Final Fantasy VIII

I’m beginning to understand that my taste for games in the Final Fantasy series swing more towards those on the underrated side. Not only that, but my fondness for those that are highly regarded wavers and is yet to be determined. Of the games I’ve played (disregarding those from Final Fantasy IX onwards), I really enjoy Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VIII, two of the more underrated games in the series (and divisive, in the case for Final Fantasy VIII). On the other end for those that are highly regarded, including Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy IV, I really only have a strong attachment to Final Fantasy VI. For the purposes of this blog, this is the ideal outcome if I could have chosen one.

Looking ahead for the games I have yet to play in the series, how the games are regarded varies significantly. From my perspective, those that are typically highly regarded include Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy X. Those receiving low review scores and poor reception typically include Final Fantasy XIII. And then you have the others, which are loved by many but just as often loathed to the point of considered the worst of the Final Fantasy games. These include Final Fantasy X-2, Final Fantasy XII, Lightning Returns, and Final Fantasy XV. I have played four and finished two of the seven titles listed in this paragraph. I view these games favorably, but haven’t played any of them for at least ten years, some going back to high school. How I view them now could be completely different. If I take my reception of the first eight games in the series and assume the trend will continue, it will be very interesting to see how I enjoy and rank the later games in the series. I’m personally looking forward to all of them.

The point was already made above, but I will reiterate: I really enjoyed Final Fantasy VIII. I went into the game with mixed thoughts and ideas. Growing up, Final Fantasy VIII seemed to get disregarded and shamed when compared to its PlayStation brethren Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy IX. Articles and reviews I would read dismissed its story and characters and criticized the battle system as clunky, broken, and overall too difficult to use. However in recent years I began to see more people putting Final Fantasy VIII in a positive light, and praising the battle system for being unique and innovative. All I knew when starting up the game was that the battle system was one that incentivized the player to take time to learn, and that the plot took place in a more modern civilization bordering on the future.

I had originally typed out over a page worth of thoughts on the evolution of the Final Fantasy games from I through VIII from a technological and societal impact. However I decided those thoughts would best be laid out in a separate blog post, independent of this blog post. I’m not sure if that writing will ever be published on here.

As explained in my previous blog post, the version of Final Fantasy VIII played was the Remastered version on my Switch. Besides updated textures and graphics, this provided me two large benefits over some of the previous games I played. First was that being the Remaster, I was able to play at 3X speed. This was a huge boon, and made drawing magic simplistic and enjoyable. Running through the hallways of schools or dungeons was no longer a slog. If there was any downside to the 3X speed, it was being so fast that I still had to pay attention. What I mean is that at normal speed it was slow enough to be able to watch a YouTube video or read some articles online, yet boring enough that I wish I could speed it up. At 3X speed battles and drawing were lightning quick, but meant that looking away at a distraction resulted in getting hit by an enemy or characters waiting for inputs. I’m not complaining about the speed increase, it’s just an observation.

The other benefit to the version I played was the portability of the Switch. I love playing Final Fantasy games on the TV, but really enjoyed being able to play it on a handheld when the TV was occupied or when lying in bed. The only issue with playing on the TV is losing headphone capability. I really wish the Switch Pro Controller had a headphone jack port like on the Dualshock 4. Even though I might not have enjoyed some Final Fantasy games as much as others, I believe all Final Fantasy music should be heard at the best quality possible; which for me is with headphones. My TV has good audio output, but music tends to be much louder and not as clear as headphones. Plus I have a train that runs behind our home about 200 feet away, passing by every few minutes.

Speaking of music, Final Fantasy VIII really surprised me. Like other aspects of the game I wasn’t expecting much, but I would say I really enjoyed almost all of the music in the game. Only two tracks I can remember were as good as the rest, one of which was played while piloting the Ragnarok. It felt very repetitive, and made me want to land that much sooner. The other was the Deling City track. It’s a good song; I won’t argue that it’s bad. However it’s even more repetitive than the airship theme. I was annoyed to be forced to listen to it again and again while trekking through the city for various quests. For the length of time it took me to map out Deling City in my mind (not even including the sewers), I could have used either a different song or an extended version of that track.

The characters and story in Final Fantasy VIII I also enjoyed for the most part. Although I feel like some characters lacked depth and wish I knew more about them because most of the cast felt essential to the plot. Obviously Squall is important, and for the most part he was written well and stayed true to his archetype throughout. He stays vitally important to the story and is fleshed out until the credits roll. After him the characters are still interesting but lack a good arc, save Laguna. I like Rinoa and the role she plays alongside Squall and Seifer, but would have liked even more information about her for how important she becomes. Seifer starts off strong, yet feels like another Aerith who disappears halfway through the game after he’s under Edea’s control. Quistis seems important at the beginning of the game but is quickly dismissed as a vital part of the team. I didn’t use her much so maybe I missed some of her conversation pieces. Zell has some good moments especially when in his hometown. I liked how people reacted differently when he was in the party and gave a neat background behind the bumbling student that everyone saw at school. Selphie and Irvine were two of the more weakly portrayed characters with very little background given. For the importance Selphie plays as a transfer from a school without Guardian Forces, and Irvine as the non-amnesiac plot pusher, they really didn’t get enough screen time. I had both in my party pretty often as the third leg and still didn’t get much dialog with them. Finally there’s Edea and Cid. Edea comes full circle in the story, possibly the most interesting character in the game. Her arc is completely fleshed out, well beyond those found in a Squaresoft game at that time, and the story took me off-guard. I was pretty surprised to have her added to the team and really wanted to keep playing to see where it was going. It’s one thing to add a character like Magus to the team, yet another thing entirely to add to the party what is viewed to be the only antagonist in the game. I’m sure it had been done multiple times in RPGs before Final Fantasy VIII, but I had yet to see it in a Final Fantasy game. Except maybe Golbez in Final Fantasy IV, but by the time the player realizes who the actual antagonist is they also understand Golbez is not the real enemy; the same cannot be said for Edea. Cid however, never gets his story finished in my opinion. I never really decided whether he should be considered a good guy, or a pawn that couldn’t face the reality of the eventual future and danger he’s putting others, children even, into. Did I miss some plot wrapping up his story?

I’m not forgetting the non-main cast. I give the developers credit for how Laguna, Kiros, and Ward were introduced in the story, to the confusion of the player. My first thought was I missed some story or a quest somewhere. These guys were strange but I wanted to know more. Originally I figured their story was taking place elsewhere on the planet and were sharing minds somehow, but it didn’t take long until I started questioning the ‘when’ of their story. Forward or backwards in time, that I wasn’t sure of for a while. The slow reveal of the fate of each of these characters was one of the more enjoyable stories in a Final Fantasy game up to this point, behind only Final Fantasy VI. The eventual meeting between Squall and Laguna was an overall great scene that made me both happy, and excited for the story to push towards its final chapter. It was only made better by the ending credits cut scene, fully wrapping up Laguna’s story. Which was much better than simply seeing a far future Red XIII looking onwards with his family.

The story isn’t perfect though. I have a major grievance with how the story wrapped up. I’m a sucker for time travel. I love time travel in all sorts of media. As mentioned in the last blog post, Chrono Trigger is my favorite game. Another of my favorite games in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I really enjoy Doctor Who, and Interstellar is one of my favorite movies. Some of my favorite book series involve time travel. For me, if one is going to include time travel in a story, then it must be kept simple, or based around science and logic. People have found flaws in the time travel with all of my previous examples, but for the most part they’re either sound in their implementation or simple enough to look past the errors. I cannot look past the time loop in Final Fantasy VIII. I’ve even gone online to see what other people think, and I do not agree with Edea having used compressed time to sidestep a potential plot hole. When Edea passes her powers down, the compressed time won’t matter once time decompresses. The loop will start again. The game tries to argue that she uses compressed time to avoid the loop, but I just don’t see it working that way. My problem with a time loop isn’t just missing an ending; it means a beginning technically never existed either. I don’t like paradoxes like that, especially in video games which are supposed to have a clear ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ which take place at some interval in the world timeline. I still really enjoy the story Final Fantasy VIII, but I let out a long sigh during the scene of the powers being passed down. It’s going to keep bugging me, but I can forgive it to remember the enjoyment I got out of the game.

And I sure did enjoy the Junction system. Yes I can agree that it took some time to understand (tutorials were so long). But the functionality of the system was pretty robust, yet simple. I don’t see why people found it so complicated. Instead of having MP, the player draws magic from the enemy, and can later use said magic the amount of ‘draws’ they have. Not a difficult concept. Maybe it doesn’t seem so complicated because I already played through Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III, both of which also have a system of using magic ‘charges’ instead of a general MP pool. Final Fantasy VIII seemed like an advanced version of the magic system found in those two games. It’s crazy that I didn’t realize the similarities until I was writing this. I was not a fan of the magic system from those two games, but Final Fantasy VIII seemed much more generous to the player. The ability to store 99 of a spell, and the ease to which the player can acquire necessary spell ‘draws’ makes the game much more playable than its antiquated predecessors.

I’m normally already attracted by acquiring all of the summons and special weapons in Final Fantasy games, yet being able to obtain more junctionable abilities from the Guardian Forces kept me exceptionally interested. I spent much more time in the menus of the game than most of the previous entries in the series because I was continually fooling around with the junctions for optimal set-ups on each character. I skipped a large amount of the abilities because I didn’t find them useful to my play style, yet I appreciate the options given to the player; I spent a minimal amount of time refining magic, items, or cards. I can see how the game could have a large amount of replayability, and fun self-restricted playthroughs.

Difficulty-wise, I mostly lean towards the game being on the easier and fairer side. However I have two gripes that I feel should be discussed. First is that I do not like enemies scaling alongside the player. This had a direct effect on not only boss battles and the abilities they use, but also the acquisition of certain spells. I’m already a player who typically shies away from games with a scaling system, and wasn’t aware of this heading into Final Fantasy VIII. It wasn’t until around level 25 or so that I learned how the player’s level has an effect. Thankfully I had the junction ability to avoid random battles, which I am extremely grateful for. Honestly, more RPGs should have the option to turn off or avoid random battles. Logically it may not make sense in some game worlds, but is appreciated to choose when to level. Anyways, using this ability I greatly reduced my experience earned, but unfortunately was unable to avoid passing the level 30 threshold that I read about online. Most games in the series reward the player for repeatedly defeating enemies and gaining experience points, but it feels like in this game the player is penalized for battling and grinding too much. And for how much grinding for spell drawing (without refining), it’s almost unfair to penalize the killing of enemies and rewarding experience points. I turned most enemies into cards, but that took up an ability spot on a character, and didn’t necessarily stop an enemy from accidently being killed. Maybe there was another skill that reduced all experience gained down to zero that I missed?

My other frustration came from the final boss battle. Not only was it difficult, but the party was randomly split up. This was a major headache because I had not given Guardian Forces to half of the characters. These characters were almost useless in the battle, and were basically damage sponges for the short amount of time they were alive. Had I known going into the battle how things would play out, I might have changed the Guardian Force and junction compositions. But there’s no way to know about this besides being told beforehand, or fighting the battle and dying. Neither of those is very fair. And no matter how the player sets up their team, the characters coming out during the battle is still random, to my knowledge. To top it all off, it’s a final battle in a Final Fantasy game, so of course it’s both long and there are multiple forms with no indication of the end. I beat it on my first try but was only out of sheer luck. Most of the characters died quickly and I didn’t even spend turns reviving them. The majority of the fight basically came down to Squall and Rinoa, one doing damage and the other throwing out defenses and Haste. At one point Rinoa died and Squall was just about to be killed, and the RNG gods smiled upon me by calling in Angelo for the just-in-time revival. Another time Angelo came in and I was excited to receive aid, and what did he do? Searched for treasure and found a Hi-Potion for Rinoa. Gee, what a good boy. The fight dragged on with too many forms, and ultimately was a letdown for the game, if only for the amount of frustration and powerlessness I felt throughout the battle. I guess the joy I felt watching the boss finally fall partially made up for the pain.

So that about brings me to the end of the game, and the end of my thoughts as well. I had a great time with the majority of the game. Good story, good cast of characters, a fun battle system, and pretty good music to go along with it. I would highly recommend anyone who it’s into RPGs to play through it, especially if they want to see what the Final Fantasy developers can do to take the series in a different direction. As usual, I have added the game to my rankings list, here is how they now stand:

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy

The game ranks pretty high on my list, which was a bit of a surprise when I started to question where it would go. It just barely sits above Final Fantasy V, but those top three are well above the rest. I would say Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy IV make up the next tier, and could swap positions being they are polar opposite games. Then the last tier has the bottom three games. I admit Final Fantasy VII is much better than the other two, but still deserves to be in the “poor” tier instead of “good”.

From here on out, things will be a bit more interesting. I’ve played a large amount of Final Fantasy IX, and have beaten Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. If my feelings stay the same as they were when I played/beat them over a decade ago, they will all rank near the top. I wonder though if Final Fantasy X and its sequel are too linear for my tastes these days? And I don’t know how I will feel about the sphere grid after playing Final Fantasy games with more freedom for leveling and job class choice? I look forward to playing every game in the series from here on out, and I imagine will have a much easier time putting my thoughts down and posting them.

Final Fantasy VII

Here is a review of Final Fantasy VII. Nope, no good introduction for this blog post. After years of not having written about games, or even anything outside of work, it has been really hard to get back into this. But I’ve already broken my golden rule…twice. After I finished Final Fantasy VII, I should have immediately written my review. Thoughts, analysis, dissection, whatever this has become. Yet I had difficulties putting my feelings into words, for reasons that will be apparent down below. Aggravated I couldn’t express things clearly, I moved on to Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

I’m not sure if I would call it karma, but soon thereafter my PSP went to shit. I wasn’t very far into Crisis Core, thankfully, but I no longer had a way to continue that game. Thinking about writing my blog post about Final Fantasy VII, again I couldn’t write. Months went by while I played other games, though it kept nagging at me. I mean how could it not? I set out in January 2013 to beat every Final Fantasy game in chronological order, writing a blog post after each one. Just under halfway done, while even at the worst pace imaginable, it was still happening!

Side note here. Having lost the ability to play Crisis Core, I later realized that things worked out for the best. Technically I wasn’t supposed to play Crisis Core after Final Fantasy VII. First off it’s a prequel, so I would have already messed up my order. Playing it afterwards was intentional. Yet I set out to play all the games in chronologically released order. So I actually shouldn’t be playing Crisis Core until after Final Fantasy XII but before Final Fantasy XIII. Which while odd, does make sense. With the future releases of games between Final Fantasy VII and Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, technology changed, development teams changed, and ideas of what a Final Fantasy game “should” be drastically changed. While I shouldn’t call it evolution (even though I use that word often in these posts), yes, there has been an evolution to the series between the two games that needs to be analyzed before I can dive into and experience Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

Moving on…I was about to get into how after a handful more months, I broke my rule again and started Final Fantasy VIII. It was the temptation of the release of Final Fantasy VIII Remastered that pushed me over the edge. The updated graphics looked great, but it was probably the 3X speed addition that got me to play it. And beat it. So now I’m two posts behind, and really eager to play Final Fantasy IX. Having played Final Fantasy IX in high school I remember how much I enjoyed the game. And Final Fantasy IX was one of the games in the series that was driving me to beat prior games, so it’s taking quite a bit of restraint not to start it.

So here I am, forcing myself to write this post about Final Fantasy VII. I cannot let myself get further behind. Already I have forgotten a great deal about the game, which is a real bummer, because I had, let’s say, many choice words about my experience. Also a couple months have passed since finishing Final Fantasy VIII, and I’m beginning to forget things about that game as well. To be cliché, not all is lost- literally, not all my thoughts are lost. I did manage to write down some notes about Final Fantasy VII. When I had written the notes, I don’t know. Could have been while I was playing the game, could have been after I finished. Both are likely true. All I know is that the last date saved on the document is in February 2018. This document will be the basis of my thoughts, a refresher, and hopefully I’ll be able to extrapolate on these ideas.

So let’s finally begin. First off, I played this on PlayStation 3. This was the updated version of Final Fantasy VII that I believe was released on PC, with slightly better graphics than the original. Not the Remastered version with even clearer textures and models or 3X speed. And obviously not Final Fantasy VII Remake, which wasn’t even out when I played the game. I would like to play Remake though, I’m very curious to see what has changed, and it obviously looks gorgeous. Maybe by the time I finish the series, probably around Final fantasy XVI, they’ll have released all of the Final Fantasy VII Remake chapters and I can play them as a “whole” game. We’ll look back on this post one day and laugh…at my accuracy.

Anyways, back to Final Fantasy VII. Honest thoughts- I didn’t really enjoy the game. I know, blasphemy! I just felt like the game never really clicked for me. The story, the characters, the gameplay, the music, they all just felt…meh. Final Fantasy VII fans will think I’m crazy, and would probably tear into me about how amazing the story is, how revolutionary it was for the time, how great the graphics were at the time, and “oh my the material system! How amazing is THAT!” But really, I don’t think it holds up over time. Yes, I agree it probably was revolutionary for its time. I will give it that. I believe Final Fantasy VII, along with a couple other role-playing games, pioneered the way forward for the genre, especially on the Japanese side. Is that statement based on fact? Probably not, but they’re my beliefs.

I think one of my big issues is that the game has had so much praise over the years, I knew going in that it wasn’t going to live up to that standard. This is personal, anecdotal evidence, so take it how you want. But often when I read articles or comments online, the majority of people who believe Final Fantasy VII is the best RPG (and game, occasionally) had experienced Final Fantasy VII as their first RPG. I personally believe that the game has more biased fans than any other game out there. This is a bold statement, as gaming groups stand fervently behind certain games. There’s just so much nostalgia playing into people’s thoughts, and honestly, I question if people have really gone back and played it, and compared it to other games both within and out of the series, and within and out of the genre as well- it’s hard to define what a RPG is anymore.

I’m sure you the reader are thinking wow, he’s really laying in hard against the fan base. But that’s the thing, I think the fan base is a big part of the problem. Very rarely do I hear about problems with the game, any criticisms whatsoever. And honestly that should raise eyebrows. No game is perfect. Before I get into my own criticisms of the game (and it’s not all bad, I mean it’s a good game), let’s turn the finger back on myself. Let’s talk about the nostalgia factor. What’s the first RPG I ever played? Okay so it’s actually Super Mario RPG, but I only played a few hours of it. The answer should be Chrono Trigger. But the point I’m making still stands. My favorite game, a RPG, happens to be the first RPG I ever played. So yes, I’m biased too, and I understand how nostalgia can play into loving a game. I praise it whenever possible, and nod my head in agreement when I see it near the top of “Best RPG” lists. The difference is I understand that again, no game is perfect. For example, I find that some ages in Chrono Trigger aren’t as fleshed out or enjoyable as they could be, like 2300AD. I think that certain attacks are borderline pointless in most fights, such as those that hit enemies in a line; you cannot actively move your character or enemies. I think Magus is interesting, but I don’t enjoy using him in battles. Marle is annoying, period. The cause and effect changes between time periods are cool, but used too sparingly. The music is amazing, I’ll fight you on that one.

It may seem I have gone off on a tangent, but I’m trying to give my thoughts and get the point across, that I don’t see enough criticisms of Final Fantasy VII, and that bugs me. It irks me that it gets massive praise, so much praise that fans screamed for years for a Remake, until Square Enix caved in and understood it’s easy money (but in all seriousness a lot of time and work went into the Remake). Chrono Trigger does not need a remake, nor do other great games. Why does a great game need a remake? What does that say about the original? Why are the most ardent fans not asking these questions?

Okay. I’m done with…that. I think I just gave substance and meaning to the title of my blog. And here I thought writing this would be difficult. The feelings I mentioned came back. *Sigh* Look it’s a good game, I just couldn’t get into it. I have issues with multiple things.

Let’s get something out of the way. This game looks like crap. I’m sorry (am I?), I’m not seeing what it did for its time. The backgrounds look pretty good usually, but I’m not expecting much because they’re rarely animated, nor do they have 3D modeling. So I’m going to judge what is actually animated and moves, which is the characters and enemies. And the characters look like junk. Do you know what characters and enemies look better? Those from Aidyn Chronicles: The First Mage. Yeah that’s right, low blow. Sure, there were four years between the releases of the two games, so I’ll give Squaresoft that. And by then both Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX were out, and had much better character models. So it’s really actually a blow against Aidyn Chronicles (deserved), but I’m going to stand behind my joke. Cloud’s arms should break like twigs. Barret doesn’t have an arm cannon, he has a block arm that shoots things. The FMV scenes were great. But that’s not gameplay. The updated character models on the remastered version of the game look good though.

Speaking of character models, let’s talk about the characters themselves. This could be a large reason why I didn’t enjoy the game as much as the previous entries. I didn’t enjoy playing as any characters. Cloud is annoying and lacks character, even after finishing the whole game and understanding his story. Tifa is smart, but cares for Cloud too much and can be whiny. Barrett is sort of annoying- I honestly only played with him at the start of the game, and dropped him after that. That’s on me. Aerith has a personality I know nothing of, and is gone anyways. Red XIII, I like. He has more backstory than most characters. But still pretty boring as his story is minimal and only in two sections of the game. Yuffie is neat with her longer backstory, but written perhaps to be too childish. Cait Sith is sort of interesting, but I found their attacks a bit unconventional so I didn’t use them enough to uncover more of their story. I enjoyed their twist however. And Vincent’s story felt underdeveloped, unfinished. I do intend to play Dirge of Cerberus to learn more about him, but I shouldn’t have to. No really, I shouldn’t play it.

The story was pretty good? It felt disjointed. The player spends a good amount of time in Midgar (at least a new player does), and while the story starts slow, it feels good. Things happen, the plot gains traction, the player finally gets to leave Midgar. And at that point the player, myself, thinks wow, and that was just Midgar. I have this whole map to explore, and I know I’m going to return to Midgar at some point. Hours later I find myself bored, going from town to town, pushing the story forward without any big surprises. It felt like I was going to new towns because I had to, just to push the plot along. Every time I went off to explore somewhere new just because I could, I didn’t find anything interesting. This is coming from someone who acquired all of the summons in the game. They didn’t really feel like side quests, they felt like random extra bosses with a neat and helpful reward. That’s not to say prior Final Fantasy games didn’t do this, almost all of them are guilty of the extra bosses and super bosses that feel like they were thrown in post-production (I mean obviously not in this case, the summons are integral to the material system). But coming off of Final Fantasy VI, where every side quest felt almost mandatory, that missing a character felt like missing part of the game? It seemed like Final Fantasy VII had the plot in place and was telling a somewhat intriguing story about Cloud, Soldier, Shinra, Sephiroth, Aerith, what materia actually is, etc. But then lacking the cohesion to push the player forward besides “we’ll find what we need in that town, let’s head there!” followed by “this town is no longer safe, let’s move on.” The past three Final Fantasy games had something to drive the plot and make the player want to continue. Final Fantasy IV was basically “Everyone in your party is sacrificing themselves and the world is about to go to shit, what are you going to do about it?” Final Fantasy V was basically “The world is literally tearing reality apart and your friends are dying, what are you going to do about it?” Final Fantasy VI was basically “The world has been decimated. We’re lucky to be alive but things are only going to get worse. We have to end this.” Final Fantasy VII, on the other hand, felt like “So there’s a meteor about to crash into and destroy Earth. It’s imminent, buuut we don’t know how imminent. You should probably go kill those guys, so Earth can stop the meteor. What? No, you can’t stop the meteor. You need to stop those guys. Stop staring at the meteor. Also Cloud is having another identity crisis.”

Enough about the story, let’s talk about the music. There are a couple good tracks, but otherwise forgettable. I cannot remember any off the top of my head that stand out, unlike most Final Fantasy games that came before it. I became annoyed by the overworld song in the second half of the game, heard it too often. One-Winged Angel is good, but not amazing like people make it out to be. Unless I’m forgetting something, it’s only played once. It’s like saying how great the final battle music is in Final Fantasy X against Jecht. A good song, but you don’t hear people raving about it years later. I really don’t have anything else to say about the music. Good, but not great. Forgettable.

Having wrecked analyzed the overhead, visual, and auditory portions of the game, let’s turn inwards to the gameplay. Specifically the materia, the differentiating factor setting itself apart from other Final Fantasy games. This is another large portion of my lack of enjoyment of this game, and at times goes in hand with the lack of character development. At the beginning of the game, the materia system seems too convoluted for what should be simple. It doesn’t start to click until the player obtains other types of materia, and tries using them together to see what happens. At this point, it’s no longer confusing but, in my opinion, boring. I know some people strongly disagree with this sentiment, and will go on about how great combining materia is, leveling it up, splitting it at max level, doubling, tripling, quadrupling its effects… That’s great, but leads to really boring characters. Everyone can do everything, only limited by what they can equip and how many slots it has. Sounds a lot like older Final Fantasy games, except without jobs and classes. In Final Fantasy III and V, the player could level all classes on all characters, but would have to choose a class for a time, and stick with it to level it and learn the abilities. Abilities that would tie to that one character. Over time the class could be mastered, and another chosen to level. Materia can be used to figuratively create a class, but it’s never tied to the particular character or a class. All the materia can be swapped from one character to another. Someone who loves this game will cry “Freedom!”, while I shrug my shoulders and say “characters lacking personality”. Having higher or lower stats and individual Limit Breaks does not do enough to give the characters individuality. I like having the option to fool around with game mechanics and try different combinations. It’s better than games like Final Fantasy IV, with written-in-stone character classes. But I want the choices for leveling characters to have consequences.

At this point, I don’t think I have much else to say about Final Fantasy VII. This isn’t so much about not having more opinions on the game; it’s just that I have forgotten so much of the details. There could be reason to argue that maybe my thoughts on the game stem from this, but I would disagree. These feelings of discontent with the game I remember often while playing. I want to stress, I don’t think Final Fantasy VII is a bad game. I just found myself bored with much of the game. Those I talk to about the game may be able to convince me of its merits in certain categories, but they won’t be able to convince me that I wasn’t bored. My rants and harsh criticisms would be less likely to be voiced if it weren’t for, what I feel, this game receiving a free pass on most fronts for its flaws. Perhaps one day, after I finish playing all of the games in the Final Fantasy series, I’ll go back and play a few of those I found to be the best or worst and see if my thoughts remain the same.

So where does this put Final Fantasy VII in my rankings? Obviously not near the top, but I still had trouble determining where to put it in relation to some others. After much consideration, here are my current rankings, likely to continue to change:

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy VII

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy

I wish I could go back and have this written as soon as the credits ran. My criticisms and boredom would still be apparent, but I’m sure I could have presented better points with more detail. I will do my best in the future (after the Final Fantasy VIII post) to complete my writing and post as soon as possible.

2014 Games Recap

Something I've done on this blog for the past few years, if the only constant this blog has going for it, is recapping what games I've played and beaten over the course of the previous year. Today being March 3, my recap of 2014 is a bit late. However I had not forgotten, just lazy. And rather be playing games. To my reader out there, no, this is not done by memory. Over the course of the year I keep track of what I play, and mark it when I beat it.

Which gets into my rules, as I always post before continuing with my list. Nothing has changed, but my rules must still be stated for clarity. All games on the list were played at some point during 2014, though not necessarily started in 2014. All games were played for at least one hour. Games in bold have been finished. Games without endings are still listed. Finished does not mean 100% completed, however any games that met those requirements will be notched with a *. Finally, any game having been beaten before, and therefore not my first playthrough, will be notched with a ^.

A side note I would like to point out, is that while these games are listed by system, the order by which they are listed within each is the order I started them in. Just something that came with being more attentive to my play list.

Nintendo DS: Played 1 - Beat 1
Final Fantasy III

 Nintendo 3DS: Played 7 - Beat 0
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Tomodachi Life
Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS
Fantasy Life

Nintendo Wii: Played 2 - Beat 0
Final Fantasy VI
Super Castlevania IV

PlayStation Portable: Played 4 - Beat 2
Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy IV: Interlude
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
Final Fantasy V
Persona 3 Portable

Nintendo Wii U: Played 16 - Beat 4
Super Mario World
Super Metroid^
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker*^
NES Remix 
Mario Kart 8 
1001 Spikes
Child of Light
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate
Unepic
Castlevania
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance^
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow^
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Wii U

Xbox 360: Played 22 - Beat 6
Spelunky
Fallout 3^
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons*
Miner Dig Deep
Zuma's Revenge!
Outland
Alice: Madness Returns
The Bridge
SSX
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD
Deadlight
Sonic Generations
Dark Souls
Saints Row IV
Peggle 2
Borderlands (DLC)
Castlevania: Harmony of Despair^
Grand Theft Auto V*^
Banjo-Kazooie
Mass Effect 2
Bastion
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night^

Total: Played 52 - Beat 13

Compared to prior years, the ratio of played to beat is pretty bad. Only one quarter of all games played during 2014 ended up getting beat. And over half of those beaten were in series of games I have been working on completing (Final Fantasy and Castlevania). On the bright side (I think?), I played more games than last year, which could be why not as many were finished, percentage-wise.

Of note, I finished off Final Fantasy III, which I totally forgot happened in 2014. That was a major stepping stone in continuing my quest to play through every Final Fantasy game, in order. Two more main-line Final Fantasy games were beaten in 2014, not even including most of Final Fantasy VI as well, which was finished shortly into 2015. You may have also noted that in the PSP section, I stated only 4 were played, and 2 beat, yet those do not match what is listed. For clarification, I beat Final Fantasy IV: Interlude, but being a 2 hour literal interlude, do not count as a full game. I do consider Final Fantasy IV: The After Years a full game though, since for many people takes longer to beat than the original game. I hope to beat a few more Final Fantasy games this year.

2014 was also a big year for Castlevania, which I started to play through from the beginning. Even with save states, beating Castlevania III will likely never happen. And in order to beat Super Castlevania IV, I'll likely need save states. I will be starting Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow sometime later this year, to begin the end of the Castlevania series.

Last thoughts- the pattern of the year, while not visible above, basically went from playing Xbox 360 games, to handheld games, to owning a Wii U and playing a bunch of those games. With Final Fantasy games throughout the year. Overall, not a very interesting year, but fun games nonetheless.

Final Fantasy VI

It’s here, my Final Fantasy VI blog post. That means I have finally finished the sixth game in the Final Fantasy series! It’s been nine months since I last posted, not that it took me nine months to beat the game. I did, however, quite playing the game on two occasions. The first time (during the summer) was about a third into the game, and the game just wasn’t grabbing hold of me. I know, sounds crazy for Final Fantasy VI, but I typically only play RPG’s during the winter months. Notice how my posts for the first five Final Fantasy games all were uploaded during winter months. Something I’ve noticed about my gameplay habits over the years. Maybe it’s because I have less urge to leave the apartment during the winter, and can spend more time invested in longer games. Anyways, the second time was right as I was finishing up the World of Ruin, and went home for Christmas. Couldn’t really be avoided, and wasn’t in the mood to play right when I came back. Two weeks ago though, I picked it back up, finished some side quests, grinded for some magic spells, and yesterday, ran through Kefka’s tower.

To little surprise, this is my favorite Final Fantasy game so far. I hope to keep this post short (in comparison to my prior posts), and shouldn’t be a problem as I don’t have many complaints with the game. I read through each of the past five game posts before writing this, and I also plan on avoiding the small nitpicks or positives I found in the game (example: inventory is no longer limited- I wouldn’t have even thought of this positive if I hadn’t read the other posts).

I’ll begin with a common theme of my positives found with the game. The music continues to be amazing, one thing I feel like Square couldn’t screw up with these games. I’m listening to the OST right now, and enjoy the diversity of tracks, which fit in well with the areas of the game, or themes of the cutscenes. Brought over from Final Fantasy V (and maybe IV?), I really liked how every character has their own them. When a cutscene starts, and a theme begins, the player knows who the focus is on, and who to be paying the most attention to. And while it’s very difficult this time to point out the best tracks, Celes’ theme has to be near the top, its greatness increased in thanks to the island sequence. If there are any complaints with the music, it’s that a few tracks have identical portions also heard in Chrono Trigger. Yes, Final Fantasy VI came out over a year beforehand, and doesn’t really detract from either game, but with such great musical talent on staff, would have liked for more diversity.

Graphics are great, nothing outstanding, but nothing to downplay during the game’s release timeframe. Areas are diverse, and feel different. Wish the cities on the map were more visible, but again, me nitpicking.

No segue here, just jumping to characterization. Final Fantasy VI continues what IV and V started, of giving characters personalities, and tying emotion into gameplay and cutscenes. Scenes aren’t as sad as Final Fantasy V, but there’s also less death. The good news is for what death is included, they’re no longer just plot devices. A death becomes a driving part of the story, and gives characters a reason to move forward and take action.

Unfortunately, while Final Fantasy VI arguably shows more emotion, character backstories and relationships feel barren. Side quests late in the game help show some backstory to each character (game developers, take note- these types of side quests are what we want to see, something that actually plays into the plot, not fetch-quests for exp./money), but the characters still feel one-dimensional. I would have enjoyed hearing more about Shadow’s life, Locke’s childhood, Celes’ movement through the ranks to achieve the title of General, and so on with everyone else. Beyond this, the relationships between characters are weak at best. Love is a common theme between characters, but that’s about it. By the end of the game, party members have formed “clicks” that separate themselves from everyone else. We don’t get to see how friendships form and evolve between the entire party. The party segregates themselves into 9 main groups. See: Locke, Celes, and Terra; Edgar and Sabin; Cyan; Shadow; Gau; Setzer; Mog and Umaro; Relm and Strago; Gogo. When do Strago and Relm become friends with Locke’s click? Is Shadow aware of Gau’s existence? What kind of scene would play out on Setzer’s airship with Mog and Umaro running around? I’ve been spoiled by the tight-knit groups seen in Final Fantasy IV and V, so this felt strange. I even formed by parties based on knowing what interactions during cutscenes would occur, which is unfortunate.

As a side note, who could not love Ultros? The one character that never fit with the game, but was always a joy to see appear. I had a good chuckle seeing one of the three final statue bosses use the Ultros attack (which I did not get Gau to learn, unfortunately). Ultros may be trapped selling tickets to pay off a debt at the coliseum, but everyone seems to know him.

Onwards! I’m still on the fence regarding the game’s difficulty. On one hand, it was by far the easiest of the first six Final Fantasy games, only giving me trouble with some end-game bosses. That’s somewhat disappointing, but it was also nice to have a more relaxing game to play, after the previous entries. It didn’t dawn on me until after I beat the game that I never had to use a guide to figure out where to go next, or how to get through a dungeon. That was a nice change, but not going to hold my breath for games yet to come. I also realized that I rarely fled from random battles during the game, even the final dungeon. That’s completely opposite of at least Final Fantasy II through V.

However, I might have been over-leveled for much of the game. While I wasn’t too high on the numbered level and stats for characters, my magical abilities may have been above where I should have been in each area. I grinded two or three times in the game solely to increase my party’s magical abilities. As much as I loved the open-endedness of Final Fantasy V’s job system, I also really enjoy systems such as Final Fantasy VI’s Espers. I like being able to put all magical spells on each character (and to be able to do so easily, spending a fraction of the time grinding as I had to do in Final Fantasy V for magic points), and go into boss battles without worries.

It was also neat how magical abilities came from the Espers. This pushed me to collect all of the Espers, because I wanted to be able to put as many magical abilities on my party members as possible, even for spells I would never use. I become a completionist at times, for little reason other than to see a completed screen. I only grinded all magic spells onto seven characters (Locke, Edgar, Sabin, Shadow, Celes, Terra, and Cyan), not including Crusader’s, who I obtained but didn’t care about since I was in the final dungeon.

I also liked how Espers had a secondary function of increasing stat boosts for characters at level-ups. This meant I spent even more time flying through the menu screens to check who was close to level up, and what Esper was equipped at the time. I only wish that could have been more streamlined, as I probably spent too much time in the menu screens constantly checking. By the final dungeon, I didn’t care who had what equipped and what bonuses may or may not have been attributed. I was plowing through to the end.

While being able to give every party member the exact same magic eliminated the differentiation between characters (as seen in prior entries in the series), the personal abilities more than made up for the change. I rarely used Locke’s Steal or Terra’s Morph, but relied heavily on using Edgar’s Tools (loved Chainsaw), Sabin’s Blitzes (loved Bum Rush), and Shadow’s Throw (when he was in the party). If I play the game again someday, I’ll try to learn more Rages for Gau, as there look to be many of them, and that could have been quite fun.

Finally, I feel I need to touch upon the final dungeon. Splitting up the party was really annoying every time it occurred in the game. It was frustrating every time because I never knew what kind of enemies I’d be facing, how long the dungeon was, etc. I enjoyed the last dungeon, but probably would have more so if I were able to control a single party (but obviously that would mean a less strategic and eventful final battle against Kefka’s forms- unless the airship came swooping down during the pre-battle cutscene, with all the other party members).

I did enjoy the last dungeon, though. I thought I had a great strategy going into that dungeon. The three parties were as follows:

Team 1: Locke, Sabin, Strago, Celes

Team 2: Edgar, Shadow, Setzer, Terra

Team 3: Cyan, Gau, Umaro, Mog

Notice how team 3 is extremely weak and limited compared to the others. Cyan had plenty of magic spells, but Mog only had a few spells and only up to Life 2 and Cure 3 (but was missing Cure 2 for some reason). Gau had no spells, and Umaro obviously doesn’t have any. I did this because Mog had the Moogle charm, and could explore the final dungeon freely without worry of random battles. Little did I know that mini-bosses would be scattered throughout. Team 1 fought a statue mini-boss and the Skull dragon- no problems at all. Team 2 fought one statue mini-boss (and skipped Atma- I got destroyed the one time I tried) - no problems either. Team 3 had to fight the Inferno mini-boss, the Gold Dragon, and then a statue boss, Doom. These three battles were the hardest and most strategic I had in the game, behind only Kefka’s final form. The first time I fought the Doom statue, Cyan, Gau, and Mog were killed off quite quick, and Umaro fought by himself for over 20 minutes. I put down the controller, and watched. Since Doom kept using Ice attacks, it kept healing Umaro. Umaro would heal Doom for around 1,300 with Ice Storm, but for every time he did, he dealt over 3,000 damage in other attacks. Unfortunately Doom’s second form killed Umaro, but I was very hopeful that I’d beat one of the last bosses in the game without pressing a button. The second time I was able to keep most party alive the whole battle- sorry Gau. I originally hated myself for forming the third party as such, but after those three battles was very proud of what I was able to accomplish with such a strange team.

And to top it off, the most interesting boss battle of the Final Fantasy series up to that point, Kefka. I really didn’t understand the set-up beforehand, with 12 spots open. But after Shadow died and was replaced in Kefka’s second form battle, I immediately understood. At that point, while the battles were really quite easy (thanks to everyone spamming Ultima, and the occasional Cure 3 to heal), I became more aware of the boss’ attacks. I tried to figure out when the attacks would change and signal the boss having half or low health, to insure that I could keep all of my party members alive. I did not want to enter the final form with a weak party member. Unfortunately, that came halfway true. Upon entering Kefka’s final form, I was left with Locke, Sabin, and Terra, which was great. I had not yet seen Celes, the last useful party member after having lost Shadow and Edgar. Cyan joined the battle, to my dismay. He was good for healing, but had low health and really didn’t do much except for cast Ultima a few times. That was a really neat and fun entire battle.

So there are my thoughts on Final Fantasy VI. Gameplay time was around 52 hours, well above any of the others, and sadly an increasing trend that won’t stop until around…um…maybe Lightning Returns? Or Crisis Core if that counts? I honestly think that VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, XII, XIII, and XIII-2 are all at least 80 hours each. Hopefully they’re all worth the time investments. Six games down, only ten games left!

Game time so far:

Final Fantasy: 25 hours

Final Fantasy II: Unknown?

Final Fantasy III: Unknown?

Final Fantasy IV: Unknown?

Final Fantasy V: 42 hours

Final Fantasy VI: 52 hours

And of course, to end this post, my personal rankings at this point in time, from best to worst:

Final Fantasy VI

Final Fantasy V

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy V

Even though I take notes while I play through each Final Fantasy game, it surprises me how difficult these posts still continue to be to write. And none harder than this one, thanks to my torn opinion on the game. Final Fantasy V does many things right, much better than its predecessors, but still falters in areas that just cannot be ignored. This was going to be a short post, and should have been. But I'm a person who can't let certain problems go, as small as they may seem to others.

As usual, let me get the easy things out of the way first. Music is the one area that all of the Final Fantasy games so far have not disappointed. Library of the Ancients has an especially good track, and I also enjoyed the music that plays during Chocobo/Galuf/humorous scenes. Graphics are pretty good, but being as though every game I've played so far has been a remake, this PlayStation port is technically the oldest game in the series I've played. If there's one thing that stands out about the graphics, it's that there are a wide variety of textures and areas in dungeons and caves.

Speaking of graphics and music, Final Fantasy V is different from those that came before it, in that it really shows emotion. When a character is sad, they bow their heads. When Galuf laughs, the sprite throws it's head back in laughter. A surprised character, such as when falling through a trap, will show humorous bulging eyes. It reminds me of Chrono Trigger, which is no surprise being the same company. The music ties in perfectly with the scenes as well, especially during sad scenes, which have two very moving tracks. And there is no shortage of those in this game. I'll go much more into that in a bit. To cap it off, characters have accents, which help give them personalities to their emotions.

The story itself is pretty good, and is so far the second best out of the five, behind Final Fantasy IV. Unlike the previous game though, twists continue occurring throughout the game, both minor and major. I only have two complaints on the story. First, Square reused the same plot device for the third game in a row: team is beat by the final boss (this time by being sent to N-Zone, basically the void between worlds), and the spirits of other heroes come to the rescue by waking them up and urge them to continue fighting. I don't know how they got away with that for three games in a row. The second problem is that it's too long. I put 42 hours into the game, at least six of which were solely spent on grinding. By two-thirds of the way through, I wanted it to be done. Unlike the past games, it wasn't just the final dungeon, but the story itself. The pre-final dungeon quest did not help either. It basically felt like the end-game Wind Waker fetch quest. The player cannot reach the final dungeon until they collect four tablets, which in turn unlock the 12 legendary weapons. Supposedly these weapons sealed away ExDeath (bad guy) the first time, yet none are actually required to be used to beat the game. What awful writing.

Okay, I admit it, my frustration with the game's length may be my own fault. I used a guide for this game, as I have done for basically each game before it. I followed it very closely as well, meaning obtaining all optional summons and magic spells that I would have normally missed many of. Since Final Fantasy V has an awful map, I found a guide necessary for saving me time, from wandering around...aimlessly. Not to go off on a tangent, but how could Square not update the map in any way for this port? I'm grateful that there even is a map to pull up, and that it has blinking white dots to indicate a town or cave entrance. There are multiple problems I found with the map. If you're going to create a large map (which I prefer), include variety of landmasses, which in turn creates areas that stick out as reference points. Having multiple deserts and a plethora of forests, mountain ranges, rivers and lakes, ended up just confusing me. I would also recommend having distinguishable continents, and naming them. I didn't realize how important both of these ideas (variety of landmasses and named continents) were in the previous games until I played Final Fantasy V. What made the map worse, was that every time I was just getting to memorize it, it would change. This happened twice, and the third version of the map was by far the most confusing. I'm not even going into the underwater version of the second and third maps, which I avoided when possible. Imagine the opposite of the maps, but without any landmasses to base one's location off of.

Returning to my main complaint, the game is just too long. This is too bad, since the last few dungeons during the fetch-quest are actually very good and interesting. By that point I didn't care, and wanted to blow through them as quickly as possible.

Which leads me right to another complaint, random battles. In the five games I've played in this series, I have easily run from the most battles in Final Fantasy V. Maybe it's just me, but the frequency of random battles is at least double that of any of the previous installments. Every five to ten steps would be another battle. I wouldn't care so much if the game wasn't aggrivatingly slow. Loading a battle takes three to five seconds. Exiting a battle takes three to five seconds, and I would pray that the enemy does not drop anything (99.99% of the time would be a cheap item of which I was already carrying 99), adding another three or four seconds. For a port they did a shoddy job. Anyways, yes, random battles were frustrating. It was not uncommon for me to run from nearly all battles in a dungeon, and fight only the boss. A boss that while not easy, also did not require any grinding to defeat, and until late-game would be taken down on the first attempt. Before you start believing that this is an easy game, it is not. Hold onto that thought though, I need to talk about other things before delving into that.

The theme of a shoddy port should be something you're starting to notice. The most noticible problem with this game, which ultimately turns most people away from this particular rendition, is the save glitch. I encountered this glitch within the first 30 minutes of playing and literally said "wow, f that". Imagine going into the save screen from the menu, and seeing a fuzzy screen, which after a few seconds turns blue, with the deformed figures of the characters off to the left. There is no text on the screen, so saving seems impossible. I read online that most of the time you can still save normally, but I didn't want to risk playing 25 hours and then losing all my data. That would put this run on a long-term hiatus. Unfortunately over the next week, I couldn't find the GameBoy Advance port/remake of Final Fantasy V in the three local stores (yet found Final Fantasy VI Advance and multiple copies of Final Fantasy IV Advance and Dawn of Souls), and wasn't up for paying $25 on amazon for a used copy I couldn't physically look at first.

I did as much research online as I could, trying to find out my odds of losing my game data. Turns out, permanently losing game data is rare, and more often than not the worst problem with be the game glitching out (I'll explain soon) or freezing. The freezing, which thankfully I never encountered, occurs when backing out of the save screen. Oh, I should mention that yes, one can still save without problem even within a glitched save screen. Wait for the fuzziness to disappear, and the screen to turn blue. Tap down once (from temporary save state to save port 1). Next screen, hit X (first save slot). Then hit X once more (confirm yes, save in this slot), and hear the confirmation tone for completion. This is the spot where the freezing can occur. I have read that by backing out of save screen too quickly can be the cause. This honestly makes sense to me, because after the save tone dings, if the player listens closely, they'll hear the music slow down for a second or two. I believe the game is having trouble continuing to load, and will just break if the player tries to back out and load even more game data. The answer for avoidance is simple: wait three or four seconds between each O button press to back out. Timely, yes, but better than a frozen game.

Short story time. My game glitched out just once after saving, and to be totally honest, it was pretty cool. I had just saved after traversing a ship wreckage, with the save point being below deck in a piece of cabin. After backing out of the menu, the room was glitched and completely black with white stripes. I could still see my character, the save point, and make out the general room features and two exits. I knew I should just turn the game off and back on, but part of me feared that my save data was corrupt (but always had two saved games, just in case), so I wanted to try exploring first. I figured maybe it was only this room that was glitched. I walked out the south exit, and was then standing outside the last village I had visited. I just started laughing. Somehow I had warped from a ship wreckage out at sea, past an ocean, a long river, and across another ocean to the safety of this land. Being that the story had long moved past that village, I'm pretty sure I would have been stranded in that area. Although safe, I suppose. I reset, and the game was fine. Anyways, the point being, the save glitch is blown out of proportion. I only encountered one problem during my 42 hours of playing.

I want to get into the battle system, the meat of most discussions regarding this game, but I want to mention a few other good things that stood out to me while playing. Inventory, as far as I could tell, is unlimited. Inventory management was such a pain in Final Fantasy IV, so this was a huge relief. Float no longer dispells itself when moving from one floor to another in a dungeon or cave, like it did in Final Fantasy IV (I can't remember about previous games). And really, why should it go away? Finally, I think that Square did a great job with the ending cutscenes and credits. It wasn't just a "Yay, we won!- roll credits", but includes scenes to show what each character is up to, and really wraps up the entire story.

Okay, the battle system and jobs. This is what kept me playing the game. At the beginning of the game, when there are only a few jobs, the system seems confusing. I didn't understand really, how to use one job and equip another job class' ability. As I kept playing though, and more job classes opened up, I could see the potential of characters obtaining abilities between multiple jobs and using them together for different strategies. Each job has innate abilities and normal abilities. Innate abilities will all be "on" when as that class, though normal abilities must be equipped to be used. However, when as the Freelancer (Bare) or Mime job, all innate abilities from mastered jobs are transferred over, as well as the best stats of the best mastered job. Once I learned this, I understood that by the end of the game, each character needed certain jobs mastered so that all of the innate abilities would transfer over to the Freelancer job, and I could choose the best combination of normal abilities (of which Freelancer gets two ability slots instead of the normal one choice, and the Mime receives three slots, though in turn loses the Attack and Item commands- more on that later).

Before I go into how the job system can be gratifyingly game-breaking, I must, as usual, get my qualms out of the way first. The player has no idea what ability they are currently learning, or how many abilities the current job even has. Jobs range from four to seven abilities, from around 400 to 999 Ability Points required (not respective to the number of abilities). This would have been enormously frustrating without a guide. It is not uncommon for the final ability of a job to be lackluster, even though the large amount of Ability Points (ABP) required seems enticing. I would have been in a fit of rage had I spent hours gaining ABP just to learn "Equip Rods" or something similar. The only reason to learn a job's final ability is for the innate abilities to transfer to the Freelancer class (yet the job class which has this final ability, Time Mage, does not have any innate abilities to transfer, and the Freelancer job can already equip all items!). Spending hours to gain enough ABP is not an exaggeration either. The Player receives one or two ABP per battle at the beginning of the game, up to five to seven later in the game. When considering how slow each battle is to begin and end, acquiring hundreds of ABP takes way too long. Even with using a smart strategy, to kill multiple particular enemies in one Blue Spell hit to obtain four to eight ABP per battle, grinding still took multiple hours. Though the time spent was worth it, as the outcome resulted in some fun and nearly game-breaking battles.

I'll give one example, since this battle stands out in my mind, so much so that I took notes on my exact strategy to win. This was not a fun battle, but every Final Fantasy game has at least one of these. About halfway through the game, the player must fight against purely elemental bosses, in this case four identical crystals. Each crystal had a different element, each with 8,000 HP. The problem is that while they all have rather weak attacks, when their HP drops low enough (below half), they begin to cast powerful -aga level spells which hit the whole party. The goal is to kill one at a time, but unforunately the best attacks hit all enemies, and most of my team had counter-attack as an innate ability, so they would whittle down the HP of an enemy I didn't want to target.

I died five times before succeeding. A guide can only help so much when every player's team is going to consist of different jobs and abilities. My strategy ended as follows (I also post for myself to read this in the future). Battle starts, my Ninja casts Float (a Time Mage ability) on the entire party. My Ninja and Knight then held back and defended for the time being. I did not want them doing any damage just yet. My White Mage continually healed the small amount of damage taken. For three rounds, I had my Black Mage summon Titan (a Summoner ability) to do damage to three of the four crystals, with the fourth gaining HP (holding at full HP) with each attack. After the third summon, I had my White Mage use Gil Toss (a Samurai ability), dealing around 4,500 damage to each of the crystals. Unfortunately, their HP was not yet low enough to kill them off, which I then believed to be another death. One crystal used Fire3 (Firaga), killing my White Mage and leaving my others with precariously low HP. I was fortunate enough to summon Titan once more before the other two crystals with low HP were able to use their very damaging spells (Aero Rake and Aqua3, as I learned from previous failures). This killed those three off. The Gil Toss left the last crystal with low HP as well, so it started casting Earth Shaker. And this did nothing, thanks to the Float cast early on. My Knight then used Sshot (attack four times) and my Ninja attacked as normal, and the battle ended successfully. Really though, these battles are not fun, and while there are definitely more ways to win, it still shouldn't take this much strategy. There was a second elemental boss battle later in the game, which while I won on the first try, felt much worse. There were three boss enemies instead of four, but this time they continued to throw out moderate to heavy damage along with debilitating status effects. What's worse, is that they all had to be killed within a few seconds of each other, or the dead would revive. I prefer most other boss battles, which require little strategy other than figure out its resistance, its weakness, attack, and stay alive. Listen Square-Enix: elemental boss battles are not fun!

Enough ranting about bosses and raving about the job class system (which words still can't explain well enough). I have a beef with the Final Fantasy series for something else: death. Final Fantasy V got me thinking a lot about death in the series. Really, why does every Final Fantasy game have so much death? There are multiple staples of the series I have noticed: Cid, an airship rising from the ground/sand/water (Final Fantasy V continued this trend, again), Moogles, and death. There continues to be characters, whether in the party (FFII, FFIV, and FFV) or important NPCs (every FF game so far), who die off. Why does this need to be a plot point to drive the story forward? I'm not denying that it works. It makes the player more immersed with the story, and feel for certain characters who have attachment to those who die. For the most part, there are characters who sacrifice themselves in order for the party to accomplish the task at-hand, whether it be a minute fetch-quest or a large part of the overall quest. I just think that this type of plot device has become stale after five games, and hope the trend fades away, or is at least a rare surprise (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy VII). I will admit though, that Final Fantasy V has the saddest and most emotionally jarring scenes of the first five Final Fantasy games.

Speaking of death, let's talk about Pokemon for a moment. I've always thought that the idea of being KO'd in Pokemon games, with never any Pokemon actually dying, pretty funny. None ever die, but can be revived at a PokeCenter or within battle via certain items. In RPGs, especially the Final Fantasy series, characters can die in cutscenes. Yet for some bizzarre reason, cannot be raised with any items. These same characters can die hundreds of times in battles, and be raised with magic or items without any problem. The same magic and items, with characters that have plenty of these items and MP I should add, almost never come into play during these cutscenes. And the developers give zero reason as to why. I never really considered it (thought about it occasionally, but never really cared, being that it was a plot device) until a cutscene in Final Fantasy V where they actually try using Cure3 (Curaga), then Raise, and then a Phoenix Down, all to no avail. The text then reads, "... (omitted, spoilers) flame flickered out..." I like that for once, the developers, while not giving any explantion, showed that items and magic have no effect. My point is two-fold: Square-Enix and other developers/publishers need to give more effort into why characters cannot be brought back from the dead this one particular time, and that the Pokemon games no longer look so foolish. Nintendo and GameFreak, at least with the Pokemon series, avoided being involved in this discussion because Pokemon never die. Just something to think about.

I finished* Final Fantasy V. I'm disappointed in myself, because I couldn't bring myself to finish the game properly, however. I died on the final boss four times, each being a 20-30 minute battle, without cutscenes. Thankfully there's a save point 30 seconds away from the final boss, a first for the Final Fantasy series. But this boss is just plain tough. Two forms, the second being what I cannot beat, no matter my strategy. Unfortunately all the good strategies I've found online use different parties and abilities than what I have, and I don't feel like grinding for at least two more hours for Exp. and ABP. So I took the easy way out: had a Chemist combine a Maidens Kiss with a Holy Water, and used it on the first form. After defeat, the battle ended without transforming into the second form. Yes, I cheated, and I'm ashamed for it. I'm still debating returning to level up, because I don't want all of my hard work and planning for my jobs and abilities go to waste.

Yet, who can resist the allure of Final Fantasy VI...