 The Blackbelt, Mage,
Warrior
ROSSMAN
I've dipped my hairy toes in the Breath
of Fire series.
I've played some Dragon Warrior too... Never
really impressed me. The Lunar games?
*Yawn* How about Suikoden? No biggie. Phantasy
Star 1-4? A nice try. All of those series of
RPGs are/were
fun
and all, but there have only been a few that really jumped
off the TV and whacked off in my face as if this analogy wasn't
going anywhere fast.
American Role Playing Games have never
done it for me. The ones with storylines are lame, and the
online never-ending ones just piss me off for not having
a beginning, middle or end. Nope, it's Japanese RPGs for me,
bunky. And of that fairly large genre there have only been
a dozen or so that have been anything more than "average".
The ones mentioned above were definitely fun to play -- some
more for the characters and storylines and some more for the
battle systems and gameplay mechanics... but they were all
missing something that one Japanese company truly understood
and capitalized upon like nobody's mad business. I speak of
Squaresoft (aka Square-Enix): The GODS of the RPG Relm. They
understood
from the beginning what people wanted and gave them just that
and then 5 more heaping teaspoons of sugary bonuses with a
giant cherry to top it all off. Over the many years they have
given us games with engaging and endearing characters, a winding
and long-roaded plot, a mile-long weapon and item chart, innovative
leveling-up techniques and great enemies and especially great
villains. Some may argue that Chrono Trigger (the Dream-Team
compilation game by the masters) was the greatest RPG ever
made. They'd of course be wrong, but at least close to the
correct answer. See, the true greatest RPG was put out by
the same company with some of the same people involved... only
it was released 3 years earlier and called Final Fantasy
VI.
Yes, the Final Fantasy series
is everything a non-retarded person could want in a video gaming
experience.
Starting waaaay back in 1987, the original Final Fantasy was
Square's last best hope for salvation and profits. They poured
all of their resources into the production of the game, and
got 4 times more detailed in terms of plot, items to buy, weapons
to hack and slash with and bad guys to beat up than the closest
rival game, Enix's Dragon Quest. But most
importantly, every 8 out of 9 enemies you ran into weren't
"slimes". If that
sentence made no sense to you, don't worry, the rest of this
review won't either.
After the first FF hit paydirt,
Square quickly started to pound out sequels like that Catholic
mother in Meaning
of Life shot out kids. But the best thing about the
FF series was that each individual game took
place in its own unique world with no character or plot ties
to anything that
had come before (well, except for Final
Fantasy X-2...
But I'm not even reviewing that here so just forget about it
for
now). Yes, most of the games have recurring character names
(i.e. a mechanic or leader named "Cid" and background
characters named "Biggs" and "Wedge"), overused items of transportation
(like the mighty Chocobo and
the highly
advanced
airship),
and the use of summoned creatures (i.e. Shiva, Ifrit, Bahamut,
et al.)...
But those
things are
all kind of just bonus fun things. The plot never really revolved
around them for more than one game (like FFVI's plot was based
around summoned creatures, but none of the others... Let's
just move on).
Let me clear things up first (or just refresh
your short term memory) and take you on a whirlwind
trip through the most basic of the
basic
plots
for
these fine
ten
games.
Keeping in mind that some I haven't played in 15 years, and
I don't like digging through old websites just to get accurate
and factual data for my review. Also keeping in mind that two
of these games I only played in horribly translated NES ROM
versions made by fans, for fans. So just bear with me and cut
me some major slack. And let me just tell you now, spoilers
abound. Bueno nachos, and gracias.
Final Fantasy (1987)
 The
grandaddy of them all. It completely revolutionized the
whole console RPG genre, and it started the whole tradition
of keeping me lifeless for entire months at a time while
I played it and powered up my Fighter, White Mage, Black
Mage, and Blackbelt and got them all rich on Giant gold.
The whole point behind this 1 megabit wonder was that
the world was rotting and the people of the planet were
just chilling out awaiting the arrival of four prophesied
warriors to come along and do a little spring cleaning.
The Warriors of Light start by doing all the bitch work
of the main kingdom that their entire army wasn't able
to do previously (like saving the princess, beating up
blind witches, making deals with dwarves, etc.), but
then they tumble into a quest to save time itself when
Chaos and his four buddies (Kraken, Lich, Kary, and Tiamat)
start fucking with the world's virtual flux capacitor
in order to rule the present from the past. The weird
yet incredibly fun thing about FF's
plot is that in the end, after you save the world, your
actions ended up
never happening due to the time-ripple effect that Doc
Brown goes into great detail about in Back to
the Future Part II. Pretty deep for the plot
of a game on the NES. I first played this game after
I stole my grade school buddy, Jason Lords', copy, and
I never looked back. That was the beginning of my love
affair with console RPGs and crime.
Final Fantasy II (1988)
Revolution! FFII is all about fighting
the evil empire (yeah, this plot comes up again a few times
[and FFVII even
makes the "empire" a corporation), but here
it was fresh and a new way of looking at RPG storylines.
Four idealistic
kids get together and decide to put the medieval smack-down
on their oppressors only to find out (Gasp!) that they
are merely puppets of the real big bad... Once again,
this was actually very new at the time this game was
made. Everything else since FFII has
ripped Square off. Well, after lots of heroic sacrifices
and death and destruction
the heroes throw down with Dark Cloud and save the world.
Yay! This along with FFIII I was only able to get through
thanks to some shady ROMs that some nice people were
nice enough to translate and upload back in the mid to
late 90s.
Final Fantasy III (1989)
The Crystals have returned! Rejoice! The four things that
I wish all FF games had in them take
center stage here: the Elemental Crystals of Power. Four
Crystals, four
elements: wind, ice, earth, fire. Four spunky kids (surprise!)
find that they are the legendary Light Warriors from
a talking piece of glass. They take the Crystal seriously
and quest to save their sunken world from the enemy that
wishes for nothing but power at the cost of pissing off
all the inhabitants of the planet. After getting Cid
to fix up an old airship (really early on for a Final
Fantasy game), and then SMASHING it into a mountain (you
wouldn't
believe how pissed I was to lose something that precious
like that. Seriously, you don't usually get the airship
in these games until the final 3rd of the story), the
kids confront the baddie only to find (HOLY SHIT! You
don't say) that an even bigger evil is still hiding in
the shadows. Then with the ability to change caste classes
at the drop of a dark wizard's hat, and with the help
of the bizarro Dark Warriors, the four youths save the
day! Huzzah!
Final Fantasy IV (1990)
Fuck yes! Oh man, this one just ruled my little world when
it first came out. See, the big N (Nintendo) had only
brought out the original FF to the States
before FFIV was released
for the SNES, but thank goodness they thought twice about
this one.
It all starts out with the King
telling  the
main man, Cecil, to kill people. Lots of people. Soon
Cecil and his bud, Dragoon-dude Kain (aka
the backstabber/bestest friend in the whole wide world),
think that doing bad things is naughty and therefore
repent. Cecil's hot tamale of a girlfriend, Rrrrrrosa,
joins
the party
along with the cutie summoner Rydia and the ninja-guy,
Edge. There's also a mechanic named Cid, a "spoony
bard" named Edgar who you want to beat the crap
out of with his own mandolin, an old wizard named Tellah,
two bratty
twin kid-mages, and a kung-fu master who sneezes a lot.
Seriously, the size of the cast and plot alone made me
piss my highschool pants every night for weeks while
I played
through this game and watched in pissy glee while the
plot gradually unfolded over the course of its 25-hour
playtime. I had never put as much effort into anything
as I did helping Cecil find redemption against his evil
bro, the four elemental bitches, and eventually Zeromus
on the moon. ON THE FUCKING MOON. I never saw that coming.
That was just such a sweet and unexpected way to end
the game, by going to another planetoid (yeah, yeah,
yeah... Phantasy
Star...
Whatever. I was a Nintendo-boy through and through)!
On top of that there was Cid's sacrifice, the entire
underworld of the Dwarves, Magic Monsters that would
fight in your stead, Chocobos,
that giant
robot... Oh man, this one got deep. But the game I
originally played
wasn't
even the full thing. The US release was made easier than
the Japanese version, it had its stripper-shot removed,
and it had the "porno book" taken out as one
of the rarest items
in
the game.
You
read
that right.
Final Fantasy V (1992)
 Meteorites,
hot pirate chicks and Gilgamesh, oh my! While
FFV didn't live up to its potential
(it was kind of a let down after FFIV),
it was still a fun game to play, and it brought back
the character job system that FFIII initially
created (wherein each character could literally grow
up to become any kind of profession imaginable...
I've even heard rumors that there was a secret "hooker
class" that you could unlock in which to proposition
X-Death in the final battle and let him die horribly
from some major Fantasy STDs). There's planet-hopping
galore and the death of a major character... but in the
end
it just felt a little flat. The thing that hurt Five the most, in my valuable opinion, was the fact that the
big bad guy was a tree. An evil tree. What the fuck where
they smoking? FFVI's evil clown was a better bad
guy. Unfortunately, even the forest of Moogles couldn't
save FFV from slipping a bit
in the
plot and
character development department. But, that's what FFVI was for.
Final Fantasy VI (1993)
Quite honestly (I wouldn't lie to you), Final Fantasy
VI is
the greatest game ever made. FFVI is a work of art. I took
my entire
Thanksgiving
week off from school one year to play this thing. I originally
beat it in 32 hours, but I didn't even have 2/3rds of all
the optional characters, and 1/2 of the secrets discovered.
On subsequent playthroughs I was finally able to get all
14 of the main characters, but I don't think I will ever
find all of the items, weapons or pieces of background
info on everybody and everything involved. I am simply
in awe that it didn't take the FFVI design team 10 years
to make this bad boy. But on to the plot!
FFVI is
all about one tyrannical Emperor's quest to revive Magic
in the world,
1,000 years after the great magic wars decimated the
planet. He and his top gay general, Kefka, do a lot of
evil  as
they collect three magical statues and imprison any left
over Esper beasts that they come across. But with the
help of a half human half Esper named Terra, the rebellious
Returners lay siege on the Emperor and his minions just
as the shit is about to hit... But at the last moment Kefka
slays
his
boss and blows the world up (with some wicked one liners
just to taunt our heroes with). And that's not even the
first 1/2 of the game. After a year, one of the Returners,
Celes (the bestest
RPG babe
ever),
finally recovers from the End of the World and starts
on
a quest to reunite all her old comrades in arms, and
meet up with a few new ones, in order to stop Kefka's mad,
gay,
iron-fisted rule.
Seriously, FFVI had
everything including 5 kitchen sinks. 14 characters! FOURTEEN
playable
main characters, and only something like half were really
necessary to complete the quest. You could honestly beat
the game
halfway through if you so chose. And each character was
so different from the others in design, personality and
abilities. One was more magic prone, one could use chainsaws
and power-drills in his attacks, one used button combinations
like a Street Fighter II character to work out his mad
martial arts moves, one was a samurai with the best power-buildup
ever, one could paint her enemies and learn things about
them that way, one could mimic any foe or friend, one was
a smart ass Moogle, one was a wild child, one was a quiet
ninja with a doggie, one was a thief, one threw coins like
shuriken,
one was
a Yeti
and
one was....
Wait,
was
that
all of them? Fuck
it,
they
all
ruled. And the amount of detail that went into the world
was just mind and cock blowing! All of the secrets, all
of the character histories (yes, almost every one of the 14 main characters
had a loooong backstory that you could choose to find out
about), all of the magic and weapon attack combinations
added up into the greatest video game ever made. FFVI had
fun gameplay, it actually had a really deep and entertaining
plot, the music was way too good for its own good (best
soundtrack ever too), it had a magnificent 20
minute ending (totally
unheard of back then, and even today!) and and and... Oh
shoot. I just creamed my pants again thinking
about
it.
Final Fantasy VII (1997)
Yeah, it was a long time between VI and VII,
but the wait was worth it... At least it was at first. See,
it so happened that Square
and the Nintendo had a little bit of a falling out (mostly
cause Nintendo refused to go "disc" and kept
the whole concept of "cartridge" for their
new system, the N64), which led to Squaresoft jumping
camp to the
Sony Playstation
with their flagship series in tow. Nintendo at first
guffawed at the threat, but when Final Fantasy
VII basically
MADE the PSX the mega-king of all gaming consoles
on both sides of the Pacific Nintendo was forced to eat
its own hat... and swallow its own vomit. FFVII was
in fact a genius move by Square. They made another epically
huge storyline filled to the brim with monsters, heroes,
video cut scenes and plot... but they just forgot the
tone of the Final Fantasy series. Instead
of a medieval-like atmosphere filled with some high tech
devices, FFVII was a
high tech world filled with sci-fi devices. It was all
dark and moody (and so was the lead character) and it
felt as if we were stuck in a post apocalyptic world
where there was not even the dim light of hope to save
us. In a word, FFVII was "dreary."
I will admit though,
that when I first played it through I really got into it.
The polygon graphics were pretty revolutionary at the time,
the massive amounts of cinematic cutscenes made me want
to rush from one plot point to the next as quickly as possible,
and the story itself was pretty interesting  (even
though Cloud was even more fucked in the head by the end
of everything than
we could have ever imagined... What a downer). FFVII is
all about the Shinra Corp. Well, Shinra and Sephiroth,
the bleached dude in the leather trenchcoat that would
make Spike from Buffy proud. Shinra is all about making
a profit on the world's life energy, while Sephi is all
about killing everything and letting God sort it all out.
These two forces are faced by our main man, Cloud, his
hottie friend Tifa (with the biggest boobies EVER in a
video game until FFX's Lulu), the flower girl Aerith, Mr.
T, Cid, young ninja Yuffie, talking lion Red XXXIIIIIXIXI,
the mysterious Vincent, and the most annoying character
EVER
in any entertainment
medium,
Cait Sith. That fucking puppet cat made me throw things
at my TV on several occasions.
So Cloud and company
are all about good vibes and stuff, but then that thing
came out of the sea, and there was that point when Aerith
is gutted in front of the crew by Sephi, and then we find
out that the Turks are cool, but Sephi was really already
dead and made from JENOVA, the Knights of the Round live
in a cave that only a gold chocobo can get to, and Cloud
isn't Cloud, but an imposter.... Whoa, wait. Yeah,
Squaresoft,
plottwists
are
good and all,
but
the
point is to not completely LOSE your audience with confusion
and emergency story additions. Once again, I will admit
that I really liked FFVII when I first played it, but in
retrospect it really wasn't one of the better Final
Fantasy games. Especially coming after VI. It was more like Square
just wanted to make a movie and only added play mechanics
at the last minute. Though truth be told, I did have fun
breeding Chocobos... Is that so wrong?
Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
This game has caused the biggest rift amoung RPG fanboys
that I have ever seen. People either love FFVIII or
hate it.
And
no matter what their thoughts on it are, they probably
can't explain their feelings on the subject. In hindsight,
5 years after playing it, I love it. I don't know why.
Yeah, I can make fun of some if its plotholes that you
could detonate an Ultima spell in (like why a world with
only something like THREE countries, each with only one real
city, would even need an organization like the gigantic merc group
known as SeeD)... But just remember, this is a video
game.
 What
FFVII did to change the series, FFVIII did
again, but with more style and a
bit more funness. Funnerness?... Hmmm. It was even more
a cinematic adventure than FFVII, but
the characters were a lot more
likeable
(man, if I was a bunch of polygons I would so chase Rinoa,
Selphie and Quistis' hot boo-tay... Ooooooh yeah), the
plot was more seat-edging, and the music was sooo much
more
dramatic
and grand. We start out with a violent training session
between long time rivals Squall and Seifer as they hack
and slash at eachother when they just as easily could have
whipped out their dongs and had a measuring contest...
Uuuh, on second thought, maybe sword/gun fighting was the
better choice. Soon Squall and his love-lorn lady friends
join up with a tattooed dude, a cowboy, and a hot chickie
in blue (Rinoa) in order to take down the evil bitch, Edea.
Throughout their mission Squall has major visions from
the past of a hippy soldier who has the hots for a lounge
singer and who is somehow related to their own task at
hand. Bizarro. Anyway, Squall and gang travel the planet,
blow shit up, go into space, and star in some of the coolest
CGI cutscenes the world has ever known. That whole scene
in outer space with Rinoa and her necklace floating in
her helmet... Gorgeous. The assassination attempt on Edea...
took my
breath away. The entire ending? Whoa... Just so well done.
Perfect to a fault. The whole take during the party that
was shot through a camcorder added a whole new element
to the story. Plus the music. Oh, the music of FFVIII is
the second best of the entire series, and its soundtrack
the second best videogame soundtrack ever made. The Orchestral
CD for FFVIII is even better than FFVI's
Orchestral CD. God bless you, Composer Nobuo Uematsu!
Pretty much the only
thing that I didn't really love about FFVIII was
the gameplay. A big flaw, I know, but right now, years
later, I'm having a hard time remembering
why it was so bad. It had something to do with the fact
that no matter how much you leveled up, all of your enemies
leveled
up
the same amount too. That kind of defeated the entire point
of an RPG... but Eight was just so much fun anyway, I was
very able to overlook this shortcoming. And the Pokemon-cloned
card game was fairly addictive too.
Final Fantasy IX (2000)
 Christ.
Don't even get me started on FFIX. What
a shit game. I played it just 3 years ago and yet it was
so crappy
that I remember more plot and gameplay information from
the games in the series that I played 12-13 years ago.
Square so dropped the ball on this one. The most I remember
was
that
there
is this monkey boy who teams up with a princess in orange
and a giant rat and they meet a little summoner girl
and a chubby black mage, and Garland is the big boss
(Garland who turned into Chaos in the first Final
Fantasy...).
Bullshit. The whole thing. First of all, yes, Square
DID place the story back into a fantasy-themed land and
took it away from the whole sci-fi settings of the last
two games. Point to them. They even got character designer
GOD, Yoshitaka Amano, to create their character designs
again after being absent from the last two chapters.
Point two to Square... But then they turned his gorgeous
designs into Chucky look-alike midgets, and they rushed
the music, and the plot was broken and that chef with
the tongue was almost as gay as Cait Sith. Man, all those
negatives fucked this up for me. I don't even remember
how it played or what the bosses were like. Urrrrgh!
Fuck you for this abortion of an RPG, Square! It could
have been your best ever had you taken your time and
not rushed it in order to concentrate on Final
Fantasy - The Crappy Spirits Within.
Final Fantasy X (2001)
The first Final Fantasy game for the Playstation
2 (keeping the tradition alive of doing their best to utterly
kill Nintendo)
was pretty different from all previous installments...
For better or worse. I will tell you that I did very
much enjoy
FFX for its storyline and its battle
system... but there were a few things that Square tinkered
with which they
shouldn't have touched. Number one is how incredibly
linear FFX turned out to be. You go
from one town to the next (there are no options to do
anything else) in
a straight path from your start to your destination.
There is no overworld map for you to walk around on and
randomly meet monsters. There are just paths that lead
from one town to the following. And as Gandalf once warned, "Do not stray from the path".
I mean, you couldn't if you wanted to, and I kinda wanted
to. Granted, FFX is
all about a mission, a single mission with one
journey that leads to the ultimate goal. It would have
been silly
plot wise if the lead characters had been allowed to
wander around when they knew what they had to do and
that they only had a short amount of time to do it, but
it's just more confining when you aren't allowed to do
so.
 Final
Fantasy X starts
off in a world kinda like what we've seen from FFVIII:
futuristic, sleek and neony. But almost immediately
our main character, Blitzball champ Tidus, is pulled into
a giant ball of water that just destroyed his city, and
plopped right into a world strangely
familiar, but magically religiously different. Tidus is
confused as he meets up with the rest of the blindly religious
cast (their faith is of the Yevon Church and all its kooky
teachings), but don't worry, they're not that annoying
about it (well, Wakka is at first, but then he gets better).
Tidus then joins the cutie Yuna's traveling group as another
one of her Guardians, and along with Auron, Lulu (the only
video game character with more cleavage than Lara Croft
and Tifa from FFVII combined), Wakka,
that Lion-O thing, and my main bitch Rikku, they start
their quest to rid
the world of the threat that is Sin (the thing that transported
Tidus 1,000 years into the future to where he is now).
The traveling companions
go from town to town, city to city as Yuna, a summoner
and a sender, pilgrimages her way from Yevon Temple to
Temple in order to gain all the summoned creatures that
she can in order to finally defeat the giant and icky looking
Sin... But is their quest all for naught? What is the point
when the final summoning takes Yuna's life? Is the sacrifice
worth it knowing that by defeating Sin they've only just
put it to rest for a couple of years? Yes, Sin is guaranteed
to come back even after everything they go through, so
what will Tidus do in order to save his honey Yuna? What
does Tidus' dead-beat dad, Jecht, have to do with any of
this? How do Lulu's titties not pop out of that outfit?
How many heart to hearts can a group of friends have during
the course of a 35-40 hour game? Who the fuck was Yu Yevon?
How sucky is it that souls can't pass on to the next world
unless some chick does a little dance over their dead bodies?...
As for the last question, the answer is VERY sucky. Seriously,
if you happen to die and there's no Summoner/Sender around
to do the Sending Dance you are doomed to walk the Earth
as a vengeful fiend, or a sorrowful ghost until the End
of Days. Pisser, huh?
All in all though, FFX was
a really fun addition to the whole Final
Fantasy lineage.
At the very very least it towered over FFIX.
But to be quite honest, that Bible Stories Nintendo
game that my great Aunt and Uncle gave me for my 7th birthday
in which
I helped Moses get all those animals on that boat, and
then tried and rescue Jesus from the cross was ten times
better than FFIX. What the fuck were they thinking?....
So that's Final Fantasies I - X in
a nutshell. All in all the FF series is the
grandest video game collection ever. It avoids the pitfalls
that the Legend
of Zelda series fell into (what with the
highly convoluted official history and plot) by making each
chapter a stand alone world filled with new
heroes, enemies, monsters and threats. Instead of making the
final boss in EVERY FUCKING GAME a giant pig-dude, in FF we
get an evil clown, a giant space-brain, a biogenetically engineered
gay guy with long flowing white hair, a giant flying whale
thing named Sin, and a tree. Now that takes imagination.
But aside from story and stats-building, there
are two more very important ingredients to the whole Final
Fantasy thing that makes the series stand even further
apart from everything around them like God pissing on heathen
ants. I speak
of
the greatest
artist who ever lived, Yoshitaka Amano, and the greatest video
game composer to ever get behind a synthesizer, Nobuo Uematsu.
Without them the Final Fantasy series wouldn't have been half
as great as it is... But in all honesty that would still make
it 3 times as good as Bubble Bobble.
 Amano
was responsible for all the character and enemy (and even some
scene) designs from Final Fantasy
I through
VI. And it was good. His style is just so
fucking great that it brought a feel of its own to the show.
His background in
fantasy art made the games feel like we were indeed playing
one of his paintings. Yes, even on the 8-bit Nintendo his art
shone through, but it wasn't truly until the SNES Final
Fantasy games
came
along that his art was truly allowed to shine like the burning
light of a thousand Meteor and Ultima spells colliding in the
heavens. My GOD do I worship the man and his talent! But then,
most unfortunately, the Square bigwigs started getting blow
jobs from some cookie-cutter artist on staff and Amano was
out for
doing
character
designs
for FFVII and VIII (he still
did promotional art for the games [which of course ROCK], but
he was no longer
in charge
of the actual
design creation because Square thought that his style could
not be translated properly to 3D when in fact the redone
CGI
openings and closing for FFV and FFVI on the Playstation had
3D interpretations of his stuff and it is the most gorgeous
3D CG shit I've ever seen in my sad little life! Fuck you,
Square!!!). But I digress.
They kept Amano along for the ride and tried
to quell die-hard fans of the FF series by
letting the artist do the designs for FFIX...
but as I stated above, Square was really just fucking with
everybody. Sure, they got some incrediboobilous
art from the hairy little man from which to craft a new FF world
from, but then they gave Amano's designs to the same fucker
who did the bland designs of FFVII and VIII.
And he farked them up to high holy hell. He made Amano's works
look
ugly. I don't know how but he did. Only that girl summoner
with the horn in her head came out cute, the rest were bucking
futt ugly. After that, Square went back to the FFVII and VIII artist
and got him to do the FFX art. Surprise. That
was probably the replacement's plan from the beginning you
know. "Hey,
boss, I think it'd be spiffy to let old Amano-sensei do the
art for
Final Fantasy IX! The fans'll LOVE it!...
Just let me turn his gorgeous paintings into hideous 3D renderings
before the
game goes out to print and we'll all win! *Hee hee... Looks
like my job is safe.*"
Sigh... Anyway, the other part of the other part
of FF's great success lies in the composing
hands of Nobuo Uematsu. The man knows how to make *beeps* and
*boops* sound
like musical candy. His scores for FFIV and FFVI go
so far beyond what the Super Nintendo should have been capable
of
with its limited sound system. I stand by my claim that FFVI has
the greatest soundtrack for any video game ever. Yeah, Nobuo
got close to perfection again with FFVIII and FFX,
but the fact that he had something like 16 fucking character
themes
running throughout FFVI along with that 20
minute finale and an entire opera piece blows my pretty mind
all over the wall like
a shotgun blast to the lower jaw.
One last thing to hit upon before I wrap this
fucker up. Pretty much each FF game also has
at least one moment in it that takes you so completely into
the
game that you are
actually kind of sad when that scene or moment is over and
you have to get back to saving the world. Whether it be finding
that underground city of the Summoned beasts in IV, the opera
in VI, the death of Aerith in VII or the space rescue in VIII,
you are temporarily transported into a video game. Most big
screen movies fail to do that. That is just one of the many
parts that makes these ten games kick so much pixilated ass.
God bless you Square! God bless you and whatever demon you
had to sell your collective souls to in order to make these
spectacular spectacular games.
What did
I think of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy series, games
I through X? You are truly mentally incapable of
rational thought if you still have to ask that. I
give the whole shebang a 436 out of 440.284 Points of Fantastic
Fitness.
Without FFIX it gets 440.271 Points. As
for why I didn't rate FFXI, FFX-2,
or FF
Tactics... Well, FFXI sucks Behemoth
King dick, I am still tentative to play FFX-2 because
I'm afraid it'll ruin the ending of FFX (which
was so perfect), and FF Tactics is just
a game made for computer nerds who wanted a fantasy-themed
chess-like game to play just so that
they could feel even dorkier than their normal classmates
who now play their taboo and nerdy RPGs that they once
held
so
dearly to their own pocket-protected hearts. Yes, FF
Tactics blows goats. The FF
Movie, OVA series,
and FF
Unlimited TV
series suxor too, but for totally different reasons...
I mean, they just flat out stunk. I've said my piece.
As for how I'd rank the FF games, well, kinda
a little something like this: VI is the best, followed by IV,
I, III, II, V, VIII, X, VII and then IX. If I could I would
forget that IX ever happened, but then I'd always wonder why
they jumped from VIII to X.
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