Final Fantasy Marathon Pitstop #2
I’m glad to have played VI and VII in this context. Going through the series chronologically really makes it apparent how big of a leap they both were, and VI and VII are interesting to compare as late 2D and early 3D games respectively so playing them back-to-back was quite fun.
As far as that comparison goes for VII, I’ll start with the biggest negative first; I think the turn-based combat of VII is worse than VI in virtually every way, in fact, if I’m being especially mean, I think it might be worse than every SNES FF. The reduced complexity of going from 4 party-members to 3 aside, the party members in VI were far more unique in terms of fundamental mechanics: Sabin’s Blitzes, Edgar’s tools, Cyan’s bushido techniques, etc. These were fundamental commands that set these characters apart from the rest of the crew and gave them an identity, whereas in VII a lot of that idiosyncrasy is locked behind limit breaks, which are a very good and fun mechanic, but don’t distinguish party members on a turn-by-turn basis. VI’s esper and relic systems were excellent because they perfectly synthesised the customization and long-term character planning of V with the fixed job-identities of IV. Materia, which follows the same philosophy, levels up independently of characters, so there’s little need to engage in any long-term planning, the stat changes they inflict are so miniscule that there’s no reason to care about that aspect of them either, and unless I was doing something wrong, materia levels up so slowly that you’ll spend the first 2/3rds of the game confined to the most basic spells and techniques. The ability to freely reassign materia would work well in the context of a game more willing to force you to switch characters, but again VII pales in comparison to VI in how it handles this. VI was ingeniously structured into a linear first half and an open second half, with the first forcing different party combinations and the second bringing all those different characters together for its brilliant multi-party dungeons. In comparison, unless you’ve innocently and/or ignorantly committed yourself to using Aerith, VII will rarely take you out of your comfort zone, there’s an incredibly brief section where Cloud and Tifa are taken away from you but aside from this you can just pick a team at the start of the game and stick to it throughout 95% of the runtime. Elemental weaknesses are much less relevant this time around, so very often encounters just boil down to holding the attack button, and this lack of complexity feels like part of the reason why the difficulty has been massively turned down from VI - if there’s little variety then asking the player to replay sections after a failstate becomes unattractive. The appeal of the combat feels much more attuned to the novelty of seeing your moves in 3D, the oft complained-about long summon animations being a symptom of this, they are cool and the 3D is great, don’t get me wrong, but I think the result is a combat system that’s more comfy than mechanically interesting, which is not really my preference considering VI arguably fulfils both of these functions.
Thankfully, VII is leaps and bounds ahead of VI in terms of its aesthetic sensibilities and thematic core that I consider them to be pretty similar in quality (that is, very good). As wonderful as the pixel art Final Fantasies are, all of those worlds were a little generic. VI had some steampunk/early industrial vibes but it wasn’t cohesive in the way that VII’s bio/cyberpunk themes are: The reactors and the slums, the vast lifestream and whirring machines of Midgar set against the struggles and drama of the tiny, downtrodden people who are trapped within it. The iconic, timeless soundtrack with its funky synths and intricate pre-rendered backgrounds catapult this setting into a whole new realm of artistry. I always think of the Shinra mansion basement with the dutch-angle shot where Those Chosen by the Planet plays in full for the first time - a type of cinematic moment that just wasn’t possible in the 2D era - as the sort of thesis statement for this specific aesthetic combination of fixed-angles and crunchy synths.
I played this with a retranslation patch, and as this is my first time I can’t really compare them fully, but I am somewhat surprised that the original translation is still so widely used to this day, from the few excerpts I’ve compared it seems very bad. That being said I enjoyed how this steps things up from the SNES era. VI’s story was well executed and full of drama and great moments, but it was nevertheless a classical heroes vs villain setup, where a ragtag band of charming characters team up to save the day from evil. VII feels like a generation step to a modern, more introspective, more subversive type of narrative: A protagonist who, out of shame for his failure to live up to his childhood expectations, supplements his broken identity with the illusion of heroism, supporting characters who struggle to reconcile their desire to set things right with the realisation that systemic, planetary forces beyond their control will ultimately render their heroics meaningless, a story where the cheerful, wide-eyed and eminently plot-relevant connective tissue in the protagonist’s love triangle dies suddenly for seemingly no reason, leaving the rest of the cast scrambling to find meaning in her death, only for the spell she sacrificed herself to cast to nevertheless leave presumably most of the world’s inhabitants dead - saving the planet but not its people. It’s not hard to see why it’s had such staying-power as a cultural object, despite the bad translation. I think Disc 2 lacks a lot of momentum compared to 1 but that arguably complements the aimlessness and lack of certainty felt by Cloud & Co at that point, and even if you don’t agree with that justification, the fact that it invites this kind of interpretation is what signifies its hefty ambition.
Anyway, it’s a classic, I don’t think I can offer any radically new perspective on it, if it had better gameplay it would probably be one of my favourite games but I still really enjoyed my time with it!
Onto VIII!
I’m glad to have played VI and VII in this context. Going through the series chronologically really makes it apparent how big of a leap they both were, and VI and VII are interesting to compare as late 2D and early 3D games respectively so playing them back-to-back was quite fun.
As far as that comparison goes for VII, I’ll start with the biggest negative first; I think the turn-based combat of VII is worse than VI in virtually every way, in fact, if I’m being especially mean, I think it might be worse than every SNES FF. The reduced complexity of going from 4 party-members to 3 aside, the party members in VI were far more unique in terms of fundamental mechanics: Sabin’s Blitzes, Edgar’s tools, Cyan’s bushido techniques, etc. These were fundamental commands that set these characters apart from the rest of the crew and gave them an identity, whereas in VII a lot of that idiosyncrasy is locked behind limit breaks, which are a very good and fun mechanic, but don’t distinguish party members on a turn-by-turn basis. VI’s esper and relic systems were excellent because they perfectly synthesised the customization and long-term character planning of V with the fixed job-identities of IV. Materia, which follows the same philosophy, levels up independently of characters, so there’s little need to engage in any long-term planning, the stat changes they inflict are so miniscule that there’s no reason to care about that aspect of them either, and unless I was doing something wrong, materia levels up so slowly that you’ll spend the first 2/3rds of the game confined to the most basic spells and techniques. The ability to freely reassign materia would work well in the context of a game more willing to force you to switch characters, but again VII pales in comparison to VI in how it handles this. VI was ingeniously structured into a linear first half and an open second half, with the first forcing different party combinations and the second bringing all those different characters together for its brilliant multi-party dungeons. In comparison, unless you’ve innocently and/or ignorantly committed yourself to using Aerith, VII will rarely take you out of your comfort zone, there’s an incredibly brief section where Cloud and Tifa are taken away from you but aside from this you can just pick a team at the start of the game and stick to it throughout 95% of the runtime. Elemental weaknesses are much less relevant this time around, so very often encounters just boil down to holding the attack button, and this lack of complexity feels like part of the reason why the difficulty has been massively turned down from VI - if there’s little variety then asking the player to replay sections after a failstate becomes unattractive. The appeal of the combat feels much more attuned to the novelty of seeing your moves in 3D, the oft complained-about long summon animations being a symptom of this, they are cool and the 3D is great, don’t get me wrong, but I think the result is a combat system that’s more comfy than mechanically interesting, which is not really my preference considering VI arguably fulfils both of these functions.
Thankfully, VII is leaps and bounds ahead of VI in terms of its aesthetic sensibilities and thematic core that I consider them to be pretty similar in quality (that is, very good). As wonderful as the pixel art Final Fantasies are, all of those worlds were a little generic. VI had some steampunk/early industrial vibes but it wasn’t cohesive in the way that VII’s bio/cyberpunk themes are: The reactors and the slums, the vast lifestream and whirring machines of Midgar set against the struggles and drama of the tiny, downtrodden people who are trapped within it. The iconic, timeless soundtrack with its funky synths and intricate pre-rendered backgrounds catapult this setting into a whole new realm of artistry. I always think of the Shinra mansion basement with the dutch-angle shot where Those Chosen by the Planet plays in full for the first time - a type of cinematic moment that just wasn’t possible in the 2D era - as the sort of thesis statement for this specific aesthetic combination of fixed-angles and crunchy synths.
I played this with a retranslation patch, and as this is my first time I can’t really compare them fully, but I am somewhat surprised that the original translation is still so widely used to this day, from the few excerpts I’ve compared it seems very bad. That being said I enjoyed how this steps things up from the SNES era. VI’s story was well executed and full of drama and great moments, but it was nevertheless a classical heroes vs villain setup, where a ragtag band of charming characters team up to save the day from evil. VII feels like a generation step to a modern, more introspective, more subversive type of narrative: A protagonist who, out of shame for his failure to live up to his childhood expectations, supplements his broken identity with the illusion of heroism, supporting characters who struggle to reconcile their desire to set things right with the realisation that systemic, planetary forces beyond their control will ultimately render their heroics meaningless, a story where the cheerful, wide-eyed and eminently plot-relevant connective tissue in the protagonist’s love triangle dies suddenly for seemingly no reason, leaving the rest of the cast scrambling to find meaning in her death, only for the spell she sacrificed herself to cast to nevertheless leave presumably most of the world’s inhabitants dead - saving the planet but not its people. It’s not hard to see why it’s had such staying-power as a cultural object, despite the bad translation. I think Disc 2 lacks a lot of momentum compared to 1 but that arguably complements the aimlessness and lack of certainty felt by Cloud & Co at that point, and even if you don’t agree with that justification, the fact that it invites this kind of interpretation is what signifies its hefty ambition.
Anyway, it’s a classic, I don’t think I can offer any radically new perspective on it, if it had better gameplay it would probably be one of my favourite games but I still really enjoyed my time with it!
Onto VIII!