Review of the Good Installments in the Final Fantasy Franchise

Stirling,

I never played a lot of FFIX, but a friend of mine had it in high school and he liked it. This was the same friend who introduced me to Chrono Cross. He loved both games, but I never played far enough in either one to really see the appeal. I'm not saying they're not good games, but my attention span expired before I got to the good stuff apparently.

Maybe to stray from your topic a little bit, but Katy and I last week purchased our first HDTV, and so (as soon as she would let me) I pulled out all my old RPGs to see what they looked like on the bigger screen. Maybe I'm only being nostalgic, but in my opinion, the newer FFs don't have nearly the heart or the replay value of the older ones.

No single-player game of its era, for any system, by any publisher, or in any genre, is as replayable as Final Fantasy I. There are 126 distinct party combinations, and I'd be misleading you if I said that I don't want to someday beat that game with each and every one of them. Sure, the plot lies somewhere on the continuum between simplistic and non-existent, the magic system is outdated, and your party members will occasionally attack monsters that are already dead. I don't care. Yeah, yeah, the status and equipment menus are poorly integrated, being poisoned alters your party order, and sometimes you'll get killed by a roving band of Sorcerors before you can peel off a single round of attacks. I don't care. It still sets the standard for how attention-hogging an RPG should be. When I'm bored, I'm still more likely to pick FF1 up than any other RPG I own. I will admit that I'm probably lucky that FF1 was my first RPG experience, since its clunkiness would have been more readily apparent if I'd played others first.

I'll skip down to FFVI, although I could certainly sing the praises of IV and pass mild judgment on V. Final Fantasy VI is the best RPG ever. I said it. Ever. There is more in there to see, to do, to find, and to equip than there ever has been in any other RPG. There are 14 playable characters, and only a handful of them are throwaways. Each one is distinct in terms of personality and equipment. And the level of certitude that the game achieves in terms of the effects of elemental magic and weapons is superior to that of any game before or since. And maybe what I love about this game the most is that getting the best weapons, armor, and items in FFVI does not necessarily require you to go to GameFAQs or buy a strategy guide (except for the Paladin Shield); FFVI rewards patience and cleverness, without requiring you to be an insider.

Final Fantasy VII. I don't think I fall into the camp of fanboys that you loath, Stirling, but this game is another one that's pretty much spot-on. It's the first time that the English translations from Japanese started to sound relatively fluid and natural. (With some exceptions!) It's throughgoing storyline is superior to that of any FF before or since, with the possible exception of XII. And I do prefer materia over magicite. But in every other respect, I prefer VI over VII. Most of the characters in FFVII are totally peripheral. That includes Barrett, Red XIII, and Vincent, but I'm referring especially to Yuffie, Cait Sith, and Cid. The Cloud-centricity of the plot makes these characters' side quests feel that much more tacked-on. Also, I sort of feel like there's less to find in FFVII, and even after you find it, it's not as interesting as the stuff you found in FFVI. Once they decided to make weapons customizable by equipping materia to them, they limited how much interest the weapons themselves could hold. Weapons became reduced to battle power, hit rate, materia slots, materia growth rate, and ability bonuses. But that meant that you'd no longer find weapons with elemental effects, or that cast spells randomly upon striking, or that consumed MP to cause a critical hit. If you wanted such a weapon, you had to create it by equipping materia. Which is fine for what it is, but the more ground the game designers cede to in-game customization, the less the game draws on the old swords and sorcery motifs that made RPGs appeal to me in the first place.

But it's really only in FFs X and XII (among the ones I've played) that the in-game customization reaches such an epic scale that it becomes an actual turnoff. Come to think of it, in-game customization is probably at least a part of what makes FFV a few tiers below the best of the series as well. Since this is getting pretty long already, I'll save my rants on those games for another time.