With Final Fantasy XV out tomorrow and my excitement for it at an extreme level, I’ve decided that I’m going to devote the next month on my other site MoeGamerto an in-depth exploration of the series as a whole.
Final Fantasy as a whole may be a little outside my usual mission with MoeGamer — it is neither underappreciated nor overlooked — but it’s worth discussing nonetheless, particularly with regard to those installments along the way that are regarded less favourably.
It’s also worth discussing as it’s a series with a long, interesting history, and can quite rightly be described as genre-defining alongside its longtime rival Dragon Quest.
Mostly I want to talk about it because it’s been important to me for a long time now. Nearly 20 years, in fact, which is a scary prospect, as my first encounter with the series is still absolutely fresh in my mind, as if I’d just experienced it yesterday.
I first heard of Final Fantasy VII, my first point of contact with the series, through my brother. I had a PlayStation at the time (well, more accurately, I had a hand-me-down Japanese PlayStation that my brother left behind) but, what with it being a Japanese model, I hadn’t really explored the games available for it beyond the three I already had: Ridge Racer, Tekken and Raiden Project.
Hearing my brother describe Final Fantasy VII made me want to try it, though. I’d already had experience with story-heavy games thanks to our family’s mutual love of point-and-click adventure titles from Sierra and LucasArts, but this sounded like something different; something more. Specifically, the thing that got me interested in it was the promise of a scene partway through the game where pretty much everyone who had played it ended up crying. (Said scene is now one of the most famous scenes in all of gaming, but back in ’97, it was easier to remain unspoiled.)
So, reading up on the old “disc swap” trick that allowed you to play different region games on a PlayStation, I propped my PlayStation’s lid open with a biro lid and a bit of Blu-Tack and inserted the first of the three discs of my shiny new copy of Final Fantasy VII, not sure what to expect.
I was immediately blown away by the spectacular video intro sequence that moved almost seamlessly into in-game action, with polygonal characters moving perfectly in sync with the prerendered background camera angles. (I was then slightly distracted by the rather primitive field screen character models Final Fantasy VII is now somewhat notorious for, but I quickly became accustomed to them.)
The music drew me in. The action started right away. It was like being part of a movie. Then I got into my first battle and, having never really played an RPG before, was initially baffled. Once again, though, it didn’t take me long to become accustomed, and there was no turning back from that point: the game had me well and truly in its clutches.
I enthused about the game to my friends at school. They were initially skeptical, but it didn’t take a lot of convincing to get them to give it a try. And before long, they were as obsessed with this spectacular new game as I was. We played it through together, discussing things we’d found and things we’d achieved; we’d complete it, and start over again, eager to enjoy the story all over again. We devoured guidebooks and online FAQs about the game, keen to see everything it was possible to see. And, on one particularly memorable occasion fueled by tequila and various other intoxicants, we played for 36 hours straight, my friend Woody passing out midway through the G-Bike sequence, having some very peculiar dreams and suddenly waking up demanding to know “what’s an X-Walker?” (To this day, we have no idea. X-Potions? Sure. X-Walker? No clue.)
The impact Final Fantasy VII had on me drew me to explore the rest of the series. While at the time I found the NES original a little hard to appreciate — it was just a bit too clunky in comparison to the later games — from IV onwards (or II as it was known back then thanks to the fact Final Fantasy II, III and Vdidn’t see Western releases until many years after their NES and SNES original versions) in particular I found them to be just as compelling despite their more primitive visuals and sounds.
These were games that told stories that resonated with me. Stories about people who rose up from humble beginnings, gathering a group of close companions and achieving something incredible. This sort of thing is seen as cliched as all hell these days, but there’s a reason the standard JRPG tropes have been a thing for as long as they have: even before video games, this story structure is proven to be an effective way of telling a heroic epic.
Even in those early days, though, I could tell that the Final Fantasy series wasn’t one to rest on its laurels. While I had a fairly Western RPG feel to it with its completely mute, characterless party, II introduced the series convention of having a party of predefined characters with actual personalities. III brought us the Job system for the first time. IV gave us an incredibly detailed story full of emotion. V refined the Job system further. VI turned the narrative conventions of the series on its head by not really having a “main” character, instead allowing us the opportunity to spend time with an enormous ensemble cast. And so on, and so on.
I’ll talk about this in detail once I start writing the MoeGamer pieces, but Final Fantasy is a series that has constantly reinvented itself over and over again. Even in those installments that seem superficially similar (I-III, IV-VI, VII-IX) there are enough unique components to each title to make them distinct from one another, and from X onwards the series has enjoyed even more drastic, dramatic reinventions with each installment. And this isn’t even getting into the myriad spin-off titles, many of which are even more fondly regarded than the mainline titles in the series.
As you can tell, I’ll have plenty to write about. And I’m afraid you’re almost certainly going to have to put up with a lot of enthusing about XV on this here site from tomorrow onwards, too. I make no apologies for my excitement in this regard.
Now, just a good night’s sleep and a day of work between me and my first adventures in the lands of Eos. Can’t wait.
Well, if it’s good enough for Sony — they are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their console, after all — it’s good enough for me.
Here are my top three original PlayStation games.
…Shit.
There are too many. There are way too many to choose from that I’ve played over the years. Some of them are incredibly obvious choices. Others are games that I have but a dim memory of playing, but which have stuck in my brain ever since. I can’t choose three. I can’t.
So I won’t. Instead, I’m going to present some fake awards for the games that have stuck in my mind ever since I first played them. In some cases, it may have been 15-20 years since I played them, but they still carry significant meaning to me for one reason or another. In many cases, they may not even be among the best games on the platform, but for whatever reason I have remembered them fondly ever since.
Here we go then. The first one is an obvious one, but I don’t think many people will argue against it.
The “wow, this is better than anything I’ve ever seen before” award
What other game could this go to than the original Ridge Racer?
The word “revolutionary” is thrown around far too much with regard to games these days, but Ridge Racer was genuinely revolutionary. It clearly demonstrated the vast difference in power between the 32-bit PlayStation and the 16-bit Super NES and Mega Drive that had come before.
Its slick 3D graphics and unapologetically arcadey handling — remember this was in the days when we were still using digital control pads rather than analogue sticks — made it an absolute joy to play. And despite a relative lack of content compared to modern games — there really weren’t very many tracks at all, and all of them were based in the exact same environment — it was a game that could keep you occupied for hours as you tried to beat the irritating yellow car and its even more irritating later counterpart, the black car: an adversary so cocky that it often parked on the side of the road in order to allow you to catch up a bit.
A not-particularly-interesting anecdote about Ridge Racer is that it also kind of introduced me to electronic music. Prior to that game, I’d dismissed a lot of electronic music as being just noise — at least partly due to my parents regarding it as such — but over time I came to appreciate the weird and wonderful accompaniments to the racing on the soundtrack, and was much more open to the idea of listening to electronic music outside of games as a result.
The “holy crap, this is on the same system?” award
It would be remiss of me to talk about Ridge Racer and not mention the much later Ridge Racer Type-4, a game which came out much later in the PlayStation’s lifespan but which still plays like a dream today.
Ridge Racer Type-4 was noteworthy not just for being a great game — and a great-looking game with what passed for “photo-realistic” visuals at the time of its release — but also for being beatifully designed, too. Take a look at the video above and tell me that those bright yellow animated menus aren’t immediately distinctive and memorable — and instantly recognisable as being from Ridge Racer Type-4.
Everything about Ridge Racer Type-4 fitted together perfectly. The hour-long Grand Prix campaign gave you several mini-stories to follow through as you challenged various races in various vehicles. The vehicles you unlocked ran the gamut from the relatively sensible to the ridiculous, such as the jet-propelled monstrosity you unlocked later that really, really didn’t like going around corners.
And the music. Oh, the music. At the time Ridge Racer Type-4 came out, my friends and I had discovered a genre of music known as acid jazz — a blend of jazz, funk and hip-hop typified by artists such as the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai. We would listen to pretty much nothing other than this type of music, and so we were delighted to discover that Ridge Racer Type-4’s soundtrack consisted almost exclusively of music of this ilk — certainly a far cry from the early-’90s electronica of the first game — and even more delighted when we found that Namco had very much made this distinctive sound part of their in-house “style” for a while, as other games such as Anna Kournikova’s Smash Court Tennis (an honourable mention in this list) also had a rather jazz-funk flavour about them.
Racing games have come a long way, but few modern titles provide the same degree of satisfying arcade fun that Ridge Racer Type-4 still does. And now you can download and play it on PSP and Vita. And typing this, I’m very tempted to go and do that after I’m done here.
The “so I like RPGs now” award
Final Fantasy VII. I don’t think I really need to say anything else about this, so here’s the intro — still one of my favourite game openings of all time.
The “inexplicably burned into my memory” award
I played a lot of role-playing games on PlayStation — at least, after I discovered Final Fantasy VII and the genre as a whole — but I actually have a pretty good memory of most of them, and indeed enjoyed most of them, too, even those that were objectively lower-quality and lower-budget than other games available at the time.
One such game that has stuck in my mind for a long time is The Granstream Saga.
I remember only a few very specific details about The Granstream Saga: it had some lovely anime cutscenes; it had a great battle system that was somewhere between a traditional RPG and the real-time combat of games like Zelda; it featured two heroines called Arcia and Laramee (the latter of whom donates her name to my custom characters in games any time “Amarysse” is not available); and that none of the polygonal models had any faces.
I’m not sure why The Granstream Saga has burned itself into my memory quite as much as it has, but of all the RPGs I played on PlayStation, it’s one of the ones I remember most fondly. I’d be interested to replay it sometime and see how it holds up, graphics aside.
The “I like this more than Zelda” award
Yes, I like The Adventures of Alundra more than pretty much any Legend of Zelda game I’ve played to date. (Disclosure: I only played a couple of hours of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, and haven’t played Skyward Sword at all.)
Alundra surprised me, because it came along at a time where, so far as many teenage gamers were concerned — teenage gamers like my school friends and I, for example — it was 3D or nothing. 2D games were things of the past; it was all about the 3D now, and preferably games that came on more than one disc. (My friend Woody believed for many years that it was physically impossible for a game to be as good as FInal Fantasy VII, which came on three discs, if it only came on a single disc. This was despite me pointing out that the three discs of FInal Fantasy VII all included the exact same game data, and the only thing different between them was the prerendered cutscenes. I could never convince him.)
Alundra was staunchly 2D, though. It wasn’t even a little bit 3D — games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (which we’ll get onto in a moment) supplemented their beautiful 2D art with 3D backdrops and other scenery elements, whereas Alundra was a pixel-art labour of love, with hand-animated characters, a distinctive and consistent aesthetic and the feel that, aside from the screen resolution, it may well have been possible to recreate on the Super NES.
After I got over my initial culture shock at playing a 2D game, though, I discovered something wonderful: a beautifully designed Zelda-style action RPG with, to date, some of the best-designed puzzles I’ve ever solved without the aid of GameFAQs. Alundra’s puzzles were difficult — more difficult than that which Zelda typically offered — but never insurmountable, and consequently they gave a wonderful feeling of achievement when you successfully solved them.
The plot was pretty cool, too. In fact, it went on to inspire a story that I’ve had half-finished in my head and various word-processing documents ever since. One day I should probably finish that.
The “Hmm, 2D platform games are still relevant” award
2D platformers have had something of a resurgence in recent years thanks to the indie scene, but in the early years of the 32-bit era, developers and players alike were thoroughly enamoured with 3D, with everyone trying to recapture the magic of Super Mario 64.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night proved that 2D still had a place, however. And what a game it was.
The game was immediately striking thanks to its intro, seen in the video above. The beautiful pixel art, the incredible soundtrack — by gosh, I miss old-school Castlevania music — the cringeworthy but memorable voice acting and script… all of it combined to make the second-most badass intro sequence after Final Fantasy VII in my book.
What was perhaps most interesting about the Symphony of the Night intro, however, was the fact that it was actually the last level of the previous game. Only after you beat Dracula — in a fight that you couldn’t lose this time around — did the game proper begin, and then you were in to one of the earliest examples of the “Metroidvania” genre: a type of 2D platformer where you could freely explore a single, huge world split into distinct areas, some of which were blocked off by the requirement for you to unlock specific abilities first.
Symphony of the Night as a whole was so great because it was designed well, played well, treated the player fairly and didn’t outstay its welcome. It was over and done with in about 10 hours — including the “secret” second castle — and by that point you’d had an eminently satisfying experience filled with thrilling boss fights, challenging platforming and, of course, amazing music. It’s no surprise that this Castlevania above all others is the one that keeps getting re-released.
The “this game is broken as hell, but I still love it to pieces” award
Bust-a-Groove took up a considerable proportion of one of our summers. Why? Because it was brilliant.
Bust-a-Groove was one of the earliest examples of “rhythm action” games that I remember playing, and took the unusual approach of being somewhat like a fighting game — it had different characters, each of whom had their own iconic stage, and you worked your way through them to a non-playable final boss. The whole thing was over in the space of about 20 minutes or so — a single playthrough was, anyway — but it was the kind of thing we all enjoyed playing over and over again with different characters.
Why was it broken as hell? Because of its multiplayer mode, and because of the nature of its gameplay. By requiring the player to input specific button sequences in time with the music, it was possible to get a “perfect” score on a level, and if two evenly matched players squared off against one another, it almost always ended in a stalemate. The game’s answer to this was to provide a couple of special attacks that could be triggered in time with the music, but there was also a dodge button and a very obvious cue that these attacks were coming so, again, two evenly matched players would more than likely end in a draw, while two players of different skill levels would be a foregone conclusion.
As dumb as it was, the personality-packed characters, the detailed stages and the incredibly memorable soundtrack made this one of my favourite games of the PlayStation era.
The “I like this more than Zelda, too” award
Here in Europe, we got screwed over on the RPG front for a good few years, with many localised titles not making the hop across the pond from America. Fortunately, I had a modified PlayStation capable of playing imported games, so when I visited my brother in the States on one occasion, I took the opportunity to pick up a selection of games I couldn’t get back home, one of which was Squaresoft’s Brave Fencer Musashi.
Brave Fencer Musashi was a funny game. And I mean that in several senses. It was clearly Japanese through and through, but an excellent job on the localisation filled it with exaggerated Western stereotypes such as the valley girl princess (who calls the protagonist a “little turd” within two minutes of them meeting), the mystic who overdid it on the archaic English and the distinctly camp scribe named Shanky.
Structurally, it was peculiar, too. It had many of the trappings of an RPG — levelling up, HP, MP and the like — but the feel of a 3D platformer, with you exploring a world of gradually increasing size and getting into various setpiece scrapes against bosses and special events. I never got around to beating it, but it was a lot of fun, and I still have a copy on my shelf, so… hmm.
The… hmm.
I’ve gone on for over 2,000 words and I think I could probably continue if I tried. But I’m going to hold it there for now and perhaps revisit some more PS1 classics tomorrow.
I’m mildly bewildered by the fact everyone is losing their shit over the new Pokemon games for 3DS. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anyone their excitement and I’m sure they’re very good, I just feel like I’ve never really “got” Pokemon.
This is strange, really, because the Pokemon games are effectively JRPGs which, as longtime readers will know, is my favourite genre of gaming. And yet despite a brief dalliance with Red back in the Game Boy Color days, I’ve felt absolutely no inclination whatsoever to return to the series. I’m sure it’s changed a lot since Red — at least I hope so — but honestly, my fairly underwhelmed experience with the original installment in the series was enough to discourage me from checking it out again in the future.
My main reason for disliking Red back when I tried it was that it felt like a “JRPG for kids”. This isn’t necessarily in and of itself a bad thing, and it’s probably actually a fairly accurate description what with the warning on the box informing players that “basic reading ability is required to enjoy this game”. However, what this translated to for me was something that played like a JRPG, but which didn’t really include many of the things about that genre of gaming that I liked.
Pokemon Red came out in the UK in 1999. I’d discovered JRPGs with Final Fantasy VII back in 1997, and it felt like a big step backwards. Obviously I’m aware that this isn’t a particularly fair comparison, what with FFVII being on a CD-ROM based 32-bit machine and Red being on a cartridge-based 8-bit handheld. But even so, limited technical capabilities doesn’t prevent you from doing good things with writing and characterisation, and Red just didn’t offer that to me. I didn’t care about what was happening in the world, I couldn’t put myself in the shoes of the mute, personality-free protagonist and there were very few relatable characters scattered around the world. It felt like a game about the grind, and about collecting endless reams of things that you’d never use, rather than the kind of JRPG that I definitely do like: games where there’s a cool story to follow and, oh, by the way, here’s a bajillion other things to do in this world with these characters you like.
I don’t know if the Pokemon series has changed since then, because I’ve never felt inclined to try another one after that. As I say above, I’d hope it has — surely the long-running anime has shown that people are hungry for some actual characters and story in among the monster-training gameplay — but I remain unconvinced at present. I am almost — almost — curious enough to pick up a copy for myself and see why everyone seems so excited about this latest version, but not enough to spend £35 on a new copy. After growing tired of Animal Crossing a lot more quickly than some other people I know, I’m hesitant to jump aboard another Nintendo hype train.
If, on the other hand, someone wanted to send me a copy so I could educate myself, I would certainly do my best to try and understand the new games’ appeal. (Worth a try.)
I’d been putting it off, but I finally beat the Garuda boss fight in Final Fantasy XIV this evening, renowned by some as one of the harder battles in the game’s main story.
The “Primal” fights that you engage in over the course of the main quest’s narrative are genuinely thrilling engagements that reward cooperation, communication and everyone knowing what they’re doing. Sure, the fact that there’s the possibility of instakill moves is frustrating, but with a good party gathered you shouldn’t fall foul of them, particularly if you’ve taken the time to either discuss the fight with more experienced combatants beforehand, or learned from past mistakes.
The thing I’ve been most impressed with by the Primal battles in particular but also a number of other setpiece engagements in the game is how exciting they are. This is something I’m not altogether used to in MMOs, many of which are focused on doing things by rote as efficiently as possible. Final Fantasy XIV’s combat, while not deviating hugely from the template set by World of Warcraft, requires that you stay on your toes, survey your surroundings and move around the battlefield according to what’s going on. In the case of the Garuda fight, there’s a lot of cowering behind pillars (until the horrid harpy destroys them all, anyway) and then ensuring that you don’t get sucked into the increasingly tumultuous storm all around you during the latter stages of the fight.
I played through most of World of Warcraft up through Wrath of the Lich King and I can only think of a few fights I participated in that elicited the same feeling of heart-in-mouth excitement as these Final Fantasy XIV battles. The difference is that in World of Warcraft’s case they were all high-level or endgame content, while Final Fantasy XIV spreads them out over the course of its entire main quest. And then you get to do them all again, but harder, once you hit the level cap. They’re some beautifully designed encounters, and I’m interested to see how Yoshi-P and the team intend to top them in the coming content updates.
It’s that heart-in-mouth feeling that feels most authentically Final Fantasy to me. I can vividly recall the first few times I beat Final Fantasy VII (because I beat it a whole bunch of times in my teenage years) — every single time I reached that final cutscene before the final boss (“And Sephiroth! … To the settling of everything!” — God bless that game’s appalling translation) I would feel real, honest-to-goodness excitement. I’d get a delightful feeling of “butterflies in the stomach” before the screen went all swirly and Birth of a God started playing, and it would continue right through the final fights, even if I was hopelessly overlevelled, which I usually was.
In fact, a good JRPG (hell, game, full stop) these days will still give me that feeling, and if a game makes me feel that way I’ll immediately think considerably more fondly of it than those that don’t. It’ll be a sad day for me when I can’t get fired up by a game’s final confrontation at all — I hope that day never comes, and I shall continue to enjoy that pleasurably anxious feeling for as long as I can in the meantime.
Final Fantasy VII came out on Steam today, a full year after its “new” PC port hit Square Enix’s store with new achievements, cloud saves and an option to make the whole thing insultingly easy for yourself.
Final Fantasy VII holds a very special place in my heart for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it was the first ever JRPG I played and understood.
I’d played role-playing games beforehand, largely on home computers, but didn’t really understand the concept. I’d tried games like Temple of Apshai, Alternate Reality and Origin’s dreadful Times of Lore, but didn’t really get my head around the concept of numbers affecting your performance in the game. When I first started playing Final Fantasy VII, I still didn’t quite get it, but all the core concepts gradually started to come to me: turn-based combat, abstract representations of game elements, characters distinguishing themselves with unique special abilities.
It wasn’t the mechanics that attracted me to Final Fantasy VII, though; it was the story. I’d never experienced a video game with a story 1) that long and 2) that emotionally engaging. Of course, both Final Fantasy VII’s length and emotional engagement value are both somewhat laughable today, but remember, this is 1997 we’re talking about here, and also I had never played a previous installment in the Final Fantasy series. Largely because quite a few of them never made it to Europe.
I’ll tell you the one reason I picked up Final Fantasy VII in the first place: my brother explaining to me that it was the first video game he knew of that had made people cry. I don’t remember if he was one of them or not, but certainly someone he associated with had wept openly at That One Scene That Everyone Knows by Now But Which I Won’t Spoil on the Off-Chance You Still Haven’t Played FFVII and Were Thinking About Picking it Up on Steam.
That idea was fascinating to me. Up until that point, computer and video games had been an important form of entertainment in my life, but very few had engaged my emotions in such a manner as to have a physical effect. In fact, none had. There had been story-based games, sure, and there were a number of these which contained characters I thought rather fondly of — I still fancy Sophia Hapgood from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis — but none which had really made me feel something.
By the time I reached the end of disc 1 on Final Fantasy VII, I was thoroughly invested in the story and characters. By the time that disc actually ended — you know the bit I’m talking about — I had to put the controller down, sit back and dry my eyes. It felt a bit odd tearing up at “just a game”, but it marked the beginning of my lifelong fascination with interactive storytelling — particularly those works that grab you by the heartstrings and tug, tug, tug.
I don’t know yet if I’ll pick up Final Fantasy VII on Steam. I have a perfectly serviceable physical copy on PS1, after all, and aside from the hi-res graphics on the PC version (which aren’t all that great) the PS1 version is The Way to Play. But that game will always have a very special place in my heart. It may not be the best entry in the Final Fantasy series; it may not be my favourite game of all time any longer, but it will always be special.
