Final Fantasy VIII Review

"...Whatever"

I actually did approach Final Fantasy VIII without any preconceptions about the game and what it entailed, which lasted for all of about 5 hours of playtime until, by sheer bloody coincidence, MrMattyPlays uploaded a video to his second channel 'Retro Rebound', entitled something to the avail of 'Worst RPGs I've ever played' and in that thumbnail, tucked away in the top left, was Rinoa- FFVIII's poster girl. "Uh oh" I said, pointedly choosing not to watch that video. But it was too late, now I had the inkling in my brain. A JRPG lover considers FFVIII to be not just bad, but one of the worst they've ever played? Maybe that itself was a nuclear take, but the cloud of what it represented formed- not hanging over me like a downpour, but forming condensation on the glass warning of troubling skies. Now I was not just enjoying the set-up for the new Fantasy world I was diving into, I was suspicious in the ways it might ultimately let me down- (Knowing Matty is a narrative-buff like myself) and I'll confess to that potentially coating my views somewhat.  

That being said... yeah, I kind see where he's coming from.

The next step on my journey to experience gaming royalty, Final Fantasy VIII was an actual enigma to me- the only aspects of the game I knew were the rough identities of the cast- and that's just because Selphie is inexplicably one of Roxas' childhood friends in Kingdom Hearts 2 and "Leon", the inexplicably renamed 'Squall', mopes about all emo-like contributing little to the overall plot of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. I remember thinking he felt like a discount Cloud. I remember wondering what he was doing there. I remember wondering why the hell he renamed himself to "Leon". Now I think I have an idea, if not theories. He feels like Cloud (and has a name that is similarly weather-related) and is in KH because the character designed of FFVIII was a Final Fantasy VII fanatic whom we all know quite well and... tolerate. Yep, Square's modern day mad-man Tetsuya Nomura. From the height of obsession.

This did mean that I was approaching this Remaster, a quite successful and beautiful upscale of the original game which seems to sacrifice none of the original artistic intent in order to look decent on modern day hardware, with curiosity in my eyes and questions bubbling in my heart. Chief of which- why do people find Selphie annoying. Coming out the otherside I still have that question. She's your typical bubbly over-excitable archetype like Yuffie and, I assume based purely on her character design, FF X's Rikku. If anything any chance she had to become overbearing across the game is neatly stolen by Zell- which fits given that the both of them share the honour of being the characters to undergo the least significant character arcs in the game- but I'm getting ahead of myself...

In being faithful, FF VIII's remaster retains the 3D models in FMV backgrounds, similar to Final Fantasy VII and, a beloved game of my youth, Abe's Odyssey. This means some visuals can be overexposed and garish, my literal first note is "makes my eyes hurt", but good-lord you can't beat that old school charm. And, honestly, Final Fantasy VIII does kind of push the envelope with this technology in a way that makes me curious whether or not it can work in the modern day in kind of an old-school revival way. Moving video backgrounds whilst the sprites are controllable leads to some genuinely fantastic set-piece action moments I had to clap my hands at. And seeing as how I skipped FF VII (because I've already played it to death at this point) this marks the first point in my journey where I can see how to-the-page Square were when rendering Yoshitaka Amano's work.

I've seen his art style with accompanying art-books across the pixel games but there's always been compromise getting off the page and to the game- as is natural; pixel's are limited. Not so anymore. I recognised his style immediately the second I say Edea's horn-strewn red-hued asymmetrical headdress- that is right out of the Firion-style of character makeup. (Makes for quite the contrast compared to Tetsuya Nomura's pointedly westernised concepts for the design of the main cast. Like a conventional world meets otherworldly fantasy.) And I've never seen Amano's typically bubble-like city designs brought to life so perfectly until I saw Balamb Garden and the city of Esthar. Actually delightful!

Conceptually Final Fantasy VIII places its scenario in that same 'pseudo sci-fi/ contemporary' setting space that seems to spawn some of the most memorable JRPG worlds out there. Not that I don't love a good fantasy world space, Metaphor's world absolutely sung with history, culture and introspective strife galore- but it takes serious effort to distinguish oneself from the grey deluge of medieval fantastical peers- coated with garishly over-vowelled nouns and a light novel's worth of expected background reading material just to comprehend the significance of "that one guy doing that thing in this scene." Give us the grounded allusions to the world in the contemporary and go ham wild with your creativity in the Sci-fi any day of the weak and you'll win this old curmudgeons heart over! That being said- I am of two minds about the world of FF VIII.

On one hand it carries on FF VII's benchmark of distinctly realised worlds that feel workable beyond just being present. You can truly picture this world, follow the intercontinental train lines that dot the land and feel the web of global society- whilst pretending you don't notice how few actual settlements there are in this supposedly modern world. On the otherhand, and maybe this is partially my own preconceptions on the basics of human logic, it seems to make no damn sense whatsoever. This is the first symptom of a malaise that effects a lot of what makes up Final Fantasy VIII- what I'll call 'Ambition beyond ability'. Because yes, yet again this is another Final Fantasy game I'm going to give the vaguely over-used badge of 'Ambitious'.

But to be fair, Final Fantasy VII did so much to push the franchise forward not just in terms of visuals but in world building and the scope of the narrative and characterisation! (Okay, I'll relent there- FF VI actually pushed the envelope for character arcs in this franchise.) For VIII to decide not to just reach the same plateau that VII hit marks a courage that I'll always prefer over the safe laziness which colourises the sad majority of Ubisoft's existence. (Yep, got a dig at Ubisoft in there. It is a blog made by me!) All that being said- it doesn't turn out well. Not in story, not really in character, not in world and not, god forbid, in the disaster of an 'RPG system' that Final Fantasy VIII calls a core mechanic! (FF 7's Materia kept things so simple, and I guess that rubbed the FFVIII team the wrong way?) 

Story

FF VIII places us in the shoes of Squall Leonhart, an improbably named near-graduate of Balamb Garden, one of three mercenary schools that 'accepts' students aged 5-15 and trains them up to the point of becoming their elite-most operative- a SeeD. (Yes, it is always styled like that in the game. No, incredibly, they never tell you what the acronym is! I am actually aghast researching this to figure out if I'm just an idiot. There is no officially published acronym laid out for SeeD. Unbelievable!) Right away you are placed in a classroom in this Amano-conjured wonderland of a structure before a terminal of optional reading material. And let me just tell you now, after greedily consuming every bit of that terminal, there are so much mountains of context absent from that prime exposition dump of a device it sickens me. (Even a bloody mission-statement would have been helpful!)

This is a world that lives in the aftermath of 'The Sorceress War', which is kind of like FF6's 'magi war' only this foundation bit of world building is hardly mentioned and only ever indirectly elaborated on during the main story, so that even when you are actually witnessing the events of this war it's never quite clear who is fighting over what until several plot points later. (You feel that? Your brow furrowing? Get used to that feeling.) Honestly if I didn't play so many other genuinely coherent and well written RPGs I would actually consider myself the problem here- but as even the fans of FFVIII will tell you- the problem is within the pages of the script in that nothing feels like it makes any sense in the moment and only after you've seen the credits and seen how it all ends can you look back and connect some of the dots. Which is actually cool for like a mystery narrative or a weird conceptual mind-bending game- but for an otherwise conventional Fantasy game? It just comes across as poorly written.

Anyway, 'The Sorceress War' left a power imbalance and now nearly two decades later it's victors, the Galbadian military dictatorship, (Didn't know they were a dictatorship until looking it up just now.) are starting to stretch their borders and subjugate their neighbours. But never to fear, because the Garden's vast supply of specially trained child-soldiers have services available to purchase by any struggling city state. And if you think the child-solider factory that ships off 16-21 year olds to war is obviously going to turn out to have sinister intentions... nah. They're actually pretty much completely the good guys with barely any downside, barring one 'short-lived insurrection' which to this day I have no idea what relevance it played in the overall plot.

What I've done for you, in those three paragraphs, is untangled the jumbled mess of confused half-dissected thoughts and aborted plot threads which makes up the basic lead-in scenario of FF8- you'll not find a more concise, yet complete, overview: particularly not in the game! It almost feels like your wading around the poison-swamp that represents the creative processes in Hidetaka Miyazaki's brain as he conjures up his next Souls-Game- getting buffeted this way and that with the stinging acid of run-on sentences and absurdly vague dialogue snippets that feel like gaslighting. When Headmaster Cid told me that SeeD's were created to fight Sorceress' and then that it was Sorceress Edea who proposed the idea, and felt that no elaboration was necessary between those gigantic plot drops; I thought I was going actually insane.

Pit stop

But that's enough ranting about story, before I go any further I need to talk about FF8's combat system, or rather- it's failed attempt to take Espers and Materia 'just one step further'. The GF System (GF stands for 'Guardian Force', but it's funnier if we forget that.) is an archaic and needlessly esoteric relic of the pre-millennia seeped in superstition and suspicion. But is it really as complex and nonsensical as everyone says? Yes and no. The biggest problem with this system is actually the same problem as with the story- these writers suck at imparting even the simplest of information. I actually gawked at the cumbrous manner that FF8 lumbers through it's tutorial for this foundational gameplay system that I had to look up a guide on Reddit. That's how I know that it isn't all-that complicated; just head-scratchingly bizarre and more than a little bit ill-conceived.

So GF's are 'summons' for this FF, and just like Espers from 6 they have lists of skills and abilities you unlock by levelling them over the course of countless battles. So far, so good. Except these aren't 'spells' you're unlocking, but junctions slots. Bear with me, this is when it gets stupid. So a 'junction slot' is essentially a 'modifier slot' that you can apply to a specified stat- stats being what you see on your typical Final Fantasy character sheet: Strength, Vitality, Speed etc. When you unlock a junction slot in that stat- (that particular GF has to be 'equipped' for the slot to be available. Luckily there is no equip limit, you can pick and choose.) you can then 'junction' a magic spell to that slot which will buff that respective slot. (For example: Slot 1 fire to your Strength stat and it'll get a buff of +1.) This alone is the way you get powerful in Final Fantasy 8. Not one of the ways, the way. As in- levelling doesn't make you that much stronger- in fact, because this game has level scaling for some abominable reason, it is actually disadvantageous to level because it makes everything stronger without improving you enough to meet them! Insane, isn't it? (Most fans of the game actually encourage running away from most world encounters so as to avoid XP. I feel like I'm in a mad house.)

But surely I'm overselling the importance of Junctions, right? Afterall I just said that a fire slot will give only 1 to strength, if even that! Well I did say 'one' fire. You see, there is no MP in FF8. Spells are ammo that are drawn (a combat or world action) from enemies, draw points or GF unlocked item-conversion abilities. The more spell ammo you slot, the more that slot is buffed with a max of 100 spells per slot. The type of spell interacts differently with the type of stat too, so a damage spell will buff Strength more than a curative spell would. (They work better under HP.) "But then", I here you say. "If Spells are Ammo- and you need you keep 100 copies of spell slotted to your stats to stay competitive...(You can only hold 100 per character) then what if you need to use a spell?" There in lies one of the most perplexing conundrums of this entire concept because yes- if you use a spell that you have junctioned you are actively weaking that stat by spending your buff ammo! So pray you have alternative spells that aren't being junctioned- which becomes an issue in itself late game because... all those late game spells are the best junction fodder! I'm not going to spend rare Ultima spell ammo when that's the thing keeping my basic attacks popping! So FF8 managed to take the range of gameplay choice present from 6, (and slightly muted in 7) strip away classes completely again and disincentive spell use- encouraging basic attack spam until major boss fights. That is design incompetence to a near Ubisoft level! 

Characters

Back to the meat- the story and it's many characters! Right away we meet two rivals who's wrestle to overpower each will... kind of be entirely overshadowed by the fact that this game proceeds one of gaming's most legendary rivalries in 'Cloud v Sephiroth'. Still, Squall's bully Siefer is an intensely unlikeable prick from moment one, lacking charm, humour and wit to a near ghoulish degree. It is perhaps the one narrative plot point that FF8 is very effective at instilling at the appropriate time- from the first words he speaks. And yet, he is such a detestable asshat that it slightly works against the narrative when they try to shine sympathy on him. When I hear that Rinoa had a crush on him from a year back, that just lessens my regard for Rinoa's skills of basic deduction not to realise a prat when she sees one. When his backstory and the reasons for his iciness are extrapolated- it just somehow makes him see even more childish and pathetic- even next to a protagonist who is literally defined by regressive and insular personality traits. So good job in making a minor antagonist I dislike, FF8. Shame you wasted that energy on a dude who doesn't even rise to 'tertiary antagonist' in the grand scheme of things.

The otherside of this early-game conflict, Squall- is markedly better as a character, but not as much as he needed to be. Squall is kind of like a Cloud 2.0 in how stand-offish and 2000's emo-coded he is- only FF8 gives us much more insight into Squall's inner workings thanks to near constant thought bubbles during dialogue exchanges. I am... ambivalent about their presence. One one hand they really give us an in to his mind in a way we never really got with Cloud, on the other hand his inner monologues lack a juiciness to them to make them really interesting. Squall's mind, unfortunately, roils with the same energy of emo-"I don't care about anything" vibe you'd expect from a teenager- which is true to life, I guess, but not so exceptional for a protagonist in a story. His inner thoughts are mired with a anime-typical aloof yet philosophically rote haze which wares as the game goes on. Like the inner monologues of Max Payne but lacking any and all traces of poetry and noir.

More faux pas

That's enough character stuff- what if I told you there's another deeply questionable gameplay design choice- albeit one with a bit of more wiggle room for how objectively 'bad' it may or may not be. Limit Breaks- don't we love 'em, folks? That ultrapowerful explosion of flashy super moves- never get tired of them! Final Fantasy VII knew exactly how to handle them- build up the limit break meter with every basic ability you land until you hit it off. Simple, effective, we're still using that model decades later. Of course FF8 went for something completely different. There is no limit meter in FF8, and in fact you can use Limit Breaks constantly. one after the other, as many times as you want. The catch? They only become active when your health in the critical zone. (15% or less.)

Now... from a narrative point I can actually get this. You're taking a beating, down on your last leg and suddenly a burst of power surges forth as you turn the tables of the battle- it's real soaring stuff! In fact, I'm pretty sure Final Fantasy XV does something similar with their summon system- the more dire the battle the more likely they'll come! But in actuality, within the hands of an actual player- the second you realise how unbelievably broken and easy to exploit this is- it's over. When don't you just walk around with your most powerful physical attacker constantly on the edge of death spending each turn limit breaking? By the endgame doing this strat was the difference between Squall doing 4000-5000 damage a turn or doing 25,000-35,000 damage each turn. Well done, you've just made 'being half dead' the most appealing state of being in the game- which is exactly a design choice made for the Super Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry 2. Never have your design decision be comparable to Devil May Cry 2- friendly bit of advice there.

Set pieces

If I can just veer haphazardly back into story beats- I would very much like to be a bit positive again. For all the ill that Final Fantasy VIII's unchecked ambition caused, in ill-thought out combat systems, in unfocused narrative- I have that same ambition to blame for this game's, honestly, just awesome collection of set pieces. I really got a taste for them during the train operation which presented a mission-impossible style set of objectives to seize the Galbarian president's carriage mid-journey through an impressive series of precision line switches and a minigame that was basic, but thrilling and different from anything else in the game (or series) up to that point. The Assassination was resplendent in spectacle, questionable though it was given how little the game wanted to tell us about the premier in question- and I'm not just talking about her purposefully mysterious identity, but the very aspect of what a Sorceress even is or why the Galbarian's would be excited about getting a new Sorceress leader whilst SeeD would find that disturbing. (In hindsight that makes even less sense, actually. Didn't that country literally just finish a war against a country ruled by a dictatorial Sorceress?) However the sewer maze in the middle of the assassination sequence had me fitting my neck for a rope necktie. And finally, the Battle of the Gardens is just epic grandiosity to a frankly ludicrous scale.

The bizarre

Of what little I had heard about Final Fantasy VIII before this playthrough; one such thing was the existence of fan theories- one of which being the oldest and laziest in the book= was it all a dream? Such believing is trite and underserving of examination, but the trigger for such postulating marks one of the most grand dead-end threads of plot that even FF fans in the moment, lovers of the franchise, couldn't ignore. Namely Squall being impaled with a bolt of ice, suffering a proto-typical death sequence only to wake up in a few hours with a mild confusion about not even having a wound and never mentioning it again. It's a startling omission that begs for attention despite the fact it gets literally one, all we can do is guesstimate about the reason that the villain, which at that point is Sorceress Edea, might keep around and even heal her would-be assassins. 'Moment of clarity' be damned, that was straight up nonsensical.

And then there's the orphanage plot point. I cannot tell you how utterly repulsed I was by that moment when it happened, despite vaguely hearing about some hub-up around an orphanage here and there before experiencing the moment full throttle- like accelerating into a brick wall with spikes on it. That insane moment when it revealed that everyone in the party save for the 'princess' Rinoa were all childhood friends from the same orphanage, actually had my mouth hit the floor. Then when the matron walked in I literally got out my chair, tears in my eyes, and demanded to be buried because clearly I had died. (True story.) The fact that no one remembers this apart from resident screw-up Irvine, and the explanation is the throw away assumption that somehow GF's are involved- (coupled by the very complicated matter-of-fact and sudden lore reveal that apparently only Balamb Garden uses Junctioning, despite there being two other Gardens at the time. Doubly despite the fact that Selphie, a recent Balamb transfer, relays having accidentally stumbled into a GF in her youth and randomly Junctioning with it, accounting for her own supposed memory loss, implying that literally anyone can do it, but only Balamb commit) it just creates yet another chasm of narrative begging to be filled, which is never. Which only feeds the conspiracy theorists desperately tripping over themselves to theorize some abnormal purpose for these disparate threads of lore and plot- such as the theory that Rinoa is Ultimecia with her memory destroyed from years of Junctioning. Fun idea, sadly unsupported by everything else the narrative insists- still more believable than those who insist Vaan is a good protagonist.

Triple triad

Dammit, I need another pit stop. How about we talk about Triple Triad for this one? As anyone will tell you, Final Fantasy VIII is a simply massive card game with a sub-par fantasy story tacked onto the side of it. Triple Triad might be more famous than the game itself for the impression it's left on the community and upon experiencing it myself- I kind of get it; even if it's nowhere near my favourite minigame in this franchise. Heck, it's not even my favourite "card based" minigame in the franchise! That may be due to a rocky introduction to the game thanks to, surprise surprise, yet another poor tutorial from the kings of bad information dumps. Are you seeing a pattern yet? I had to find a real tutorial on Reddit. 

Triple Triad is a card collecting game wherein you challenge a player to place cards with directional values on a grid of nine. On the basic ruleset, if one of those values is higher than a value of a competing card it's touching- you capture that card. Whoever has more cards at the end wins... and they win a card from the opponents deck of their choice. Thus starts the red-hot obsession! There are dozens of cards and most NPCs in the world can be challenged to a game so there's always some completion metric to chase. Rare cards dot important NPCs, typically sporting designs based on other important NPCs- (I suppose it would be considered conceited if Laguna sported his own trading card.) and thanks to a quirk of the level scalling system- Triple Triad is actually the most reliable source of power progression in the game. Seriously.

Okay bare with me because this explanation requires several steps. Firstly, Level Scalling problem. Remember how I said that enemies become tankier the more you level? Well there is an underground and underexplained system designed to keep players somewhat competitive as the game goes on. Slotting spells provide higher buffs depending on how powerful the spell is, so 100 Firaga spells gives more Strength boost than 100 Fira spells would. But you won't be able to draw Firaga from any early game enemy because despite some enemies having access to that spell, the drawing of it is level locked. You have to already be a certain level before the game will let you draw that spell, and you won't find world draw spots for it until the late game. This doesn't so much keep the player reasonably strong as much as it keeps them barely capable of struggling through the game. Which is why you need to start winning cards in Triple Triad.

You see, Triple Triad cards can be 'modded' thanks to another unlockable GF ability, which essentially allows you to transform any card into a specific item which can then be broken down into elemental or status spells depending on what they are. There are no level requirements here and the more valuable cards typically yield more valuable transformation items. I had a healthy chunk of Firaga spells slotted into Squall, all courtesy of earning Triple Triad cards. In the late game some of the more onerous-to-collect cards offer frankly insane items. I'm talking a full 100 Megaexilirs from the Ward card, 100 Hero (temporary invincibility) from the Laguna card- the kind of stuff that makes it feasible to tackle up to Super bosses. But what about the game itself?

I don't love it. At the start all you need to do is win your first couple of games and get at least two good cards, that pretty much trivialises this entire minigame until disc 3- which doesn't scream 'solidly balanced minigame' to me. From disc 3 onwards, however, you'll be treated to poorly explained and headache-inducing rules like 'Random', which invalidates all the rare card collecting you've been doing by saddling a bad deck on you. (Literally the only way this game mode can become competitive again.) Then you get the true devils pulled up from Pandemonium, the horrific rules of 'Same', 'Plus' and 'Combo'- which scupper so many sure-thing matches that they'll live in my nightmares for all eternity. I just sit there screaming as my entire board is captured by a single crappy card whilst Squall exposits his riveting thoughts about how much he doesn't want to rely on people despite the fact he's now doing exactly that. (What a bed wetter!)  

Which is to say that Triple Triad is distracting enough, but it doesn't feel like a coherent enough mini card game for my tastes. I'll admit I'm in the minority there, though. People love that damn game like it's their first born. Final Fantasy XIV even officially brought it back as a side activity. I'm just more of a Queen's Blood guy I guess.

Behind the curtain

I am typically a believer in the common-man philosophy that any story can only ever rise as high as their antagonist, which isn't to say that picking a solid villain ensures a good story- but that you never have a chance at developing a truly gripping confrontation without a satisfying foe. ATLUS typically pick worldly pursuits of the human condition to form their stories around, such as grappling with the reality of death both literally and figuratively or facing down truth in a world forged by fear; which it what gives them such room to forge unforgettable tales. Final Fantasy VIII gives us a time travelling Sorceress from 'the future' who's specialties are possession, a gorgeous design, an bizarre Russian accent and motivations that are barely even hinted at throughout the game. Yes, we're going to talk about Ultimecia.

The matter-of-fact way that fake-out villain Edea drops the "yeah, I was possessed by a Sorceress from the future" line will haunt my dreams. And my waking hours will forever be haunted by trying to decipher exactly what this Sorceress' plans and motivations were intended to be the entire time. We get shockingly little insight into Ultimecia's thoughts outside of a detached monologue she gives from within Edea's body back before we learn who she really is, in which she rages about some form of 'Sorceress persecution'. But such persecution is never depicted nor alluded to, if anything people cower from Sorceress' and Garden is created to try and turn that around- so maybe the inciting slight that set Ultimecia off was committed in the future between the events of the game and her time? Either way, we're never given an in-road which makes it kind of hard to vision her as a three-dimensional character and not just an 'generally leering apocalyptic event.'

This sensation is heightened by how utterly insane her plan is. Get this- Ultimecia travels back in time so she can travel even further back in time so that she can enact a vague concept known as 'time compression' which (forgive me if I get this wrong, it's literally garbled out once in the entire game) squashes together all time so that everything occurs simultaneously which is a state of being in which only Ultimecia can exist. Why does she seek to kill literally everything? I don't know. How can she survive existing in a world without time? I both don't know and don't even know how the person who told me that fact knows. Why does she need to travel a certain distance in the past to be able to do this? That I do know- it's an arbitrary goal post to enable the plot to happen- there's no sense to it. 

All of this combines to create an antagonist that pales to the iconic heights of Sephiroth or the depth of Kefka. She's just an evil lady, with a Russian accent, and a eye-poppingly stunning design- seriously, Squaresoft really ran with Amano's concept art for that one! 

Squall has no time to ogle at Ultimecia's disturbing attractiveness, however, because in the later half of this game he suddenly, and I mean suddenly, decides that he is madly in love with Rinoa. This comes like a stack of bricks on the plot because up until this point, he hardly seems to like her. I worry that this writer might have confused 'refusing to let anyone in for fear of losing them' with 'actively hates the people around him and wishes they would die'. At least, that's the only way I can interpret Squall actively trying not to save Rinoa when she's hanging off the side of Balamb during the Battle of the Gardens. Not only does he need to be guilt tripped into going to rescue her by the rest of his team, but he immediately allows himself to be distracted on a side op to help some clumsy classmate track down a kid she's lost. That man wanted Rinoa to fall. In fact, if you really examine that scene, he only flies into Rinoa to rescue her by sheer dumb luck. He wasn't piloting that flying mech, that was a total coincidence! And, somewhat upsettingly, Squall only realises how deeply, obsessively, in love with this girl he is... after she falls into a coma. Translation: he only likes Rinoa after she stops talking at him. If that ain't true love-

It's almost startling how detached Squall begins to how, almost aggressively, possessive he becomes by the end. I like to think of that as positive character growth, but I can't help but wonder if that's simply swapping one extreme for another. His emo inner monologue is replaced with pining for Rinoa, he carries her halfway across the world on his back- he replaces his fond (if long missing) memories of his childhood home as an emotional anchor with his desire to meet her at a romantic flowery meadow. It's a little nauseating, but it's a lot more character growth than we typically see out of FF protagonists, so I'll ratify it. It's a lot more than we see some of his friends get. Zell's literal only growth is... he doesn't get bullied by Seifer anymore? That's all I can guess.

Rinoa herself doesn't really leave the same kind of impression that past heroines did. Again she's kind of like Aerith's innocence with Tifa's playfulness- nothing unique to her. That being said those are solid inspirations so the girl is likeable enough, I just don't know what is particularly special enough about her to warrant the obsessive devotion Squall comes afflicted with. I mean afterall- this is a girl who once had a crush on waste-of-free-will Seifer who's only redeeming quality was the time he broke out of jail because he was afraid of Squall getting credit for taking out the Galbadian president- gee, what a dream boat! (You could do better Squall! Hell, you could go for Quistis! She's got self respect!)

Grind

Pit stop again. Despite all the ways in which the very foundation of this game's design rejects grinding to an almost conceptual level- this is the Final Fantasy game that has demanded the most grinding out of me in order to finish to completion. (Yes, I clocked every achievement, even taking out Omega Weapon. Don't ask why, I think I have a problem.) There are end-game weapon upgrades throughout the game dependent on drops you can only get from a one-time dream sequence midway through the game. I wouldn't even have expected I was able to keep resources gained in a bloody dream sequence! (You'd think such drops would be spread to the endgame enemy table- but apparently that's communist talk or some such...) The only other option feasible would be to grind Triple Triad, a game in which you have no control over what cards are played dragging out the grinding experience even further, delightful.

Also, and I know this isn't technically the game's fault but rather the Remaster staff's- one of the achievements necessitated the killing of 1000 enemies. No surprise there, literally every Final Fantasy before this one has asked the same. Only in all of those games you'll naturally hit that number just by playing the game somewhat thoroughly- but in a title that disincentives all but essential fights, (even if I didn't adhere to those rules quite as stringently as some others did.) I was staring down the final dungeon with a kill count of 250. That was two and a half hours of mindlessly murdering trash mobs whilst watching the first two episodes of Gotham. (Decent, might watch more.) Really dumb achievement choice.

The end

Back in it- do you remember me mentioning the Super boss? Think I dropped that once or twice. I do so because, unlike for FFV I actually really enjoyed getting to, and overcoming, this Superboss through enduring the hell of a gauntlet to reach the bugger and then cycling my tactics to bring him down. (Aura + hero for me- worked wonders.) Of course, Ultima Weapon is more of the proto superboss. The real winner was Omega Weapon and he was a chore. Tucked away in, admittedly, one of the better endgame dungeons of the franchise- Omega Weapon has a simply obscene amount of health and a brutal attack sequence including one move that does exactly 9,998 damage. 1 less than the health cap. He was a supremely enjoyable little extra challenge, rather than the insane RNG puzzle of FFV's Omega Mk. II.

Which brings me to the finale in general. Much of what FFVIII attempts only really exists in context of it's peers to me. I can only see Disc 4 as a pale imitation of FFVI's 'World of Ruin', only lacking the narrative weight and desolation and helplessness of that iconic moment. Ultimecia's Castle is pretty cool, however, spouting a unique challenge in which all of your commands except from attack are stolen and have to be earned back from slaying each optional boss one by one. That means no magic commands, using items, resurrecting, calling your GF summons or even saving until you re-unlock it! Very interesting little end-dungeon challenge. There's even some curious puzzles to solve in order to progress through this Resident Evil coded mansion. Yet, disappointingly, Omega Weapon isn't a puzzle at all. Simply ring a bell and jog to his spawn point. Feels like a cop-out after the gauntlet to reach Ultima Weapon.

In the end Final Fantasy VIII caps off with another overly sentimental send-off the very likes of which FFVII made pains to avoid and truthfully- it's sweet, in a garish kind of way. I'm a sucker for a bit of sap and it's not even ruined by the haphazardly thrown together bootstrap paradox in which, whilst recovering the world from it's Time Compression, Squall and Ultimecia accidently end up at the orphanage whereupon Edea inherits Ultimecia's power (a power that will one day be inherited by Ultimecia ) and Squall explicitly gives Edea the idea to start Garden and the mission statement of the SeeDs. (Of which he was raised to join.) I understand why people come away with fond memories, even if the journey is bumpier than the Nile.

Final Fantasy VIII is an experience; and one I didn't hate as much as it might sound like I did. The game is deeply flawed, in concept and particularly execution- but by god it's still a Final Fantasy game. When you just play the thing, regardless of the nonsensical GF system or the 'grinding actually makes you weaker' design philosophy- that simple JRPG heart shines through and leaves a fun enough romp- enough to counter act the bad decisions unique to this game. Which does kind of sound like I'm saying that the best part of the FFVIII experience is everything they didn't try to 'throw their own spin on'... and that would be accurate, I agree with that. The story, on the otherhand, is a mess of stylish nonsense. Eye popping set pieces strung together by barely coherent bumbles of "and then" storytelling that leaves the distinct impression that everything was made up as they went along- which is especially embarrassingly when it's so very clear that they didn't. This script was weak, and the translation to English heightens those issues by being just plain odd. I saw Seifer announce his "Childhood Dream" only for Squall to recount it as his "Romantic Dream" over the course of two consecutive lines- I truly considered how much of this narrative was lost to weak localisation. But even given the mistakes (pariticularly Squall's characterisation which is meant to come off more clinical than dismissive) there's no diamond hiding in this rough.

Struggling quite a bit with the ways this game annoyed me against the different ways which Final Fantasy XII did the same made me realise how similarly I regard the two. Both had glints of interest from the outset that burned out over the course of the game, both had gameplay systems I didn't get along with... but I could follow XII's narrative. And I think Ivalice is a more interesting world space; probably due in no small part to that improved coherence. Which is why I'm giving Final Fantasy VIII a C-, still not a failure of a game but far below the standard of quality I expect from freaking Final Fantasy! Especially just after the game that put them on the international map! Here's hoping for a return to form with whatever game I tackle next- be it Final Fantasy IX or XIII. Or X, I guess... kinda wanna jump to XIII though- I have unfinished business there...

Final Fantasy - the classics

"A true paladin would sheathe his sword"

For the longest time I've had one of the most garish gaps in my own video-game expertise it is possible for one to have- I lacked a classic video game franchise of my own for which I held the utmost personal experience and regard. The furthest back my personal experience went was Metal Gear- and that was a franchise I only really got into, to the degree of fanaticism, around the era of MGS 3- not exactly straight to the source of the river. As such that is something I've tried to amend over the years falling into an obsessive series omnibus of the Divinity Games (Still haven't finished Beyond Divinity because I found it just that odious to endure), Splinter Cell (Sans Pandora Tomorrow because that one still hasn't been ported to modern software despite a PC version having actually existed at some point in time apparently.) And Baldur's Gate (No notes- literal legendary franchise even to this day.) But beyond that there has always been a glaring omission to my own knowledge base- that of Final Fantasy.

Now, Final Fantasy has not enjoyed the smoothest road directly to my heart. Indeed, it's often felt like Final Fantasy entered into that space of a game someone should enjoy if they love games, rather than just one that people naturally do- and when you enter into that equation a equally natural friction enters into the relationship of expectation versus personability and taste. I almost felt inclined not to care when all the Xbox world lost their collective britches at the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII back when I was first becoming aware of the gaming landscape around me, and thus avoided a lot of that world when it came to. It would be years later until curiosity won me over, I would play the demo for Final Fantasy XIII-2, find some latent spark of potential and realise that "Hey, this franchise everyone says RPG lovers will love? This ol' gal might have a bit of fun to her! Who'd have thought?"

From there my experience tumbled forth like water breaking the dam. I brought Final Fantasy XIII, played a good portion of it before moving on (Still haven't finished it. Thanks for asking.) Found temptation call me towards the legendary Final Fantasy VII- really got into that one, found an unforgettable world and iconic beyond iconography itself cast of characters. Got swept away on the hype-train for Final Fantasy XV, buying and playing through 'Type-Zero' just to get access for the demo of XV, loved that game despite it's blatant and still enduring flaws. Totally ignored the PlayStation exclusive XVI during it's marketing and release. Picked up XVI the day it dropped on Steam- really impressed by it, some of the best character and world work in the franchise as I had experienced it. Oh, and of course I played XII in the lead up to XVI's steam launch. Can't forget that... experience.

But through all of that there has always been this wide disconnect between the Final Fantasy I proport to know and this franchise worth of anthologies that stretch back to the heart of gaming as we know it. I've truly neglecting video gaming history and... I guess I just got tired of missing out on all that. Some place between playing through the VII Remake saga (which I forgot to mention) and Crisis Core (There's so bloody many Final Fantasy games!) a seed of curiosity got sprouted. What are the references that are so very core to the identity of this franchise that they come back entry after entry? But really I think it was Stranger of Paradise that really pushed me off the edge. A game that not only retells the original game (a game to which I was ignorant) but also (as I've come to learn across my journey) adds a bizarre connective tissue bridging across all FF games? How can I appreciate that without diving in face first? So you know the drill- Omnibus time.

Thanks to the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters I've had the chance to not only dip my toes into the past brought to the present with life-saving improvements, (Like the ability to buy multiple items at once in the store in Final Fantasy 1) but giving a true-to-the-original pixel style which, whilst slightly homogenising these game's visually- does so much more to capture the heart of the original than those honestly garish PC remakes that existed throughout the 2010's. I lacked the context to really know what fans hated about them at the time but now, on the other side of this experience, I totally get it- those look like a disaster in motion!

So let's start simple- with Final Fantasy 1. Final Fantasy 1 is a very interesting prospect to me, because it's not the only classic Japanese fantasy RPG game from this time period that I've tried to get along with. Actually I tried to find some spark for the Dragon Quest franchise by going back to it's original entry only to find a game so rudimentary and dull that I bounced off the series entirely. I still can't find the ability to care about Dragon Quest- sad as that is. Though my time with Final Fantasy 1 proved to ultimately be anything but. There is a simplicity to the first Final Fantasy, absolutely- but within that simplicity comes a frightening playability which cuts through all the apparent shortcomings to just become an easily digestible experience.

There's very little Final Fantasy asks of you. You have your set of characters, blank slates with names, who assume classes of your choice from the get-go among a pretty standard set of professions. Monk, Warrior, White Mage, Black Mage, etc. Final Fantasy 1, as you can imagine for a game of it's age, troubles itself little with creating a narrative with characters and progression and instead just gives you the basics- Four elemental crystals that need purifying. But that isn't to say the game is without structure- in fact, Final Fantasy 1 actually lays out a structure most of the other pixel games follow suite with: an almost Metroidvania style 'travel where you can'. As you progress you'll unlock new modes of travel that allow you traverse rivers, then seas, then the skies. It's genuinely so much better than the strung-along moon logic most RPGs of the early age found tantalising.

Now just because Final Fantasy is simple, that doesn't mean it's barren. Actually FF has a world with a few interesting details scattered here and there, the ruins of some ancient civilisation called the Lufenians, and a far-passed scientist of theirs who long ago mastered airship technology called... Cid? That's right, Cid is the first reoccurring name in the franchise, who'd have guessed? Then, right at the end, the narrative takes a near unhinged swerve into time-travel and a causality loop that feels so slyly bizarre I couldn't help but laugh. That famous complex nature of Final Fantasy plotlines shines through even in their very first outing, what a hoot!

In heart Final Fantasy is mostly about enduring dungeons that grow increasingly gruelling as it comes to resource management, which can actually make it quite the struggle what with your very limited spell slots (Yes, Spell Slots. This was before MP became a function.) Recovery is a real challenge until you realise how the healing staff works, that knowledge alone kind of breaks the game a little. Bosses are more of endurance bouts than real challenges of strategy with one glaring exception. Turns out that, for some insane reason, the Pixel Remaster bases itself almost exclusively off the original Japanese release of these games in all but one crucial metric. Chaos, the final boss, comes from a 2000's re-release called 'Dawn of Souls'. A re-release which, crucially, made Chaos much tougher in order to compensate for extra dungeons which the game borrowed from later Final Fantasy games. And by 'much stronger' I mean health times a factor of five!

That sounds insane, and it is- Chaos is twenty levels tougher than anything else in the game- but to be fair.. the original Chaos was as about tanky as a Warmech, which isn't hugely tanky. (The Warmech being an insanely rare enemy spawn mini-boss whom I spent about thirty minutes grinding to get to.) New Chaos was so tough and hit so hard that it forced me to learn a mechanic I literally did not know existed at any other point in the entire game because I didn't need to know... buffs stack. That's right, in FF1 buffs don't run out and then stack- which is a necessity when Chaos is one shotting people left-right-and-centre, but utterly overkill for anyone else in the game. So not exactly perfectly balanced, but fun without doubt. I do slightly love the fact that the Final Boss truly is the baddest creature in the land- we don't get that often!

Now before we move onto 2 I might as well share my sin with you. You might have noticed that I mentioned the Warmech, an uber rare spawn who is the bane of any FF completionist, and winced. Why would I force myself to face that thing, I just wanted to experience these games right? Well something along the way of playing FF poisoned my sanity and I realised that no, I don't want to just experience the game's on that small level- I wanted to know them fully. And thus expanded my mission further than I had done for any Omnibus previously. I wasn't just completing these games, I was 100%-ing them. And doing so on my first run- which meant I picked the perfect game to realise this because Final Fantasy 1 is the only game in the franchise as far as I know without any missable achievements or bestiary entries. Thank god I started using a 'missables' guide for the next entries- they got a little tough from here on in.

Final Fantasy 2 gets a bad rap, and I sort of get it, but I also understand the huge wave of praise the original release got for being an 'anything but safe' sequel. Ditching the largely simple story of FF1, FF2 weaves a tale of an evil empire scouring the land, a royal resistance crushed underfoot and a heavily foreshadowed story of corruption that feels underbaked but I love that they went there. There's even an attempt at giving player character's some basic personalities and even canonical names- truly Square were shooting for the moon with this game! As it happens, Final Fantasy 2 actually underwent several revisions over it's development as temperature shifted between doing a direct sequel following the basic formula of the first game or something newer and distinct- a decision that would come to shape the Final Fantasy franchise from that point onwards.

Perhaps FF2's most controversial, whilst also it's most interesting, idea would be the bad levelling system. It's pretty messy by modern standards, but at the time I gawk at the sheer ambition Square were attempting and laud the bravery to go with it. Totally eliminating the level-based experience point system of most every other RPG in the world, FF2 adopts a skill-development system wherein every attribute a player has can progress independently after every fight. Your HP, your MP, skill with a sword, skill with a dagger, skill with each independent spell- all grow separately under a metric of 'whatever you use, you become better at.' Sword users will grow their sword stat and fire spell wielders get better at it. Take damage and your health grows. Deplete mana and your magic grows. It's a natural levelling system which predates the excellent Elder Scrolls system and offers a route for Role Playing totally unexplored in any other game of the time. Truly revolutionary!

It's also pretty bad. You see, weapons skills (and spell skills) level from 1 to 16, with each level indicating how many times your weapon actually hits each turn. So yes, when you have a sword at level 5, each swing actually hits the enemy 5 times. Quite powerful, no? Too powerful, actually. If you hit max level with any weapon by the endgame you can steamroll through anything, even the final boss, without sweating. Of course, because of how convoluted levelling actually is, it's unlikely you'll hit max level unless, oh I don't know- you're trying to 100% the game and thus need to figure out the levelling system in order to max out at least 1 weapon skill and 1 spell. What a terror that would be, right? So here's my attempt at a crash course. (Please skip the next monster-paragraph if you can't stand overly complex systems explained to death.)

There are level bars under every weapon, but they don't increase every fight- even if you use the corresponding weapon for that fight. So what gives? As it turns out, you only get experience for that weapon type if you use that weapon the equivalent amount of times to the level you have in it. That is to say, you need to use your sword three times in a fight in order to get sword experience for that fight. (And yes, this calculation is made independently for every fight.) But that's easy, right? After all, your sword swings multiple times every time you use it corresponding to your level, doesn't it? Not quite, you see the calculation only counts the amount of times you actually press the attack key, not how many times the attack hits. If you only attack once and the attack lands 15 times, you'll only get the credit for attacking once and not get any XP. (The calculation is a little more complex than that, with negative experience entering into every fight that takes into account the difficulty class of each enemy you fight- but my explanation works just fine if you ignore all that.) 

So the best way to level your chosen weapon is to, whenever you face a large group of enemies, put everyone else on standby and have your levelling character wail on each enemy with one attack each, overkilling is allowed and multiple hits will never bleed onto another enemy meaning you can massacre every large group of enemies you stumble onto for a little EXP shot. But there's a problem even there- the max level is 16 and the largest group of enemies you can possibly find is 8! By the time you're fighting at level 8 there's no group of enemies that will last more than one swing from you! So what gives? Well in comes my cheat code- dual wielding. Dual wielding weapons causes a double attack on each swing, and these attacks do count as a separate activation which is counted towards the XP calculation. Making use of this not only allows you to speed through weapon skills in the early game, but makes Firion, the FF2 protagonist, look like a badass. So did you get all that? I bloody-well had to in order to complete this game!

Outside of utterly perplexing levelling, Final Fantasy 2 introduces some series staples for the first time. Cid returns with another airship, only this time Cid is alive! Chocobos are given their debut into the franchise and we even get our very first Behemoths! Gods alive, what a sight they are! Of course, we also get the Iron Giant, but given that the Iron Giant is this game's Uber rare- I wouldn't blame anyone for not knowing that. (Took me about half an hour of grinding to get him.) Also introduced in Final Fantasy 2 is the frankly ridiculous death count some of these games love so much- pretty much everyone in FF2 dies, it's grimly hilarious. Oh, and this game's music really steps up the game. The Castle of Pandemonium theme is actually a series high.

Oh, and as for my quest for 100%, Final Fantasy 2 was my first dose of missable content. Code words, random hidden chests, blink-and-you-miss-it locations- FF2 seemed as determined to ensure you don't experience everything as I was to get that sweet 100% on my first go around. Luckily I had the power of guides on my side! Final Fantasy 2 was good, overly ambitious but I prefer over-ambition to... Ubi-slop. Liked the game, can't wait for the Netflix adaptation.

Final Fantasy 3 kind of feels like a do-again of 1, only with much more ambition and experience behind them. Narratively 3 is kind of the blandest, going back to the 'Warriors of Light' concept from the 1st game only lacking the insane time travel stint of the final hour of Final Fantasy storytelling and instead settling for... I actually can't remember. Throwing aside the 'everyone dies' angle for a more light hearted story, with a little bit of character sprinkled in for good measure in the silly characters of the world, leaves less of an impression but isn't quite unwelcome as one might think. Sure Xanthe won't go down as one of the greatest villains ever, particularly as he doesn't even make it to 'Final Boss' status, but I remember his name, which is more than I can say for the actual Final Boss who is... um...I have it here in my notes that this game has 'the least interesting Final Boss', let me look it up... Right, the lady cloud- yeah, this game ain't winning any narrative awards. But that also wasn't really the point with this game.

Enjoying one of the larger worlds to date, and the introduction of moogles, Final Fantasy 3's claim to fame is the 'Job System' which would be my first introduction to a concept that gave me chills. Jobs were always this thing that later Final Fantasy games dabbled with which sounded daunting- giving the player the freedom to pick classes also gave us carte-blanche to screw up. Just look at my Final Fantasy 12 crew who had dual jobs picked at seeming random and struggled to face any of the true endgame content- I didn't want to end up in that hole again! Luckily Final Fantasy 3's job system is, honestly, quite darling.

Jobs are classes you can switch to freely at any point, opening up versability to your play style and meaning you can approach any fight in anyway. Need a team of mages for this fight? Go ahead! There's no penalty for job switching and it just means you're incentivised to buy four sets of every armour type as you progress. This also allowed for the team to develop more specialised and tough boss encounters, including some decently tough optional bosses that fill out the gameplay experience. We also get the best Airship yet in 'THE INVINCIBLE' which acts as a genuine home base- albeit one you get pretty late into the game to enjoy.

Ultimately despite being narratively basic, FF3 proved to be the most engaging, and thus the most materially fun, Final Fantasy game yet. But there still felt like some degree of potential left on the table that wouldn't be realised until a couple of games down the line...

Final Fantasy 4 might be considered one of the real break-through moments of the franchise, where Final Fantasy really figured out what it needed to be in order to have a future in the, to become very crowded, RPG space. It was the moment that Final Fantasy really started to focus on Characters, introducing a morally grey (at least initially) protagonist in Cecil, driven by relationships and loyalties explicitly laid out throughout the plot. He has a woman he loves despite his ills, a king he serves despite their onset tyranny and a child he adopts after murdering her mother and destroying her village. Yeah, FF4 isn't perfect with it's characterisations yet, and some personalities feel a bit flat, but ambitious is an understatement for all they were planning.

This also marks the very moment that Final Fantasy stopped being a pure turn-based franchise, for all those that bemoan the apparently 'implacability' of Final Fantasy's game style and their shirking of those 'turn based roots': these games stopped doing that in 1991! This is the start of the ATB real-time/turn based function, wherein every character has an 'action bar' that fills up in real time requiring players to stay active and in the moment to not get slapped silly by enemies. This also takes us back to the fixed classes for characters, but matches them with unique functionality which makes these various classes feel somewhat unique. Also, characters actually naturally learn spells this time, rather than requiring you to go spell hunting all over the world. God I missed that.

There's a lot of character and special 'above and beyond' aspects of Final Fantasy 4 which made it my favourite thus far. A rare party limit of five gives almost overwhelming choice in the early game, gear feels more intentionally placed to have specialties pointed towards upcoming threats making the 'click optimize and push forward' meta obsolete, encouraging actual thought into planning. Octamammoth's evolving sprite which lost more tentacles the more you fought him was cool, coward character Edward actually fleeing battle when his health get's low really characterised who he was, even just recycling the jobs from 3 into actual roles which characters possesses instils the world with a sense of immediate death and objectivity. You can place the role and it's connection to society instantly naturally filling out the scope of the world. Of course, that isn't to say the game is perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

Bards are functionally useless, now expending potions to heal everyone for no reason. Character growth moments lack the grace one might expect from a narrative this ambitious, character relationships evolve so quickly the narrative feels like it's in first forward. (Remember I talked about Cecil adopting a girl who's village he burned and mother he killed? Yeah, that happens like... the next day. And She, Rydia, seems cool with it.) And whilst some of the narrative twists seem really grand and interesting, others seem mind-numbingly dumb. Rosa and Rydia getting unsanctimonious dumped from the party for no other reason than 'woman' only to be let back into the party thirty seconds later is both a waste of time and a plot hole. (The team left them on Earth, and bumped into them again on the Moon. How the hell did the girls manage to catch up? Did they hold onto the ship as it flew into space?)

Still, Final Fantasy 4 really feels like the moment the Final Fantasy we would come to love came into view. And I'm not just saying that because this is the first time we see 'Bombs'. We have protagonists that actually rank in character, a cast some people might actually want to revisit and a world that felt like it had purpose and heft. I understand why this is one of the few games in the franchise to enjoy a follow-up (Final Fantasy 4: The After Years), even if I'm not invested enough to actually seek out and play the thing.

Final Fantasy V is the biggest and fullest feeling Final Fantasy so far. In fact, it was the one that took my longest to 100% by five or so hours out of this collection. It also presented me with great music and the prettiest visuals so far from the get-go, so my expectations were high. I knew that Final Fantasy V would see the return of the job system, but what I didn't expect was for this to be a marriage between jobs and narrative driven storytelling! I honestly thought the two concepts would be largely divorced in my head out of necessity, and whilst there is a level of objectivity which is lost under free-form job placement, I'll be honest- it kind of comes together in the finished project.

FFV's jobs are a world more interesting than they used to be. This time around you can level whatever job you want, but they actually have a proper levelling limit, as befitting their separate levelling metric to base levelling. All jobs get points after every fight which push them towards levelling up, each level up grants a 'universal skill' from that job, one of which can be slotted in conjunction with another job. For example, if you get the two-handed perk from levelling up the warrior tree (wielding one weapon in two hands to double the damage) you can then equip that perk whilst wielding the Samurai class to double the damage of the powerful Katana's they get to wield. Already this blows open the customisation of the job system.

In narrative FFV goes once again for the light hearted approach of 3, only this time with a wit and humour that some find endearing. I thought it made the story less engaging, but I could appreciate the odd funny line from Bartz, (our canonically named protagonist) or Gilgamesh. (Yes, Gilgamesh is introduced here.) Unfortunately, thanks to that narrative, Final Fantasy V also has the most missable content with two huge world shifts that render entire tables of enemies redundant. Filling out the bestiary for this game was a nightmare, and this was the first time I wished I hadn't neurotically decided to 100% this franchise.

Also, speaking of negatives- can Blue Magic die in a fire? Blue Magic is the ability to use an enemy skill, which can be pretty powerful however- You have to be hit by that enemy skill beforehand. Whilst being a blue mage. And that might just be the most annoying stipulation I have ever seen in a class ability in existence, with the exception of the 'gambler' skill from FF6 but we ain't there yet. First off- there's no way to know what skills you can steal, so you better have a guide open with you because there's only a handful across the entire game. Secondly, some of these skills are insane. Take 'Death Level 5' for instance, a spell which kills anyone who is a level divisible by five. Yes, just straight kills them. Which means you have to get your mage to die to this spell (having it miss doesn't count) whilst ensuring that at least one person in the party isn't a level divisible by five because a party wipe demands a reload. Also everyone levels up at pretty much the same rate so you're only ever a couple battles away from everyone being the same level.

Then there are some spells that enemies only ever target themselves with. So now you need someone else in your party with the Beastmaster class who needs to land the control skill in order to control the enemy and make them use the skill on the blue mage. But then there are skills that an enemy can't target a party member with, meaning that you need to use control to take over an enemy whilst another party member casts reflect so that when the enemy casts the spell on themselves it reflects and hopefully hits the blue mage. Or just make everyone blue mages. And, of course, one of the achievements asks you to get every blue mage spell. Hated it.

There feels like a lot of grind to Final Fantasy V which was almost non-present in previous games. World 2, for example, features a galling jump in difficulty for 10 level plus 15,000 health overworld enemies out of the blue. Several quest-threads just kind of stop, leaving the player to wander around aimlessly trying to figure out where to go next. And all guidance just slips by the back-end meaning 100% searchers have to drag their sorry hides around the entire world space to go bestiary filling. That being said the challenge was appreciated with the exception of the series-first superbosses, Omega sure had me pulling out all the stops, I just wish that 'the stops' didn't include 'strands of hair' as his abilities utterly transcended logic to the point of sheer RNG. I had to pray my way through his reaction moves everytime I 'Rapid Fire' 'Two handed' katana-ed him!

Exdeath was certainly a weaker antagonist, not least of all thanks to that dumb name, but I found the characters and their tales to be enjoyable and full enough. No one character is drooling depth, but with a lighter narrative like this one that just seems more tone fitting, I suppose. I have to praise Final Fantasy V at least for having some of the coolest endgame sprites and the start of the 'Neo' naming convention that the franchise would come to love from here on out.

Which bring me to Final Fantasy VI. I wish I could come to this game with a more nuanced and cold take, but you know the drill already. Final Fantasy VI is easily the best of the Pixel Remasters games- it feels like the grand opus of everything that Final Fantasy had been working towards up to that point, sans the levelling system for Final Fantasy II because I literally think Square have never tried something like that again. (At least Bethesda carried the torch.) From the moment go Final Fantasy VI has the most gorgeous visuals of the series thus far, the most intriguing world building in this unique post-magic fantastical industrial-era tyranny and a jaw dropping, I can only assume iconic, intro. Actually, the only question I was really asking myself throughout all of this game was... how does it compare to Final Fantasy VII- the only game that is largely considered it's rival. Traditional wisdom gives FFVI the prize but from the lens of hindsight, regarding only the original FFVII, I wondered if the same conclusions would dawn on me.

Story really is the guiding heart of Final Fantasy VI, and this game's grasp of character and world feels a genuine step up from all previous attempts. Every character from this vast cast has genuine place and a desire for purpose in this story that frames itself around that search, giving a valid path of growth for just about everyone save the mascot characters and Gogo. Who is just... I don't understand Gogo. Like at all. Now true, I wouldn't say there's anything particularly profound about an RPG narrative where every character is framed around a search for purpose but FFVI seems so tightly wound to this concept that they create a heart around this ideal that transcends what might otherwise be considered somewhat pedestrian. I came to care about pretty much everyone. Also, 'Magitek' is introduced for this game. Yay.

FFVI also manages to wiggle itself around the whole 'class' system, whilst giving everyone consistent classes to better fill out the world building they introduce 'relics' that act as substantive modifiers to the way you play that can, in some instances, prove as powerful as job perks from FFV. We also see a whole slew of really unique class types. Celes' Runic Knight class is quite circumstantial, but an interesting idea. Gau's... whatever he is makes for an interesting trade-off between versatility and control. Strago is a much better blue mage- in that he doesn't need to be whacked in the face by a spell to learn it, he merely needs to see it be performed in a fight. FFVI's ATB bars refill so much slower than previous games' and it isn't until you see the depth of command at your disposal that such a choice makes sense.

Espers are a curious addition to the toolset, operating like Magatama from SMT 3, every Esper you equip slowly bleeds their skills into the equipper as you level up with them, and others even buff stats if you level up with them- creating that kind of optional character building for those really looking to min-max their character builds. They also relate back in the story in a significant way which adds a sense of gameplay-narrative congruity that enriches the overall experience. Glad they made summoning feel worth a damn this time around.

Kefka is the villain this time around and the man has an earned slot among the franchise greats. His laugh is an iconic haunting byte punctuating an inexplicable clown routine which feels in danger of making him seem incompetent, but rounds-off into sheer unpredictability. Kefka is the first villain who feels genuinely interesting to see on the screen as well as to just hear about off it. Even if you never really get to dissect who he is directly, there's enough context to draw conclusions. Kefka's general ridicule even by his own peers, his status as an errant experiment by a tyrannical emperor all belies a search for purpose underlined by a malign nihilism which drags him to madness even at the height of his strength and power. There's a depth to Kefka utterly absent from other antagonists and I was left just wanting more from the man, not so much more of the joker-esque jester antics that are typically highlighted in other games he shows up in (like Dissidia) But more of the silent torment that wracks through him. What drew him to the way that he is? How was it growing up with Terra? What was their dynamic like? How must it irk him to know everything that gives him worth was extracted and copied from Terra's natural talent? It's almost a shame this game doesn't give us these stories, feels like potential left on the table rather than just margins designed to be read into.

But FFVI is very confident about it's storytelling. Enough that key character moments are sometimes left to complete optional chance. You'll sometimes be dragged away from one set of characters to control another simultaneous scenario, or meet someone new entirely. That confidence is warranted. VI has a strong cast of characters that nearly all get completely satisfying arcs from start to finish, such that those who don't, like Shadow, feel utterly intentional to instil that forlorn longing for resolution which keeps fans wistfully wondering for years to come. ("What if Shadow had a chat with Relm- just for a moment! >sigh<")

I do have my issues. I think the Esper system is cool, but it does homogenise character abilities near to the end of the game, making everyone spell slinging demons. Sabin's QTE blitz system is just annoying. Not difficult, just a waste of time to do everytime. Setzer's slot machine can go jump off a cliff, I spent three hours trying to get 777 for the achievement before learning the game nonsensically rigs the result for no reason. Also, it can randomly kill the party if you set it on autobattle (which happened for me thrice. Screw Setzer.) Also, and I get this is slightly unfair, 'Aria Di Mezzo Carattere' is way too close to Aerith's theme. I know, I know- this one came first- but I can't help but compare! Only Aerith's theme is justifiably iconic for emotional range and musical depth, which makes 'Aria Di Mezzo Carattere' feel like the first half of a breath, bizarrely incomplete. Unfair, but I have to be honest.

Finally, I need to talk about the World of Ruin. I did not know that Dragon's Dogma 2 was a send-up to Final Fantasy 6 but now it seems utterly obvious, the WOR is such an interesting place for a FF game to go in. Cutting the thread of narrative off and leaving you in an open ravaged world- it's utterly unique and chillingly daunting. Also curious how the protagonist seems to shift from Terra to Celes for a time, making this feel like a narrative that transcends character and rather settles on the drive towards purpose itself. Final Fantasy 6 left me with a sensation I can't shake- I think there's a genuine masterpiece in mould that makes up the game, but it isn't quite on the screen. Whereas Final Fantasy 7 earns it icon standing through everything we see, Final Fantasy 6 lingers on the heart and mind more, to such an extent it leaves a longing to realise all of that heart in action. I think a Final Fantasy 6 remake could, and would be incredible, but for the game we have today, compared to the original FF7, I have to give it to my boys in Midgar. More distinct world, more full antagonist, and slightly more nuanced meta-narrative; but I love both games and the choice between the two is not cut and dry!

The Pixel Remasters have been a fantastic route into gaming royalty. Each game held something special and I didn't fully dislike a single experience, which across a franchise as storied as this one marks something honestly special. I've always wondered about the legendary status of Final Fantasy and honestly held off on this little retrospective just in case reality did not live up to the stories. What I experienced what not what I expected, not by a long shot, but not a disappointment. What I found was a playability and relevance for each one of these games even in the modern age, to a degree that makes me slightly aggrieved I never did this earlier. I've learned a lot not just about history, but the evolution of a legend- and something makes me curious where the games went next... Final Fantasy VIII remaster next?

A Dauntless Tale

 

Monster Hunter games are becoming a genre- that most dreaded of foibles- after two decades of being that incredibly niche little side project that Capcom threw out every now and then fill up space between bigger franchise games. And maybe that is the strength of Eastern game developers- never sticking all their eggs in one basket but keeping loose and creative so that little underdog you might never have given two cents a while ago ends up polishing up to perfection in the background and perhaps even becoming the next 'Like a Dragon' is raised right. We've seen Wild Hearts step up to try and score some attention, we're apparently going to be seeing a Horizon series game based on this style of progression (as though base Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't already owe enough to the MH franchise) and, yes, we even have the old faithful of Dauntless.

Now, Dauntless is actually something of a special case- because it was conjured up off back in a time before Monster Hunter broke into the mainstream. Sure, Monster Hunter was a pretty well known off entity for the sheer number of entries it had accrued within it's relatively short life and simply the staying power the brand seemed to have in the minds of those who played it- but how many people had actually played the games? Enough to justify the franchise existing, evidently, but not enough to set off a fever pitch. Phoenix Labs, off Riot Games heritage, spun off with the hopes of making 'big games with small teams', and aimed right dab at the Monster Hunter franchise based on nothing but hunches and ambitions. I guess they had some solid market analysts to hand, then- because Dauntless would manage to score a release date within 12 months of Monster Hunter World.

There's no understating the monumental success of Monster Hunter World- a title released globally for all major platforms whereas previously the franchise had been mostly relegated to handhold or Nintendo Wii. It was inescapable for it's time, everyone had to talk about the big monster game- the addictive game loop, the oodles of build variety, the insanely complex enemy designs- Monster Hunter World benefitted from a decade and a half of hard-built experience all being exposed to a new audience at once and they were dizzied by the prospect. And about a year later, when the lustre of World has worn some and folks were wandering about for their next fit- here roles up Phoenix Lab's Dauntless with a promise of recurrent content updates built on a live service model. Oh, and it was free-to-play? You couldn't dream for more optimal conditions for a studio's virginal outing.

Dauntless scored big with a core audience that flocked to the game and gave it their all, proving the validity of the Monster Hunter brand and probably directly spawning the modern day interest to be included in conversations of 'generic diversification' right alongside 'a battle royale spin off' and 'An extraction shooter spin off'. (Waiting on 'Final Fantasy 7 Materia Hunter' to be announced any day now...) And to their utmost credit Phoenix labs knew exactly how to capitalise on the excitement around their game to keep some folks around- entering that stable state of player interest that few live services achieve. Not a burning phenom perhaps, but a healthy and approachable medium. Dauntless lived off itself for years and Phoenix Labs were going to use it as a springboard to launch their vast game development dreams. Until reality came knocking.

Looking at Phoenix Labs today you might be surprised to see the headlines- with the majority of the staff being let go and the future of both Dauntless and their (farming-based cozy game?) 'Fae Farm' being up-in-the-air. What happened? Capitalism obviously. Phoenix Labs were affected by the industry funding troubles as surely as anyone else and through a series of bad circumstances that led to them being acquired by a company so odious that the team actively (and arguably maliciously) attempted to hide the identity of their purchaser from everyone including potential hires. Forte- a Blockchain company. Blockchain and games go together like ionizing radioactive material and Deoxyribonucleic acid- which it to say: one totally ruins the other. Blockchain people are just so terminally unfun and deprived of basic lovable properties that their sheer repulsiveness just sucks the talent and life out of everything they touch- and yes I very much would love to say that to any of their faces; were any brave enough to leave their circles of protective sycophantic yes-goblins.

So what do you think happened when Forte- a cadre of creepy cretins- took effective control of their modestly popular- if lightly declining- game? Well of course they ended up tilting the company, directly or otherwise, towards what might go down in history as the worst 'revamp' a video game has ever received. A Steam launch to a bigger set of players, thanks to the end of Epic Exclusivity (can only imagine how many companies have grown to resent those deals in hindsight) should have been a cause for celebration- but when that launch heralded a wiping of all progress, a total reworking of progression to be flat the recycling of previous rewards into paid cosmetics- well... let's just say the cheering crowds never arrived.

There are few dumber ideas, when nurturing an years long fan base, then wiping progress to make a worse experience- When Final Fantasy XIV did something similar, that team pulled every stop imaginable to ensure the game born out the otherside was as polished and lovable as possible. Phoenix Games, however, just murdered their game loop and rolled out the corpse for mockery. It was a disaster. Fans that were still with the game were pushed out the door, the new audience saw the headlines and stayed well clear and the game managed to peak on Steam with under 1000 players. Which is bad, if that needed to be said.

Which leaves us with a tale, one of Dauntless prospects being squandered- seemingly under the direction of people who couldn't draw a circle with a compass. At least, that is what we can assume happened to the game. There's always the chance that the entire team was just hit with a stupid ray and came to Steam with the intention of killing their own game from day one- but I guess we'll have to wait until Jason Schierer does the expose on that on. Until then we can take away the lesson- when the devil comes to bargain baring gifts- remember to treat everything in that wicker basket like it's a curling monkey paw in waiting- sometimes it's better to die with dignity.