Final Fantasy III

Of the first three games in the series, this is the playthrough I thought would be the most interesting- and for a lot of reasons it was. Of the ‘NES Trilogy’, Final Fantasy III is undoubtedly the best game, and the one that has the most in common with later entries in the series. This is to its credit though, and although it has its flaws, Final Fantasy III is actually a pretty good game.

It seems that Squaresoft had heard the criticism of Final Fantasy II, and they heard it well. The retarded levelling system from FF2 was scrapped, as was the magic system, the dialogue system, and the concept of player characters with names and personalities. The blank-slate characters you had to name yourself were back from FF1, as were character classes or ‘jobs’ as the series calls them. The return of the jobs was one thing, but Final Fantasy III added the ability for the player to change the characters jobs at any time. This opened up a massive amount of flexibility with the gameplay. Up against a boss with really high defence? Change your Warrior into a Black Mage for the fight, then change him back afterwards! For its time, the job system was unlike anything in any other RPG, and the system would return and be expanded upon later in Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Somehow, Squaresoft head honcho Hironobu Sakaguchi managed to lure the lead Final Fantasy II designer Akitoshi Kawazu away from Final Fantasy III and replace him with the designers responsible for the first game. Despite the fact that Final Fantasy III was more popular than the first two games, and it was widely regarded as one of the best games for the NES, Final Fantasy III didn’t leave Japan until it was remade for the Nintendo DS a few years ago. For over a decade, Final Fantasy III went unplayed and unnoticed by the majority of the world- which is a shame, because its a far better game than the first two entries in the series.

Final Fantasy II

So now Square had an issue- Final Fantasy had become the runaway hit nobody expected, and with the company back on its feet, they could begin developing games again.

“Hey!” Hironobu Sakaguchi (probably) exclaimed to his head designer, Akitoshi Kawazu one morning. “Final Fantasy was a hit! You know what that means? We need to make a sequel! Just think of it! We’ll make a bigger world, with more characters, more spells, more enemies! Those fuckers over at Enix won’t know what hit them! Ha-ha! Final Fantasy II will be the greatest RPG of our time! Tell your team and get to work! Don’t let me down!”

It seemed like it would work too. Except this particular morning, Kawazu had been hitting the bong pretty hard.

“Hey!” Kawazu (definitely) said to the FF2 team that same morning. “Alright guys, we’ve got to make Final Fantasy II. So here’s my plan- you know all that stuff people liked about the first Final Fantasy…?”

“Scrap it. We’re gonna change everything.“

And it just got worse from there.

Final Fantasy

Of the Final Fantasy series, the first title isn’t really one of my favourites. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to some of the later games in the series if you ask me.
My play through of Final Fantasy this past few days, my first in many years, truly hammered this home.

Final Fantasy has not aged well. This is a game that came out in 1987 and has undergone many face-lifts since then, but even with a new coat of paint and a refined combat engine, this is a game that is honestly very hard to recommend.

But let’s take a trip back to 1987, where a small game developer named Square is in the midst of a financial crisis. After a string of unsuccessful titles for the Nintendo Entertainment system, the company was looking bankruptcy square in the face, their director of planning, a man named Hironobu Sakaguchi, decided to put all the company’s money into the development of one last game- the game he always wanted to create, and since he thought it would be his final work in the industry, he named it Final Fantasy. Oh, the irony.

As I’ve said before, Final Fantasy is a game I always held very close to my heart. It was the game that introduced me to the genre so many years ago, and I had nothing but fond memories of this, the first game in a long and very enjoyable franchise.

Ah, how suddenly things can change.

The Terrible Twos

Oh Jesus, what have I done? I’m not looking forward to starting this, but I shall be doing so tonight. Hopefully it’s a lot less brutal than the NES version was.

Stay tuned for a write-up of Final Fantasy I coming very soon.

Old and New

So before I get too far into this, I’d like to state something for the record.

I think very highly of this game.

Final Fantasy I was always a game I held in high regard. When I was younger, I played it at a friends house an awful lot and I fell in love with it. As the years went by, I moved on to other titles in the series and enjoyed them as well. When I became aware of the existence of PC-based NES emulators, Final Fantasy was one of the first games I played. I would have been about 12 or 13 at this time, and it was tough as nails, but I saw the game through to the end and it felt damn good. I have no idea how I managed to do that. I bring this up because I get the feeling that after playing it again after so many years, my view of it is going to be much, much different.

For the purpose of writing this piece, I was fully intending to play through the NES version of Final Fantasy all over again. But it occurred to me- with all the remakes of it out there, why don’t I try one of those instead? After all, Final Fantasy has been ported and remade more times than I care to count, so why should I have to bother with the horrid NES version all over again? It’s not much of a retrospective if I’m not playing the originals right?

Well yeah, that’s right. But there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t play one of the remakes instead. After all, the story is the same. The characters and the dialogue and the gameplay are all the same- all that’s really been updated is the graphics, the music and the user interface. Sure, the enemies have been tweaked to be not quite so difficult, but I hardly think the difficulty was what made Final Fantasy the defining game of it’s genre back in 1987. For all intents and purposes, the contents of this piece would be more or less the same whether I was playing the NES version from 1987 or the PSP version from 2007.

You want to hear what I have to say about graphics? The graphics don’t phase me, not even a little. If the NES version played as smoothly and as easily as the PSP version did but still looked like the NES version, I wouldn’t give a shit. It’s the same game. The graphics in the NES version may look atrocious in comparison to the gorgeous sprites you’ll see in the PSP version, but it doesn’t matter. I could swing either way. The graphics are just a means to an end anyway, that end being accomplishing the quest the game sets out for you- a quest that has not changed in twenty years and countless remakes.

And that’s why I’m going to be playing the PSP versions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II. Sue me.

Let’s get started

Tonight, I start the first game of the series- the original Final Fantasy.

All of these games will be their original incarnations, with translation patches where necessary (Final Fantasy III, V) and all of them up until Final Fantasy X will be emulated on my PSP. As I-IX will be on my PSP, this means I can take screenshots and easily manage all my stuff from one console. The problem I’m going to encounter when I get to X and XII on the PS2 is that I have no way of taking screenshots of those. Hmm.

Also I neglected to mention that I won’t be playing Final Fantasy XI because as some of you might not know, it is a MMORPG- and allegedly not even a very good one. I’m not getting myself mixed up into that.

So yeah, it’s really gonna be eleven Final Fantasy games. Maybe I’ll play some of the spin-offs if I’m not completely burnt out after Final Fantasy XII.

But anyway…

Let’s get this over with.

A Final Fantasy Christmas Special

This is a thing that is happening.

I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, and now is the time. Final Fantasy XIII has a confirmed Australian release date of March 2010, and in preparation, I have decided to play through the initial twelve entries of the series in order, and then write a little bit about each one. I think it will be interesting to see what I think of some of them now I’m an older, more snobby jaded experienced gamer. Some of these games I haven’t played in a long time and have rather fond memories of- I have a feeling I won’t be so warm towards them this time.

So here’s the thing- since some of the earlier games in the series have been remade and ported to every console under the sun, should I play the remakes or endure the originals? Believe me, playing the NES version of Final Fantasy II once is enough for one lifetime, if I have to do it again I think I might just kill myself. For the first two games for instance, I was thinking of playing the PSP remakes as they have the added advantages of being all around better- also I have the advantage of being able to take screenshots which would be great for using in a write-up about the games.

People who have played Final Fantasy games, what do you think?

Colours and Misdirection

Everything’s a novelty…
Everyone grows but me…

:::Rant ahead:::

Waiting for Between the Buried and Me’s The Great Misdirect to be released this last few months has been the only time in my life I’ve ever actually been counting days until a records release. The effect that their last album left on me was far greater than it probably should have been- but so different and new was the kind of music to me that I couldn’t help but fall instantly in love with it. Colours is an album I still listen to on a very regular basis, and I’m yet to grow tired of it- it holds so many memories of happier times- the first time I listened to White Walls in September of 2007 I was on the bus to town to meet up with Kara, a little over two months into our relationship. Although those carefree times have long since passed and been replaced with more complicated, dull, tedious stages of my life, one would think that listening to White Walls nowadays would only serve to make me feel miserable about my life today (not that there’s really anything to be miserable about). On the contrary, listening to it has the opposite effect- the final seven minutes of White Walls remains some of my favourite music ever, and listening to it makes me realise how much things have changed in those two years- for better and for worse.

Gallery Piece

I wanna be your love,
I wanna make you cry,
and sweep you off your feet.

I wanna hurt your pride,
I wanna slap your face,
I wanna paint your nails.

I wanna make you scream,
I wanna braid your hair,
I wanna kiss your friends.

I wanna make you laugh,
I wanna dress the same,
I wanna defend you.

I wanna squeeze your thighs,
I wanna kiss your eyelids,
and corrupt your dreams.

I wanna crash your car,
I wanna scratch your cheeks,
I wanna make you sick.

I wanna sell you out,
want to expose your flaws.
I wanna steal your things.

I wanna show you off,
I wanna tell you lies,
I wanna write you books.

I wanna turn you on,
I wanna make you come
two-hundred times a day.

I wanna dry your tears,
every time you’re sad,
I wanna be your ‘what’s happening’.
I wanna be your only friend.

I only go all the way.

This time I’m not pretending I can’t take the trash
Your trashy friends are spreading about us.
They got like fifty personalities- Oh girl, that’s so messed up.
You see that sculpture on the hill, that’s where she queered me out.

Forever.
They’re monitoring my self conscious massacres, I know
Bringing it closer to the surface so it’s easily pervertable.

I want to be a beast,
I want to make you proud,
and play with your head.

I want to take you out,
make you feel adored,
and buy you everything.

I want to hurt you bad,
make you paranoid,
and say the sweetest things.

I want to help you grow,
and for eternity
I want to be your ‘what’s happening’

So what’s happening?

Fund It! Part III

Thanks John!