When you look at a list of Final Fanatasy games ranked this is arguably the most polarizing one. Sometimes you see it near the very top and in others it’s a bottom tier of the franchise. While I understand people that have it towards the bottom for its campy, tongue in cheek story I simply disagree that this isn’t one of the strongest entries in the entire franchise.
While I agree that the story is tongue in cheek and campy I also found the story to be somewhat charming adventure with characters I didn’t expect to love but ended up caring about very much. In fact the only cast of characters that I find better in the whole original 6 classic games was in FF6. I truly grew to love the five main characters and the story wasn’t always comedic (see where you gain your fifth party member.) While I loved most of the characters, liked the story, I admit Exdeath is as bad a villain as his horrible name. The motivations and back story for him were just flat out lacking.
The star of this game is the gameplay and more specifically the job system. The job system single handedly gives this game so much replay potential. The job system from this game is still the baseline for every RPG that contains a job system. I was blown away with how good it was for being a 30 year old system. The replay system is good enough on its own but you could even do self imposed challenges where you only use certain classes to make this game a challenge for any vet.
The music and art is well Final Fantasy so it’s spectacular and always one of the best for its time of release. The battle at big bridge theme has to be a top 5 song in Final Fantasy history.
It’s criminal that this game was not originally released world wide. It makes me sad knowing this easily would have been one of my favorite games as a kid but I never had the ability to play it. While this game is polarizing in the FF community to me it’s nothing but one of the best the franchise has to offer and I cannot recommend it enough.
While I agree that the story is tongue in cheek and campy I also found the story to be somewhat charming adventure with characters I didn’t expect to love but ended up caring about very much. In fact the only cast of characters that I find better in the whole original 6 classic games was in FF6. I truly grew to love the five main characters and the story wasn’t always comedic (see where you gain your fifth party member.) While I loved most of the characters, liked the story, I admit Exdeath is as bad a villain as his horrible name. The motivations and back story for him were just flat out lacking.
The star of this game is the gameplay and more specifically the job system. The job system single handedly gives this game so much replay potential. The job system from this game is still the baseline for every RPG that contains a job system. I was blown away with how good it was for being a 30 year old system. The replay system is good enough on its own but you could even do self imposed challenges where you only use certain classes to make this game a challenge for any vet.
The music and art is well Final Fantasy so it’s spectacular and always one of the best for its time of release. The battle at big bridge theme has to be a top 5 song in Final Fantasy history.
It’s criminal that this game was not originally released world wide. It makes me sad knowing this easily would have been one of my favorite games as a kid but I never had the ability to play it. While this game is polarizing in the FF community to me it’s nothing but one of the best the franchise has to offer and I cannot recommend it enough.