Whole Gambit.

Fnords

[Maz]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

<_< >_> I hate moogles so much...

Hehe they are cute, but I wouldn't want them as part of a campaign either, at least not as a player race!

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Summons: I'm on the fence for 'huge innate attack' or 'summonable ally' Summonable Ally with a huge innate attack seems spot on, but mechanically lengthy and pretty pointless to boot if the players are only going to use Bahamut like a cannon (as they should ;D).

You got a good point here. FFX and FFXI actually seems to be the only ones I remember where you can control them (The bird-summon even saves Yuna with it's ability to fly in FFX, meaning that it can do other stuff than damage). In all others they are simple powerful attacks with a cool visual effect.
So if you only want the players to be able to use them for Damage, yeah Innate attack is by far the easiest way to go. Maybe with some added "takes extra time".

[edit]In FF:VIII they actually boost the character they are assigned to in addition to being used as attacks.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Limit Breaks: I was thinking of doing them as a series of innate attacks that can only be performed when the hero is reduced to 0 or less HP, making the Limit break a sort of "...alright, I'm barely hanging on to consciousness, time to pull out all the stops or I DIE!" But how much do I price the limitaiton. And is it an Accessiblity or a Trigger of some sort.

Funny ,that was actually my first though as well. But then I remembered that, that is actually the SOS-abilities, which is in some, but not all of the games.
If I was to run an FF game, I would however do it exactly like that as well :)
...'cause it's cool. But yeah, how to price it? Hmm. I have a suggestion:
"Only if lower than 1/3" (-25%)
"Only if 0 HP or lower" (-50%)
"Only if at -1xHP or lower" (-75%)

I think it's a pretty big limitation because in GURPS being damaged actually has a direct effect. I think -50% for 0 or below seems about right. As you have to roll constant HT rolls to stay awake just to use it.
I don't think there should be a difference between -1xHP and -4xHP. It's bad enough you have to roll a Death check just to trigger your power. It doesn't really get any worse than that.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Classes: I played Final Fantasy in this order: 8, 10, 1, 7, 9.

For a long time I only tried FF on friends computers so I never completed any of them and only played for a limited time. But the first one was FF:6 on the SNes, me and my friend played that a lot, so that's my first impression of FF.
I briefly tried 7, 8 and 9 later on, 7 more so than the others as _everybody_ played it.

However the first FF game I really played for a long time from start to end was FF:5, followed closely by FF:10 (which I played constantly on my GF PS2). And then back and forth between every one, from FF:1 to FF:12 (including the Online FF:11 and the new FF:3 for the DS).

There really is a big difference between the old FF:1-6 which is classic fantasy with some tech, more traditional classes and so on (FF:9 and 11 also falls into this).
And then the more modern ones; FF:7, 8, 10, 10-2, and 12, which are much different in regards to how much you can customise your character-development and so on.