Another missing few blog posts, but blame uni this time lol. It’s sucking the very creative life blood out of me. However, we shall not get into that here, I have another outlet for venting that rage lol. Anywho, I have been privy to some rather awesome news. News that Final Fantasy XIII is getting a sequel. I know, you’re probably wondering why I’m so excited about that having not yet done a review on an FF game, but that is because the sheer time I would need to do a review on an FF game is never around when I need it. In short I love them. I never have to think twice if someone asks me my favourite series, although my favourite of the games is slightly harder. It was this series that made me want to go into games design in the first place. As someone who also has keen interests in being an author (what’s a life without dreams right?) I found that Final Fantasy games satisfied my need to smash some bad guys and to be drawn into a compelling story.
So lets start. Where? Right at the beginning of course. Unlike many gamers who have played the series, I have played not only every game in the series (bar 9 and 11 but I’ll get to that) But I have also done it in order (except for 3 because that came out after 12.…go figure) Yes I’m just that hard core. See it all started back in 2003 at college (I was 16 for any Americans out there….I realise the school system is different in different countries) and doing an Art AS level. A girl on my course happened to show me screen shots of a game she thought I’d like…..a game called Final Fantasy X. I know now that the screen shots she showed me were of Yuna performing the Sending. But at the time I was completely bowled over by the beauty of them. It amazed me that people could create graphics that looked so real. So I set out to play this amazing game. I raved about the pictures to my sister and we hunted them down on the net at home, finally finding out that there were so many games in this series.
Then I had a stroke of luck. See while the world had moved onto the PS2, I was still loving my PS1. But of course FFX is a PS2 game. Never fear, I found a game in Woolworths called Final Fantasy Origins. I have to say I was impressed with my stroke of luck when I saw that both Final Fantasy I and II were available on it. So excited in fact that I bought it on my way up to college one Friday morning and was practically bubbling over with excitement by the time I got to my English class and showed it to my friends who were less than impressed. I feel that they felt that £20 for one game (although I did correct them that it was in fact two) seemed rather pricey and they failed to see any appeal.
I was undeterred and it was the first thing I did when I got home that evening to put it in my PS1 with my sister watching eagerly. I don’t know if you’ve played the PS1 version of FFI but there’s a lovely scene at the beginning of a light warrior fighting a large dragon with the iconic crystal theme playing. I was spellbound…so was my sister. Then the graphics turned into tiny little pixel people and we sat there having a WTF moment. But this was part of the series that had those beautiful pictures I’d seen.
Luckily for me, and my whole foray into games design many years later, I decided to persevere believing that the pretty graphics would come later. Of course they didn’t and I played through a game controlling a little party of people walking round tiny towns and villages. By the end I didn’t care. I was amazed at what could come out of a game.
I realise that nothing above is really a review, but it was necessary to show the sheer enthusiasm I have for these games. Up till then I had played several games, mainly around platformers, racing games or puzzle games. They were fun and at times could last a few hours, but this took me a few days to complete.
Yes, for those of you playing it who are used to the scenery of XII or XIII you’ll wonder what the heck you’re doing with these tiny little graphics and a very simple storyline, but this was the first. A small scale JRPG and it boasts so much charm that by the end you’ll love it.
As with most early FF’s you control a party that you can actually set up choosing from the job classes of hero, thief, red mage, white mage, black mage and monk. There may be another but I’m working from the top of my head here, so we’ll roll with it. You pick your guys and arrive in a small little pixel village called Cornelia. It’s a pretty little place that is in disarray since a guy called Garland ran off with the princess. It so happens that your little party has with them some crystal shards to the king asks you for help.
Now the battle system of FFI is simple. Very simple. You kill bad guys that you find outside of towns, these give you exp points which add up your levels. They also drop gil (the money system) and items. Compared to the crystarium of XIII it’s simple. Which is good, because you want to get into the game. It doesn’t have the pretty graphics that modern day gamers are used to so the last thing you’d want is to spend an hour trying how to understand how to kill your first real challenge while using the paradigm shift (another XIII reference…I’ll stop now)
So back to my first game, I got to Garlands castle, kicked his butt and saved the princess. I had finished the game and actually quite enjoyed it. My party returned to Cornelia for some reward from the king, only to find that our crystals can save the world and the king had kindly made a bridge for us to pass onto the other continent so we can fulfil our destiny. Suddenly the game opened up and any doubts me and my sister had, vanished as we tried to make our way through dungeons and other villages.
Now one flaw I will give this game is that for a first walkthrough, there is a real stubborn part several hours after leaving Cornelia where, you’re pretty much stuck in Cornelia’s bay unless you get someone to blow a hole in the land and let your boat pass through. This is where we discovered the wonders of walkthroughs because it totally flummoxed us as no character save like one mentions it and we spent a good few hours trying to work out what the heck these little people actually expected of us. Some of the battles could also be quite sporadic which meant that there were times that you’d be looking for a fight to level up.
We didn’t care about those flaws though. We were the light warriors out to save the world from the four elemental fiends and dammit we were going to do it well. And I guess that’s the major plus point of this game. The story was so gripping. You wanted to help these people and the more you played the more you became part of the story, which is what I suppose a good RPG should do. Naturally there wasn’t really any character development as the heroes were just cookie cutter good guys and in future reviews of later games in this series, that’ll be a real sore point of mine, but in this game it worked. It was simple but effective. It told a story and it told it well. The depth it went into with the different races living in this world and the four fiends and how they tied into everything was wonderfully done for a game of it’s time. I mean it was originally released in 1987.…that’s just a year after I was born, so needless to say that computer power wasn’t all that great back then.Would I recommend it??? Hell yeah. I feel that a lot of people are really missing out by not playing these early FF games. I know people who talk about how much they love the series but have only played from VII onwards. That’s 6 awesome games you’re missing out on. Especially now with the release of Dissidia on the PSP that uses characters from older games, people are assuming they know about their characters when they don’t…come on guys, you don’t know their characters till you’ve spent several hours of them in their own world.
So yeah, in short, play Final Fantasy ^_^ If you don’t like the original, let me know, I look forward to correcting you lol.
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