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I’ve Never Played a Final Fantasy; Shall We Give It a Go?

Written by kanbu33 | October 27, 2009

Apparently the fact that Final Fantasy XIII is making its way to Xbox 360 as well as PS3 next spring has been  a subject of much controversy since the announcement at E3 last year. A few days ago I was talking about the Playstation steadily losing the strings to its bow, and if I’m to believe the hysteria, then the Final Fantasy series must represent some sort of coup. Despite growing up on Playstation, not to mention all of the above, I personally have never played a single game in this series, something I have been led to believe to be absolute sacrilege for the last few years. So f*ck it I thought; why spend time getting good and depressed about my dying hero when I can stuff my cheeks with cotton buds and drown myself in nostalgia.

If I believe correctly, the canon of Final Fantasy is fairly laid back about its time line, so I had no qualms at all about booting up my old PS1 and starting at VII, partly due to it being constantly lauded as a masterpiece, and partly because its the only one I own, although I honestly have know idea how. Promptly Mr PS1 crashed, his legs fell off, and I was forced to abandon nostalgia for the unfeeling black cuboid that is the PS2.

I’d be lying through my teeth if I were to say I’m entering this series with no prejudice whatsoever; turn based combat has always been a bit an anomaly to me, the gentleman’s way to fight I suppose, but it doesn’t change the fact that within five minutes of starting the game, combat felt about as fun as the pause menu. The story was holding up, to a degree; I, that’s is Cloud, had linked up with some terrorists to destroy a reactor and damage the stature of an evil multinational conglomerate, in a city that couldn’t pay more homage to Bladerunner without the help of origami unicorns. All that aside, no lie, all the backgrounds looked very nice, very much in the same way as they did in Rayman, but when it comes down to it, it felt a lot more like I was running all over some nice drawings rather than delving into any kind of environment; I don’t quite know what it is, but there seems to be this real distance between the characters and the game world, that really would’ve hindered my enjoyment had it not been for the music.

Taking the opportunity to comment on what at this point is definitely the games biggest saving grace, let me say that the music in this game really is a cut above; its amazing that in 1997, when Metal Gear Solid was only one year from a fully composed original soundtrack, that you could still give a man midi for him to give you back an opera. Its like an architect building the worlds most exquisite palace out of lego and expecting to be taken seriously, and then having me take him seriously.

In any case, sparing my gushes about the soundtrack, I should mention that the presentation is definitely the strongest feature here; I’ve been playing for a good while now, and I’d like to get angry about the fact that outside of the boss battles the combat is still dishwater dull until the Victory Fanfare, that the pacing is utterly glacial, or that whole experience thus far feels little different to a slightly interesting book, where I wheel the characters back an forth to each new exchange. But as soon as something begins to piss me off, a funky tune or charming backdrop comes round the corner with the promise that it’ll all be great if I persevere, so I will.

However now and again the game pulls a dick move like getting you to jump a small gap to a swinging bar, a needlessly impossible task which is currently sending me into a rage; this gripe goes for pretty much all the little mini games, involving squat thrusts and the like, but this damn bars gonna take the cake for now.

I’ll revisit this later when I feel I’ve made a significant enough dent to warrant more prose, until then, we’ll see.


Filed Under Gaming Culture, Retro 
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Comments

9 Responses to “I’ve Never Played a Final Fantasy; Shall We Give It a Go?”

  1. Unit on October 27th, 2009 12:05 pm

    If you can take the old school gfx’s, I’d suggest you play Final Fantasy VI (FF III in the U.S.) for the snes. Imo that was one of if not the best of the series so far. It had one of the most memorable villians (kefka),great characters excellent music and a tight story.

    Reply

    Tonito Reply:
    October 27th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

    I can’t imagine a villian more memorable than Sephiroth!
    BTW, I never played FFIII and FVII was my first ever RPG lol

    Reply

    Unit Reply:
    October 27th, 2009 at 6:24 pm

    @Tonito,
    One thing that really helped FF7 to be so memorable was that it was the first of the FF games to be in full 3D. And because of that fact more people where turned onto to the series and rpg’s in general. I remember when they first showed the ads on tv, they showed nothing but the cg cinematics and many people thought that was how the game looked and played. lol

    Reply

  2. Jamie on October 27th, 2009 12:18 pm

    FFVII is all about the story when it really comes down to it. If the story doesn’t draw you in by the time you leave Midgar, it probably isn’t the game for you.

    Like Unit said, FFVI is also very good. FF IV as well. If you can get past the first 30 hours of sludge, FF VIII has an amazing ending (which is the opposite of FF VII in every way).

    If you are looking for a game that most resembles todays FF’s, you probably should have started with FFX. That is the beginning of the modern FF’s. The line between X and the games before it is pretty significant.

    If you aren’t utterly addicted to FFVII by the time you hit the Shinra building, I would quit and head to FFX immediately.

    Reply

  3. David Macphail on October 27th, 2009 12:23 pm

    I agree, Final Fantasy X was one of the best games to hit the PS2. It was, unfortunately, the last main FF game to use the turn – based combat system but it had one of the most amazing stories in videogame history. The depth and emotion in the FF X story could easily rival MGS4.

    Reply

  4. Tidusftw on October 27th, 2009 12:25 pm

    If you’re able to, play Final Fantasy X on PS2.. Many thinks that VII is the best, I think X owns VII in many ways, story, characters, music, graphics (obviosly)… it’s much more emotional thanks to voice acting too.

    Reply

  5. Ares on October 27th, 2009 12:37 pm

    Yeah, these guys are right. I’ve been playing FF my whole life and I find that those who want to jump right in sometimes need to find some footing around their favorite era of gaming. If you’re old school to the bone…FF, the original has charm. If you want the SNES stuff, FF4 and FF6 are best (my favs) and if you grew up on PS2 then go with FFX. Personally, I prefer to start at the very beginning when I REALLY want to get into something because you can watch it grow. There’s something magnificant about that. :)

    Reply

  6. Jax on October 27th, 2009 4:01 pm

    yeah, modern games will spoil you; go try and revisit any old game and you’ll find similar drawbacks; like going from MGS4 to MG1 or MG2: Solid Snake; like Ares said, it feels more significant to watch it grow :D

    And i agree; if you’d want to play any of the modern FFs, FFX is your best bet. FFVII is about the depth and the complete open-endedness of the game; in no other FF can you play so many minigames and cross dress, date etc. compared to VII.

    Stay away from XII.

    Reply

  7. Jaret on October 27th, 2009 7:04 pm

    Since you hate turn-based systems, you might want to try ffxii. I do want to warn you, though, that the difficulty is really retarded. I spent hours grinding, thinking “this time I’ll finish this”, only to find out that I’m about 10 lvls lower than I should be. It especially gets to be bad around Elder Wyrm, where the difficulty has a major spike. Final Fantasy X is easily the best, though XIII looks like it has a possibility of taking X’s place. I don’t know about everyone else, but IX was a pretty good one. It was my first Final Fantasy. I have to say, though, that I am not like many. I really don’t like VII that much. Sure, it may have been “ground breaking” but didn’t Zelda come out around the same time. The graphics in Zelda are far better than Final fantasy VII.

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