funsohng
10 reviews liked by funsohng
Resident Evil 2
2019
Capcom took a good game and made a great game. This goes beyond the call of an ordinary remake, reimagining the spaces and places of Resident Evil 2 into a slickened, very modern third-person shooter that keeps all of the working ideas about the game and makes the rest that much better.
This is a terrific reimagining, even tonally changing the story and delivery to create a more reasonable and consistent throughline for the character arcs. New rooms and items have also been expanded and the way the police station, underground, sewers, and labs have been created, it feels like a consistent wraparound space, truly interconnected, and not a series of static rooms and camera angles used to create impressions of dimensions and space.
The game runs like a dream now, taking an aging and archaic system of play and modernizing it so it would be agreeable to everyone. The key is that it is still very much about preservation but the game now feels well-balanced, whether or not you have stockpiled ammo and herbs.
It sells the big moments in the best way. The bits with Mr. X are tremendous and his path finding/warping logic through the level systems, is interesting. Likewise, the design feels more organic for the player, as the interaction with the spaces is squared off and the rough edges are sanded down, then brushed with a fine coat of polish to hold all the changes it.
The game feels great and makes an old design feel immediately relevant and new. It is with the same spark that REmake entered the conversation as the best-ever Resident Evil, that RE2make now levels up the original second game to be near the front of the pack.
Some old design decisions remain, both with charm and some repetition and necessary backtracking. You still need to switch your brain into a different mode to accomplish Resident Evil puzzles, which often require running between points of interest, juggling inventory management, and bringing key items back to the right spaces. That formula doesn’t always feel compelling but it’s also tremendous that they left it untouched. That was the right thing not to modernize, and so, they did literally everything else and left the mechanical framework in place. That’s a great compromise and the right one for the developers to make.
This is a terrific reimagining, even tonally changing the story and delivery to create a more reasonable and consistent throughline for the character arcs. New rooms and items have also been expanded and the way the police station, underground, sewers, and labs have been created, it feels like a consistent wraparound space, truly interconnected, and not a series of static rooms and camera angles used to create impressions of dimensions and space.
The game runs like a dream now, taking an aging and archaic system of play and modernizing it so it would be agreeable to everyone. The key is that it is still very much about preservation but the game now feels well-balanced, whether or not you have stockpiled ammo and herbs.
It sells the big moments in the best way. The bits with Mr. X are tremendous and his path finding/warping logic through the level systems, is interesting. Likewise, the design feels more organic for the player, as the interaction with the spaces is squared off and the rough edges are sanded down, then brushed with a fine coat of polish to hold all the changes it.
The game feels great and makes an old design feel immediately relevant and new. It is with the same spark that REmake entered the conversation as the best-ever Resident Evil, that RE2make now levels up the original second game to be near the front of the pack.
Some old design decisions remain, both with charm and some repetition and necessary backtracking. You still need to switch your brain into a different mode to accomplish Resident Evil puzzles, which often require running between points of interest, juggling inventory management, and bringing key items back to the right spaces. That formula doesn’t always feel compelling but it’s also tremendous that they left it untouched. That was the right thing not to modernize, and so, they did literally everything else and left the mechanical framework in place. That’s a great compromise and the right one for the developers to make.
Redfall
2023
Can a broken game ever be good? Not in the technical way that a faultless piece of coding can be good. Not in the usual way where the mere function of running game is the lowest expectation.
What if you take a trusted studio like Arcane and have them make someone else’s game and it is broken beyond belief? That gets more interesting.
It begins to channel different things, looter shooters before their primary development and social hooks were added. Something like RAGE, from Bethesda’s own catalogue, a neat idea with advanced textures that does come together despite id coding to the metal (they are not alike in this last way). And most clearly, it’s like Duke Nukem Forever, this instantly outdated pastiche of ideas that used to work that is thankless of the teams who have worked on it and for the players who play it.
There’s the stuff that has gone right, evidence that more things can go right. There are slices of worldbuilding which suggest an environment and beautiful places, that if stacked together as levels, would have their maximum impact. Instead, they are connected in two open world between vast quantities of empty spaces.
All the technical errors you have heard about are true. Every time you’re having fun with Redfall, it crashes. There is some fun, because Arkane are / were a deeply talented team of programmers that have made some defining games where you can path through them how you want to. There is no point here: you can go in guns blazing or the stealthy way and the same things will happen. Just don’t think about anything.
Just don’t think about how good it could have been, when you trace the edge of the map and there’s this gorgeous mountain of water suspended high in the air, or when you find a really cool multiplex with a fun mission in it, or find some really crunchy horror-themed shotguns.
Don’t think about what it would be like to play the multiplayer. The single player can hardly bare the weight of the game’s performance. Whole sections are so badly optimized the game becomes a total slideshow. Don’t worry that they didn’t design whole swaths of the game that seem like they ought to be designed.
Don’t worry because you’re in good hands with Arkane who make good games you don’t have to worry about. I remember now, that first E3 with Dishonored and how bright and happy the team was then. I think of them when I play Redfall now and hope they are still bright and happy, somewhere.
What if you take a trusted studio like Arcane and have them make someone else’s game and it is broken beyond belief? That gets more interesting.
It begins to channel different things, looter shooters before their primary development and social hooks were added. Something like RAGE, from Bethesda’s own catalogue, a neat idea with advanced textures that does come together despite id coding to the metal (they are not alike in this last way). And most clearly, it’s like Duke Nukem Forever, this instantly outdated pastiche of ideas that used to work that is thankless of the teams who have worked on it and for the players who play it.
There’s the stuff that has gone right, evidence that more things can go right. There are slices of worldbuilding which suggest an environment and beautiful places, that if stacked together as levels, would have their maximum impact. Instead, they are connected in two open world between vast quantities of empty spaces.
All the technical errors you have heard about are true. Every time you’re having fun with Redfall, it crashes. There is some fun, because Arkane are / were a deeply talented team of programmers that have made some defining games where you can path through them how you want to. There is no point here: you can go in guns blazing or the stealthy way and the same things will happen. Just don’t think about anything.
Just don’t think about how good it could have been, when you trace the edge of the map and there’s this gorgeous mountain of water suspended high in the air, or when you find a really cool multiplex with a fun mission in it, or find some really crunchy horror-themed shotguns.
Don’t think about what it would be like to play the multiplayer. The single player can hardly bare the weight of the game’s performance. Whole sections are so badly optimized the game becomes a total slideshow. Don’t worry that they didn’t design whole swaths of the game that seem like they ought to be designed.
Don’t worry because you’re in good hands with Arkane who make good games you don’t have to worry about. I remember now, that first E3 with Dishonored and how bright and happy the team was then. I think of them when I play Redfall now and hope they are still bright and happy, somewhere.
Big unique arcade machines are their own exterior ‘attract modes’ — and Racer’s is all machine design: a big pod racer with throttle controls, it’s an inviting contraption to be sure.
The mechanics of the game also fit the context of use for this arcade simplicity — like many fast and frenzied future racers, it is a game of boost management and not expending your craft by over-performing or careening too fast through the turns. It has a sharp minimally used mechanic too, turning the craft to either side to fit through narrow enclaves.
The game doesn’t expand mechanically, so much as the levels become longer and more narrow as they go along. There is some rubber-banding but if you’re really ahead or really behind any given race is really over already, Mario Kart rules may not apply.
This leaves a minimal risk/reward or whether you’ll boost through every straightaway or create your own opportunities with varied cut-away hidden paths.
There is enough invention in the crafts to give the game its own identity among Wipeouts and F-Zeros but where it lacks imagination is in the cast of pod racers. The vehicle designs are nicely differentiated but it really feels like you can just choose between Anakin and whatever shape of Alien you want. In this way, it’s a very slight and limited game, despite crafts having differentials along several levels from their acceleration to their air breaking.
It all moves fast enough. It does need a few more tricks and to use more the ones it has. Because I’ve played it a handful of times, at arcades and on Dreamcast, I spent about 95% of the game unaware of other racers, which sunk a few of my earlier memories of it being nicely competitive.
Still, the tracks express their themes well. There’s everything you get in a racer. Don’t laugh but there’s even a beach course. These use Star Wars thematics as track and background details, to useful enough effect.
The game was a fun outside release when licensed games used to also often be surprise non-sequiturs to their main branches of games. It suits the bill of advertising one of Phantom Menace’s fun new features and toys they would have to sell, but your mileage may very on if the play and design has really held up all these years.
The mechanics of the game also fit the context of use for this arcade simplicity — like many fast and frenzied future racers, it is a game of boost management and not expending your craft by over-performing or careening too fast through the turns. It has a sharp minimally used mechanic too, turning the craft to either side to fit through narrow enclaves.
The game doesn’t expand mechanically, so much as the levels become longer and more narrow as they go along. There is some rubber-banding but if you’re really ahead or really behind any given race is really over already, Mario Kart rules may not apply.
This leaves a minimal risk/reward or whether you’ll boost through every straightaway or create your own opportunities with varied cut-away hidden paths.
There is enough invention in the crafts to give the game its own identity among Wipeouts and F-Zeros but where it lacks imagination is in the cast of pod racers. The vehicle designs are nicely differentiated but it really feels like you can just choose between Anakin and whatever shape of Alien you want. In this way, it’s a very slight and limited game, despite crafts having differentials along several levels from their acceleration to their air breaking.
It all moves fast enough. It does need a few more tricks and to use more the ones it has. Because I’ve played it a handful of times, at arcades and on Dreamcast, I spent about 95% of the game unaware of other racers, which sunk a few of my earlier memories of it being nicely competitive.
Still, the tracks express their themes well. There’s everything you get in a racer. Don’t laugh but there’s even a beach course. These use Star Wars thematics as track and background details, to useful enough effect.
The game was a fun outside release when licensed games used to also often be surprise non-sequiturs to their main branches of games. It suits the bill of advertising one of Phantom Menace’s fun new features and toys they would have to sell, but your mileage may very on if the play and design has really held up all these years.
This review contains spoilers
Final Fantasy 8 is the worst mainline Final Fantasy in this marathon yet by a noticeable margin and it mostly all comes down to a rotting core of ideas regarding its character progression at the center.
There, I didn't bury the lede. It's sadly not a super controversial take and I had really hoped I would be able to be on the other end of it- to be able to see why its offbeat take on RPG mechanics is actually a cool twist or at worst an inoffensive if not truly revolutionary system ala my experience with FF2's progression. But it wasn't to be. So let's just get straight into it.
There is a lot going on for the uninitiated here- for all its actual flaws, FF8 cannot be accused of resting idly on new implementations of former game models or just making tweaks here and there. No, it upends the character progression and build process pretty much entirely. Characters still gain levels but the game scales all (or nearly all? a late optional boss or two may be exempt from this) enemies to character level. Characters also gain stats on leveling up but there is another system that takes the place of both primary skill learning path and equipment all in one that also informs those stats- junctioning- and the degree to which it informs those stats is so severe than innate stat growths and values may as well not matter outside the very start of the game when you have no magic. The junction system is built upon FF8's version of summons- guardian forces- so as a starting point, you can kind of model it similar to FF6's magicite in your head. Each summon has a set of skills, both passive traits and active commands that can be issued, that characters "junctioned" to that GF can learn over time. These skills are not learned through xp but through ap- ability points- which are also received from battles but not in a 1:1 scaling manner. (There are monsters that grant loads of ap but little to no xp and vice versa) Among those skills are junction skills themselves- expressed as Mag-J, HP-J, Str-J, etc. Each of those allows you to set a "magic" in a characters inventory to the associated stat. Depending on the magic chosen, the stat will gain somewhere between a small and a massive amount of value for that character. (The associations are intended to be intuitive, so picking something like a healing spell ala curaga, for example, for HP will result in higher gain for it than an offensive spell)
Which brings me to magic itself. MP is out again for the first time in a while. Instead, spell usage is governed by actual inventory of those spells. Series staples like fira, esuna, and thunder are now obtained in consumable fashion and can be stacked up to 100 of a given spell in a given character's inventory. The amount of a spell you have also drastically influences how high a stat value it confers to any associated junctioned stats. (and yes to be clear, they confer stats directly- not stat growth values! if you have a very powerful spell early game you can get ALL of its stat contribution as soon as you can obtain 100 of it) To obtain these... disposable? magics you must "draw" them. (With a couple notable exceptions I'll mention later) This can either be done in limited fashion from draw points in the world itself, usually one time usage or one time per location visit usage, or from monsters. Drawing is an active command and both uses a characters turn and a spot on their commands list. (This actually matters in this FF game specifically for reasons I'll get to) Each spot and monster has its specific associated magics, so theres no randomness to what you will see in that regard. Also, crucially, there is no limit on the amount of magic that can be drawn from a single enemy except what you can hold in your inventory; if a boss has a new powerful spell you haven't seen yet, you can sit there and load up your entire party on 100 copies of it for each of them.
That was a lot of mechanics breakdown. Usually I try to avoid this kind of regurgitation in reviews so I do apologize for that, but it's such a different set of systems and I feel its so crucial to understand how they work in order to see why they fall apart- either individually or as is so often the case with this game, through their interactions/incentives produced with each other- that I really did want to lay it out in as non judgmental a manner as possible initially for those unfamiliar.
So let's start breaking down the issues and interactions here, beginning with something that actually looked very appealing to me at the start- level scaling. I've been obeying a strict no grind rule for my entire FF series playthrough so when I saw that this was a feature, I thought, great, game will do the work here for me. Unfortunately, the way it plays out in practice is significantly worse. For one, you are encouraged to draw all of any new magic from a monster the first time you see it rather than across multiple battles which might be more stomachable because.... 1) there is no limit to how much magic can be drawn per fight, 2) fighting more enemies means getting more xp which means getting weaker relative to enemies since your strength is derived mostly from magic junctions and not stat growths, 3) getting a maxed stack of magic immediately means stronger junctions and a more immediate power spike, and 4) the speed at which you draw doesn't meaningfully go up between encounters with the same mob for the same magic- if you factor in having to load in encounters it actually takes LONGER to draw the magic across fights than it would to just do it in one. So in any given first encounter with a spell, you pick off any monsters besides the one you want magic from, ideally afflict with some status affect to render it mostly harmless, then just turn on 3x speed to sit through your entire party spending 10+ turns each drawing all of the magic. And if the player does end up doing this because it is so heavily encouraged by the confluence of systems here, the next domino to fall for them will be all the random battles with enemies that possess magic you already have. You guessed it; with no new magic to draw and xp actively harmful, the player should just escape each time to reduce the amount of xp they take in. This dynamic results in a good chunk of your battles being incredibly drawn out (get it?!??!) magic harvesting affairs and the rest just being the sight of the party turning tail immediately. Not a great dynamic. Even with the normal flow of encounters ruined, the game doesn't even get to claim not encouraging grinding as a positive tradeoff! You can argue the repetitive drawing in a single battle is spiritually grinding as well but let's say I'm willing to be forgiving since the actions performed are no different than distributing them across a wealth of battles in efficacy and grinding usually entails repeating content below your level over and over inefficiently to power up above content before reaching it. Even then, the aforementioned ap centric monsters exist to allow players to specifically camp a spot and power up their capabilities without risking much level growth. It's just a mess and all totaled, not at all what I'd hoped for when I heard "level scaling".
Of course, as we get into the results of all that functioning, one might question why even bother trying to grind ap for a power spike when the game will naturally guide you to being broken incredibly early itself. The direct tying of magic strength and inventory size to immediate stat value means that as soon you uncover a handful of early game accessible spells, your characters HP and attack values will skyrocket to what would be lategame levels in prior FFs. One doesn't even need to tread too far off the beaten path for this- the curious player will notice unlockable abilities to refine magic from items early and quickly discover that early game accessible items can yield absolutely busted magic well before its more logical place in the game. Heaven forbid they also notice the ability that lets you refine from cards for the game's minigame triple triad as items produced from cards can grant even stronger magic when refined within the first disc even.
To make all of this even more worse, the very nature of being overpowered in FF8 is monotonous and incredibly dull compared to what one might call overpowered strats in some prior FFs. The series certainly has a history of letting you thwart the occasional tough boss with a well placed status effect or flavor appropriate phoenix down usage, but those were usually distributed amongst more "traditional" challenges and at least required attacking from amusing, different angles specific to the enemy at hand. In FF8, the strongest strat to do for the vast majority of the game is just straight up attacking, (and frequently one shotting foes with it) nothing else required. This comes from a number of factors again blending together in a disgusting mix: the previously discussed abnormally high STR stat you can reach early through the junction system, the fact that the number of commands a character can have accessible in a fight is limited for the first time in series history and two slots are going to always be attack and draw almost by requirement so magic will frequently not even be accessible in your party lineup, magic itself is both consumed AND the source of your stat strength so using it over attacks means needing to replenish/slowly losing stats, magic itself is undertuned- perhaps as a misguided way to alleviate the players worries about using up their own stats by making it unappealing to begin with?- save some non numbers dependent utility spells in the lategame, and, finally, in the spots where you might consider exploiting an elemental weakness you can always just junction that element attack to your party members instead to convert their attacks to the element of weakness rather than having to actively expend any resources! Such an approach even leaves you more resilient to the standard status effects- squall has inherent maximum accuracy from the get go and cant miss when blinded, berserk buffs your damage and takes care of your atb on time inputs for you, and silence disables everything that isn't basic attack, so the standard FF ailments end up somehow encouraging you to take what is already overwhelmingly the best option. There is, again, an overwhelming incentive to do the most boring thing possible (ok, short of watching characters draw magic for 20 turns might be worse or flee every fight but dont worry you'll still get to do those!) produced by what seems to be the uninvestigated interaction of all these systems? It's truly baffling.
As an aside, I suppose curative magics still retain some functionality though, in that you can obviously heal up party members between fights with them from the menu. But then.... if you're willing to use up your disposable curative magics like this, what is the difference between them and potions and such? Why are items even in this game? The nature of its magic system basically renders them redundant!
If regular attacks boosted by the incredibly broken junction system aren't powerful enough for you, you can use the game's also almost inherently exploitative limit break system instead I suppose. Dropping 7's logical bar building system for employing them, 8 instead ties their usage to low health and a number of "crisis level" factors. It seems narratively/emotionally correct initially but once the player realizes there's zero cooldown on repeating them or accessing them from the point a character drops to low health, the flavor gets fuzzy. Leave your child soldiers in critical condition all the time so they can chain off what are framed as last ditch efforts of great strength just as easily as they can repeat regular attacks. Instead of wanting to heal up low characters, you instead want to beat them down to as little health as possible and leave them there. Granted, I honestly never really used this much as the regular attack strategy was broken enough as is, but just in glancing at ways to play the game without the junction system at all since out of curiosity, I see that people have taken yet another one of 8's poorly designed changes to its logical place and found a 57th way to snap the game in half.
If we're to really look for it to give FF8 the benefit of the doubt, the most reasonable plan of attack that doesn't involve breaking the game apart by simply.... doing what its systems teach you to do.... are the summons themselves, but even they are also not without flaws. Indeed, for the player who doesn't take the time to try and understand the ins and outs of the junction system, mashing the summon button is an understandable impulse. Unfortunately, the game both retains the lengthy cinematic summon animations of ff7 but crucially drops its per battle limitations, so instead of seeing a fun treat every once in a while, or animations tailored to the new usage behavior for GFs, the player will instead have to watch lengthy animations repeated over and over per battle. Once they arrive at lategame, a couple of specific boss/area designs will render their approach invalid almost entirely- something I'm normally sympathetic to in design (asking players to learn the game to beat the game) but here I've come to hate the junction system so much my sympathies are sadly reversed, and I instead pity the player who arrives at these moments having only employed GFs throughout.
I can't even say the junction system is a cool idea in search of a better implementation- there's more to discard here than there is to salvage. My initial complete impression of it, which I hoped would prove wrong in time, was that it was basically as though the designers wrote out the traditional FF character progression and combat design in a paragraph, then took out all the nouns out to render the paragraph one big mad lib, and then finally replaced all those empty spots with the same nouns distributed randomly. And that was probably the most positive take I ever had with it throughout the playthrough. There's simply no reason to go back to it. Unlike FF2's system- a similarly lambasted different progression system which can be played in a straightforward way akin to selecting a starting class and enjoyed despite its potential for breaking the game if you go off the natural path of what the game tells you to do- there's no way to actually engage with any part of its system and enjoy it.
But moving past that mountain of frustration and hate, there are actually parts of this game that I like believe it or not. Part of me hates that I'm going to cram them into much smaller notes given that they are the parts that deserve to be appreciated, but I cannot overstate just how much the systems detailed above completely wrecked what good will I did have towards the rest of the game, so the ratio in writing is warranted.
The music here is the series high point thus far. I've traditionally avoided commenting on this in prior reviews as I lack any knowledge on how to dissect music theory but for what it's worth, the sheer quantity of tracks that hit for me here outpaced the rest of the games quickly. Even more impressive, it does so through a clear change in approach- this one actually good- towards developing a coherent set of themes and moods which are built upon throughout. While I've enjoyed a lot of the singular character themes from prior FFs, dropping the obligatory new one for each character and instead doubling down on cross character/narrative themes or themes for the principle two cast members and their variations resonates strongly throughout the playthrough. And lest one think that this change up plus the games more brooding by turns romantic mood might result in a critical dearth of "bops", Man with a Machine Gun and Force Your Way would like to have stern words with you. Maybe most impressively, while this is the most coherent soundtrack to date, it also manages to get further "out there" with its sound at times than any other FF without breaking that coherency. Blue Fields is easily the most straight up bizarre overworld theme thus far, for example, but feels very home in the absolutely bizarre maelstrom of feelings the games child soldiers/adolescence/identity/timey wimey nonsense angles all create. (The time travel/compression angle in particular of those allows a lot of profitable stretching here as the suitably named... "Compression of Time" demonstrates)
This more coherent and high quality aural backdrop also helps to elevate the game's narrative, something I'm more torn on than its music but in general can appreciate for what it's attempting even when it fails at least- unlike its combat/progression. FF8 is the story of a group of child soldiers attempting to thwart a sorceress in the future's schemes of "compressing time". It is also, purportedly, a romance. (Although having finished the game and now having played through around disc 3 of FF9, I'd actually say 9 is more of a romance than 8 for whatever that's worth...) This is a very strange combination of things but it's uplifted by said soundtrack and also series best to date by a mile visuals, both of which are capable of accomodating the variety of seemingly clashing tones measure for measure. In order to tackle its angsty protagonists lack of external expressiveness, the game presents internal thoughts to the player for.... what I think is the first time? At least in this substantial a fashion. (Cloud may have had some moments like this prior but I don't recall the whole of FF7 being colored by them) It's a clunky tool, to be sure, but it does help expand the series' character development capabilities. Also an impressive mostly new tool for the series expressiveness', cross cutting is employed heavily here. Both across time in larger movements as the cast tracks the exploits of another band of heroes from a time past and in tighter, tense action sequences and dramatic events. While I would't necessarily call this impressive from a modern standpoint or in comparison to what other media had been able to accomplish, it's definitely noticeable coming off of the first 7 and another welcome step forward.
The material being presented, once past the improved presentation itself, is a bit more of a mixed bag. A proto-kingdom hearts opening montage rumination on thoughts of self and vague visions of a future/past unfulfilled set the tone appropriately enough for what is eventually to come, but the game spends long periods of time between these more surreal visions and I'm not sure what it ultimately has to offer for them is all that compelling even if I like the idea of departing from the more straightforward narratives of the past for more internal focused stories less concerned with the literal events happening on screen.
At the risk of picking nits, a number of world building quandaries perplex/undermine the literal narrative on screen throughout. Why does this world nearly exclusively use child soldiers when adults exist with presumably all the advantages one would expect, let alone the moral ramifications? What nation would ever consider military academies that conduct live military operations within their borders "neutral" just because they're a school first and not an nationally aligned army? Why does the single most useless Cid in the history of the franchise see fit to delegate the running of said private military company to a kid when there are other presumably more veteran graduates available even if he and all the other adults feel like bailing out? Even if one accepts that these are necessary sacrifices to the gods of marketing games to kids/teenagers, one doesn't get the sense they ever even attempted to build a convincing world around those starting points.
Actual big spoilers now, those were only just getting started- a lategame twist paints your entire party as a group of childhood friends that somehow all nearly forgot this AND all somehow got back together again how many years from how many different places on the planet to be the single most important group of people doing anything currently. It would be the most insultingly contrived bit of story in the entire franchise were it not for the fact that the ramifications of this are pretty much discarded immediately, which is both a relief from a story construction perspective and also another source of bewilderment as to why they'd even make this decision in the first place. Perhaps most confusing of all, though, is the very conclusion itself in which the group decides that, in order to stop the sorceress from fulfilling her goal of time compression (a concept that hasn't been explained in neither implication for what it actually means nor why its appealing at all to the sorceress...) because it will apparently render everyone dead but the sorceress and no one wants that obviously, they need to.... let the sorceress go through with time compression????? so they can then kill her while being somehow not dead????? But then the time compression has also already happened so what does it matter if you kill her or not now?????
It's a good thing the story is mostly carried by its tone, ability to convey emotional dislocation symbolically, and actual storytelling techniques and not the lore itself because had I actually cared about it at that point, I have to imagine that would have sunk it. Instead, I just laughed as I willingly followed the ride through to its conclusion. It may seem like I'm really down on it, but all in all, I did enjoy that ride on the whole. (the Laguna cast game would have been so much better, though- more appealing cast, none of this child soldier/weird neutral pmc nonsense, no time compression, better romance for loves both found and lost)
But it is worth pointing out that even throughout experiencing this story, traveling the still beautiful lands and cities of FF8's world, and listening to its gorgeous soundtrack, you're never that long from having to play through its dull combat or deal with its terrible character progression. For every novel cross cut the story does, that's another moment you need to manage moving all your magic and GFs around. Because there is a one to many relationship between party members and GFs and GFs only level when equipped, you should load up three characters in particular and just trade their full inventory each time. (Something this FF- credit where its due- finally added the functionality for) But then you find out that was just a story sequence and no combat was needed and you go back to another party so back to the menus again. Or worse you get sucked into an unexpected flashback sequence in which the game has mapped characters without inventory onto the active characters and now you have nothing on two party members. (No, the game does not explicitly tell you for the first few sequences which modern day character's moveset will be the flashback characters for some reason.) Oh, and if you've seen that running criticism for some prior FFs in my reviews of party members beginning to feel interchangeable/more of a reflection of equipment than anything unique? Yeah, obviously that has reached its zenith here. I just had so many other design problems to break down I forgot to even bring it up!
See what's happening? I was having a nice conversation about the actual fun parts of the game but then the ramifications of its terrible systems came careening through because even the narrative itself and how its structured gets impacted by them! Heck, for further example, this game has what is probably the single coolest final dungeon in the series but even it gets crushed by the systems. (It's a breath of the wild-esque approach where you can immediately fight the final boss or go around a atmospheric castle with great music hunting specific bosses to "unlock" your character commands which have all been disabled except for attack..... see the problem? All you need in this game is attack! Why couldn't it have been in any other FF? ) I say all this to demonstrate/preempt the inevitable question aimed at my conclusion- how could I dislike this game so much if there are multiple elements I not only enjoyed but found series best worthy? Well, this is the answer. There's just no escaping FF8's poor design for any lengthy amount of time.
So, in summary, I refer back to my opening line. Let time be compressed and the beginning be the end.
There, I didn't bury the lede. It's sadly not a super controversial take and I had really hoped I would be able to be on the other end of it- to be able to see why its offbeat take on RPG mechanics is actually a cool twist or at worst an inoffensive if not truly revolutionary system ala my experience with FF2's progression. But it wasn't to be. So let's just get straight into it.
There is a lot going on for the uninitiated here- for all its actual flaws, FF8 cannot be accused of resting idly on new implementations of former game models or just making tweaks here and there. No, it upends the character progression and build process pretty much entirely. Characters still gain levels but the game scales all (or nearly all? a late optional boss or two may be exempt from this) enemies to character level. Characters also gain stats on leveling up but there is another system that takes the place of both primary skill learning path and equipment all in one that also informs those stats- junctioning- and the degree to which it informs those stats is so severe than innate stat growths and values may as well not matter outside the very start of the game when you have no magic. The junction system is built upon FF8's version of summons- guardian forces- so as a starting point, you can kind of model it similar to FF6's magicite in your head. Each summon has a set of skills, both passive traits and active commands that can be issued, that characters "junctioned" to that GF can learn over time. These skills are not learned through xp but through ap- ability points- which are also received from battles but not in a 1:1 scaling manner. (There are monsters that grant loads of ap but little to no xp and vice versa) Among those skills are junction skills themselves- expressed as Mag-J, HP-J, Str-J, etc. Each of those allows you to set a "magic" in a characters inventory to the associated stat. Depending on the magic chosen, the stat will gain somewhere between a small and a massive amount of value for that character. (The associations are intended to be intuitive, so picking something like a healing spell ala curaga, for example, for HP will result in higher gain for it than an offensive spell)
Which brings me to magic itself. MP is out again for the first time in a while. Instead, spell usage is governed by actual inventory of those spells. Series staples like fira, esuna, and thunder are now obtained in consumable fashion and can be stacked up to 100 of a given spell in a given character's inventory. The amount of a spell you have also drastically influences how high a stat value it confers to any associated junctioned stats. (and yes to be clear, they confer stats directly- not stat growth values! if you have a very powerful spell early game you can get ALL of its stat contribution as soon as you can obtain 100 of it) To obtain these... disposable? magics you must "draw" them. (With a couple notable exceptions I'll mention later) This can either be done in limited fashion from draw points in the world itself, usually one time usage or one time per location visit usage, or from monsters. Drawing is an active command and both uses a characters turn and a spot on their commands list. (This actually matters in this FF game specifically for reasons I'll get to) Each spot and monster has its specific associated magics, so theres no randomness to what you will see in that regard. Also, crucially, there is no limit on the amount of magic that can be drawn from a single enemy except what you can hold in your inventory; if a boss has a new powerful spell you haven't seen yet, you can sit there and load up your entire party on 100 copies of it for each of them.
That was a lot of mechanics breakdown. Usually I try to avoid this kind of regurgitation in reviews so I do apologize for that, but it's such a different set of systems and I feel its so crucial to understand how they work in order to see why they fall apart- either individually or as is so often the case with this game, through their interactions/incentives produced with each other- that I really did want to lay it out in as non judgmental a manner as possible initially for those unfamiliar.
So let's start breaking down the issues and interactions here, beginning with something that actually looked very appealing to me at the start- level scaling. I've been obeying a strict no grind rule for my entire FF series playthrough so when I saw that this was a feature, I thought, great, game will do the work here for me. Unfortunately, the way it plays out in practice is significantly worse. For one, you are encouraged to draw all of any new magic from a monster the first time you see it rather than across multiple battles which might be more stomachable because.... 1) there is no limit to how much magic can be drawn per fight, 2) fighting more enemies means getting more xp which means getting weaker relative to enemies since your strength is derived mostly from magic junctions and not stat growths, 3) getting a maxed stack of magic immediately means stronger junctions and a more immediate power spike, and 4) the speed at which you draw doesn't meaningfully go up between encounters with the same mob for the same magic- if you factor in having to load in encounters it actually takes LONGER to draw the magic across fights than it would to just do it in one. So in any given first encounter with a spell, you pick off any monsters besides the one you want magic from, ideally afflict with some status affect to render it mostly harmless, then just turn on 3x speed to sit through your entire party spending 10+ turns each drawing all of the magic. And if the player does end up doing this because it is so heavily encouraged by the confluence of systems here, the next domino to fall for them will be all the random battles with enemies that possess magic you already have. You guessed it; with no new magic to draw and xp actively harmful, the player should just escape each time to reduce the amount of xp they take in. This dynamic results in a good chunk of your battles being incredibly drawn out (get it?!??!) magic harvesting affairs and the rest just being the sight of the party turning tail immediately. Not a great dynamic. Even with the normal flow of encounters ruined, the game doesn't even get to claim not encouraging grinding as a positive tradeoff! You can argue the repetitive drawing in a single battle is spiritually grinding as well but let's say I'm willing to be forgiving since the actions performed are no different than distributing them across a wealth of battles in efficacy and grinding usually entails repeating content below your level over and over inefficiently to power up above content before reaching it. Even then, the aforementioned ap centric monsters exist to allow players to specifically camp a spot and power up their capabilities without risking much level growth. It's just a mess and all totaled, not at all what I'd hoped for when I heard "level scaling".
Of course, as we get into the results of all that functioning, one might question why even bother trying to grind ap for a power spike when the game will naturally guide you to being broken incredibly early itself. The direct tying of magic strength and inventory size to immediate stat value means that as soon you uncover a handful of early game accessible spells, your characters HP and attack values will skyrocket to what would be lategame levels in prior FFs. One doesn't even need to tread too far off the beaten path for this- the curious player will notice unlockable abilities to refine magic from items early and quickly discover that early game accessible items can yield absolutely busted magic well before its more logical place in the game. Heaven forbid they also notice the ability that lets you refine from cards for the game's minigame triple triad as items produced from cards can grant even stronger magic when refined within the first disc even.
To make all of this even more worse, the very nature of being overpowered in FF8 is monotonous and incredibly dull compared to what one might call overpowered strats in some prior FFs. The series certainly has a history of letting you thwart the occasional tough boss with a well placed status effect or flavor appropriate phoenix down usage, but those were usually distributed amongst more "traditional" challenges and at least required attacking from amusing, different angles specific to the enemy at hand. In FF8, the strongest strat to do for the vast majority of the game is just straight up attacking, (and frequently one shotting foes with it) nothing else required. This comes from a number of factors again blending together in a disgusting mix: the previously discussed abnormally high STR stat you can reach early through the junction system, the fact that the number of commands a character can have accessible in a fight is limited for the first time in series history and two slots are going to always be attack and draw almost by requirement so magic will frequently not even be accessible in your party lineup, magic itself is both consumed AND the source of your stat strength so using it over attacks means needing to replenish/slowly losing stats, magic itself is undertuned- perhaps as a misguided way to alleviate the players worries about using up their own stats by making it unappealing to begin with?- save some non numbers dependent utility spells in the lategame, and, finally, in the spots where you might consider exploiting an elemental weakness you can always just junction that element attack to your party members instead to convert their attacks to the element of weakness rather than having to actively expend any resources! Such an approach even leaves you more resilient to the standard status effects- squall has inherent maximum accuracy from the get go and cant miss when blinded, berserk buffs your damage and takes care of your atb on time inputs for you, and silence disables everything that isn't basic attack, so the standard FF ailments end up somehow encouraging you to take what is already overwhelmingly the best option. There is, again, an overwhelming incentive to do the most boring thing possible (ok, short of watching characters draw magic for 20 turns might be worse or flee every fight but dont worry you'll still get to do those!) produced by what seems to be the uninvestigated interaction of all these systems? It's truly baffling.
As an aside, I suppose curative magics still retain some functionality though, in that you can obviously heal up party members between fights with them from the menu. But then.... if you're willing to use up your disposable curative magics like this, what is the difference between them and potions and such? Why are items even in this game? The nature of its magic system basically renders them redundant!
If regular attacks boosted by the incredibly broken junction system aren't powerful enough for you, you can use the game's also almost inherently exploitative limit break system instead I suppose. Dropping 7's logical bar building system for employing them, 8 instead ties their usage to low health and a number of "crisis level" factors. It seems narratively/emotionally correct initially but once the player realizes there's zero cooldown on repeating them or accessing them from the point a character drops to low health, the flavor gets fuzzy. Leave your child soldiers in critical condition all the time so they can chain off what are framed as last ditch efforts of great strength just as easily as they can repeat regular attacks. Instead of wanting to heal up low characters, you instead want to beat them down to as little health as possible and leave them there. Granted, I honestly never really used this much as the regular attack strategy was broken enough as is, but just in glancing at ways to play the game without the junction system at all since out of curiosity, I see that people have taken yet another one of 8's poorly designed changes to its logical place and found a 57th way to snap the game in half.
If we're to really look for it to give FF8 the benefit of the doubt, the most reasonable plan of attack that doesn't involve breaking the game apart by simply.... doing what its systems teach you to do.... are the summons themselves, but even they are also not without flaws. Indeed, for the player who doesn't take the time to try and understand the ins and outs of the junction system, mashing the summon button is an understandable impulse. Unfortunately, the game both retains the lengthy cinematic summon animations of ff7 but crucially drops its per battle limitations, so instead of seeing a fun treat every once in a while, or animations tailored to the new usage behavior for GFs, the player will instead have to watch lengthy animations repeated over and over per battle. Once they arrive at lategame, a couple of specific boss/area designs will render their approach invalid almost entirely- something I'm normally sympathetic to in design (asking players to learn the game to beat the game) but here I've come to hate the junction system so much my sympathies are sadly reversed, and I instead pity the player who arrives at these moments having only employed GFs throughout.
I can't even say the junction system is a cool idea in search of a better implementation- there's more to discard here than there is to salvage. My initial complete impression of it, which I hoped would prove wrong in time, was that it was basically as though the designers wrote out the traditional FF character progression and combat design in a paragraph, then took out all the nouns out to render the paragraph one big mad lib, and then finally replaced all those empty spots with the same nouns distributed randomly. And that was probably the most positive take I ever had with it throughout the playthrough. There's simply no reason to go back to it. Unlike FF2's system- a similarly lambasted different progression system which can be played in a straightforward way akin to selecting a starting class and enjoyed despite its potential for breaking the game if you go off the natural path of what the game tells you to do- there's no way to actually engage with any part of its system and enjoy it.
But moving past that mountain of frustration and hate, there are actually parts of this game that I like believe it or not. Part of me hates that I'm going to cram them into much smaller notes given that they are the parts that deserve to be appreciated, but I cannot overstate just how much the systems detailed above completely wrecked what good will I did have towards the rest of the game, so the ratio in writing is warranted.
The music here is the series high point thus far. I've traditionally avoided commenting on this in prior reviews as I lack any knowledge on how to dissect music theory but for what it's worth, the sheer quantity of tracks that hit for me here outpaced the rest of the games quickly. Even more impressive, it does so through a clear change in approach- this one actually good- towards developing a coherent set of themes and moods which are built upon throughout. While I've enjoyed a lot of the singular character themes from prior FFs, dropping the obligatory new one for each character and instead doubling down on cross character/narrative themes or themes for the principle two cast members and their variations resonates strongly throughout the playthrough. And lest one think that this change up plus the games more brooding by turns romantic mood might result in a critical dearth of "bops", Man with a Machine Gun and Force Your Way would like to have stern words with you. Maybe most impressively, while this is the most coherent soundtrack to date, it also manages to get further "out there" with its sound at times than any other FF without breaking that coherency. Blue Fields is easily the most straight up bizarre overworld theme thus far, for example, but feels very home in the absolutely bizarre maelstrom of feelings the games child soldiers/adolescence/identity/timey wimey nonsense angles all create. (The time travel/compression angle in particular of those allows a lot of profitable stretching here as the suitably named... "Compression of Time" demonstrates)
This more coherent and high quality aural backdrop also helps to elevate the game's narrative, something I'm more torn on than its music but in general can appreciate for what it's attempting even when it fails at least- unlike its combat/progression. FF8 is the story of a group of child soldiers attempting to thwart a sorceress in the future's schemes of "compressing time". It is also, purportedly, a romance. (Although having finished the game and now having played through around disc 3 of FF9, I'd actually say 9 is more of a romance than 8 for whatever that's worth...) This is a very strange combination of things but it's uplifted by said soundtrack and also series best to date by a mile visuals, both of which are capable of accomodating the variety of seemingly clashing tones measure for measure. In order to tackle its angsty protagonists lack of external expressiveness, the game presents internal thoughts to the player for.... what I think is the first time? At least in this substantial a fashion. (Cloud may have had some moments like this prior but I don't recall the whole of FF7 being colored by them) It's a clunky tool, to be sure, but it does help expand the series' character development capabilities. Also an impressive mostly new tool for the series expressiveness', cross cutting is employed heavily here. Both across time in larger movements as the cast tracks the exploits of another band of heroes from a time past and in tighter, tense action sequences and dramatic events. While I would't necessarily call this impressive from a modern standpoint or in comparison to what other media had been able to accomplish, it's definitely noticeable coming off of the first 7 and another welcome step forward.
The material being presented, once past the improved presentation itself, is a bit more of a mixed bag. A proto-kingdom hearts opening montage rumination on thoughts of self and vague visions of a future/past unfulfilled set the tone appropriately enough for what is eventually to come, but the game spends long periods of time between these more surreal visions and I'm not sure what it ultimately has to offer for them is all that compelling even if I like the idea of departing from the more straightforward narratives of the past for more internal focused stories less concerned with the literal events happening on screen.
At the risk of picking nits, a number of world building quandaries perplex/undermine the literal narrative on screen throughout. Why does this world nearly exclusively use child soldiers when adults exist with presumably all the advantages one would expect, let alone the moral ramifications? What nation would ever consider military academies that conduct live military operations within their borders "neutral" just because they're a school first and not an nationally aligned army? Why does the single most useless Cid in the history of the franchise see fit to delegate the running of said private military company to a kid when there are other presumably more veteran graduates available even if he and all the other adults feel like bailing out? Even if one accepts that these are necessary sacrifices to the gods of marketing games to kids/teenagers, one doesn't get the sense they ever even attempted to build a convincing world around those starting points.
Actual big spoilers now, those were only just getting started- a lategame twist paints your entire party as a group of childhood friends that somehow all nearly forgot this AND all somehow got back together again how many years from how many different places on the planet to be the single most important group of people doing anything currently. It would be the most insultingly contrived bit of story in the entire franchise were it not for the fact that the ramifications of this are pretty much discarded immediately, which is both a relief from a story construction perspective and also another source of bewilderment as to why they'd even make this decision in the first place. Perhaps most confusing of all, though, is the very conclusion itself in which the group decides that, in order to stop the sorceress from fulfilling her goal of time compression (a concept that hasn't been explained in neither implication for what it actually means nor why its appealing at all to the sorceress...) because it will apparently render everyone dead but the sorceress and no one wants that obviously, they need to.... let the sorceress go through with time compression????? so they can then kill her while being somehow not dead????? But then the time compression has also already happened so what does it matter if you kill her or not now?????
It's a good thing the story is mostly carried by its tone, ability to convey emotional dislocation symbolically, and actual storytelling techniques and not the lore itself because had I actually cared about it at that point, I have to imagine that would have sunk it. Instead, I just laughed as I willingly followed the ride through to its conclusion. It may seem like I'm really down on it, but all in all, I did enjoy that ride on the whole. (the Laguna cast game would have been so much better, though- more appealing cast, none of this child soldier/weird neutral pmc nonsense, no time compression, better romance for loves both found and lost)
But it is worth pointing out that even throughout experiencing this story, traveling the still beautiful lands and cities of FF8's world, and listening to its gorgeous soundtrack, you're never that long from having to play through its dull combat or deal with its terrible character progression. For every novel cross cut the story does, that's another moment you need to manage moving all your magic and GFs around. Because there is a one to many relationship between party members and GFs and GFs only level when equipped, you should load up three characters in particular and just trade their full inventory each time. (Something this FF- credit where its due- finally added the functionality for) But then you find out that was just a story sequence and no combat was needed and you go back to another party so back to the menus again. Or worse you get sucked into an unexpected flashback sequence in which the game has mapped characters without inventory onto the active characters and now you have nothing on two party members. (No, the game does not explicitly tell you for the first few sequences which modern day character's moveset will be the flashback characters for some reason.) Oh, and if you've seen that running criticism for some prior FFs in my reviews of party members beginning to feel interchangeable/more of a reflection of equipment than anything unique? Yeah, obviously that has reached its zenith here. I just had so many other design problems to break down I forgot to even bring it up!
See what's happening? I was having a nice conversation about the actual fun parts of the game but then the ramifications of its terrible systems came careening through because even the narrative itself and how its structured gets impacted by them! Heck, for further example, this game has what is probably the single coolest final dungeon in the series but even it gets crushed by the systems. (It's a breath of the wild-esque approach where you can immediately fight the final boss or go around a atmospheric castle with great music hunting specific bosses to "unlock" your character commands which have all been disabled except for attack..... see the problem? All you need in this game is attack! Why couldn't it have been in any other FF? ) I say all this to demonstrate/preempt the inevitable question aimed at my conclusion- how could I dislike this game so much if there are multiple elements I not only enjoyed but found series best worthy? Well, this is the answer. There's just no escaping FF8's poor design for any lengthy amount of time.
So, in summary, I refer back to my opening line. Let time be compressed and the beginning be the end.
Final Fantasy VII
2012
A clear vision of the crossroads the franchise sat at, Final Fantasy 7 is at once immediately recognizable as Final Fantasy 6's successor and as a harbinger of the design and installments that were to come. While- similar to FFIV's jump- a lot of wow factor that must have been present at release is gone, (or even turned against the game in the case of its 3D models....) this is still a notable shift forward in some specific ways for the franchise.
Yes yes- the shift to 3D and prerendered backgrounds and CG cutscenes are the most obvious "progressions" from the outside. (Though I'd have a hard time saying the game looks better than its snes predecessors in the modern age) But those are fairly superficial as the level design is still firmly grounded in the 2D layouts and traversal of prior FFs. In fact, even its equivalent simpler layouts are more confusing to read than prior installments' thanks to the busier scenes depicted and fixed, often awkward camera angles forced by the prerendered backgrounds. It's a clumsy if necessary first step into this world and I'm willing to cut it a little slack as the first mover in the franchise, but it's not the upgrade that sets 7 apart now.
That step forward comes instead in objective/mission/scenario design. An early event in Wall Market sees Cloud and crew chatting up the locals in specific sequence to work out the solution to a problem they're facing. You'll run an errand for one person, compete in a minigame to obtain other needed items, and persuade another with an.... out of the box solution to let you where you need to go. As the game goes on, the player encounters more and more one off minigames, at a pace that would impress even similarly inventive more modern titles like Super Mario Galaxy.
Unfortunately, where a game like SMG holds a certain level of consistent quality between it's one off gimmicks, FF7 does not. You'll frequently be presented with an entirely new control scheme that may or may not hold up to any genre equivalent standalone titles, only further complicated by the fact you'll need to employ it in its entirety immediately with no ramp up time. Some are just plain boring. Others hold a spark of a cool idea but don't quite nail enough of the implementation to work for me. (A RTS lite scenario comes to mind here) Still others do a passable enough job at what they're attempting that the brief sojourn into a bike chase or submarine fight or whatever is a welcome curveball in the game's pacing. And other variations in the mission design come not from a minigame but in twisting the established franchise gameplay of traversing a map and battling enemies into new form. (I particularly liked a snowy expedition that tasked the player with using a crude map to navigate an expansive, open environment) All told, the changes here are numerous and, while again clearly clumsy at times, a firm leap into the kinds of variety the franchise would begin to refine for its dungeons and quests to come.
If its lavish production values, step into the world of 3d gaming, and more diverse scenario demonstrate its part in the evolution of the franchise towards the future we know today, where then does FF7 show its connection to the past- and FF6 in particular- as I alluded to at the start? Well, for one, the world and its societies continue to hone the more specific direction of 6's.... magicpunk? aesthetic away from the more generic fantasy adventures of the preceding adventures. Midgar, in particular, is the single most well realized setting to date in the entire franchise, with fairly clearly dileneated factions and conflicts that have put those factions where they're at. A cyberpunk dystopia drawing clear influence from the surge of material in that space in the 80s and 90s. Even if derivative of them in its own way, the grounded and textured nature of it is refreshing in a similar way to Narche from 6, only expanded much further.
Next, the materia system 7 utilizes for its character progression and building most closely follows its immediate predecessor over the job centric 3/5 (and i guess technically 1) or 2's experiment. Characters don't take on roles; they simply equip the item- materia in this case over magicite- that bestows capabilities instead. At first, I was hopeful this new system would prove to be an improvement to magicite. And it is, in some ways. Most notably, its placement in the context of equipment gives gear new dimensions through which tradeoffs can be presented- do you want more stats or materia, more materia or specifically more linked slots that allow for materia to modify other materia, (imbueing attacks with an element, enabling a spell to target all targets instead of one, etc) or will you give up those powerful links and stats for high growth rate equipment that enables mastery of the attached materia faster? As an aside, I saw some complaints about the simplification of equipment in 7 online after my playthrough and I just cannot agree with it on the whole- yes, each character is down to 3 equipment slots vs 6's 6 or the rest of the series' 5, but this addition of materia to the equipment alone just presents far more considerations at the equipment screen than any title prior has had for me.
It's not all positive, though, sadly. Unlike magicite, materia mastered abilities are bound to the materia itself rather than the individual using it. This, combined with the lack of even the character specific commands from 6, makes 7's party of heroes the absolute most interchangeable members yet. Limit breaks, which are rare considerations for normal gameplay and not teambuilding foundations of character builds, are pretty much the sole distinguishing trait here. Furthermore, managing this system in light of its materia bound abilities over character bound ones is a total pain as the story forces certain party members in and out of use. If you want to swap a characters loadout to another entirely, you'll need to individually unequip every piece of materia on their gear then manually add them back one by one to the new party member. (Magicite, by contrast, left all its learned skills on the character even when moved and if you did want to change it around to grant one character in particular usage of its associated summon, only one item had to be moved instead of potentially 10+) Some quality of life could have alleviated the managing the latter problem for 7's large party, but the former seems inherent to the system as is to me sadly.
The last bit of vital shared DNA between 6 and 7 I'd like to call out is that large party itself. While not quite as gigantic as 6's expansive cast, 7 continues in its footsteps with, at its peak, 9 disparate voices joining your ragtag team of ecoterrorists turned adventurers. The character centric episodes of storytelling remain as well, though this time integrated into the forced flow of the narrative instead of scattered about a technically optional series of quests like in 6's World of Ruin. It's not as impressive as the boldness of world of ruin's departure from series norms up till that point, but it does probably fit together a bit better at least? A less fortunate trait also inherited from 6 is the tendency to have those same cast members grow silent and sit on the sidelines for extended periods when their story isn't the one currently in the spotlight. (Two optional characters in particular get the worst of this, having very little in the way of commentary to offer on the main quest proper- especially baffling given Vincents proximity to the incredibly important events and actors that caused the narrative in the first place)
Speaking of the main story, let's actually talk about it. Final Fantasy 7 starts off with what is narratively and even probably scenario/mission design wise the absolute strongest stretch of game in the series to date in its Midgar portion. The player is dropped straight into the action, complete with a killer soundtrack- the iconic Bombing Mission, and they're handed the reins of.... ecoterrorists?! It's a bold move to make the protagonist faction the ones carrying out dramatic acts of violence, potentially ending innocent life while they're at it, for a change and FF7 both does that and doesn't shy away from debating the costs of their actions as well as the potential costs of inaction. For the first time, it really feels as though the franchise is grappling with a real thematic core and I was totally into it. Even once past the bombing mission itself, Cloud and crew's adventures continue in fascinating fashion through the city with a horrific twist on the way before leading to the obvious climactic confrontation at the Shinra headquarters. The whole section stays varied in what the player is tasked with, stays active on its narrative, and constantly incorporates the questions of its thematic content into the flow; it's legitimately a real achievement for the franchise thus far.
But then something happens. A new character arrives- Sephiroth, one of the franchise's, or hell even gaming in general, most iconic villains- and what that does to the story honestly.... kind of sinks it? That's not to say that Sephiroth is himself a bad character- I don't feel especially strongly about him one way or the other to be honest- but moreso that what he does to the story is to take this grounded (at least for FF) struggle with actual themes and completely derail it into a far more generic villain chasing quest across the world. It's not immediate, thankfully, (A desert storyline examining the lives of those left behind after corporate exploitation shows promise in particular and moments like the Fort Condor minigame can't escape the better worldbuilding established at the start) but slowly and surely, we get there. And our characters are no longer debating the lengths they should be willing to go to deal with their planet's slow murder but instead simply facing an evil that must be stopped. Like some other modern allegories that put the planets existential threat beyond humanity's flaws or even reach, he, in a way, absolves the humans of Shinra and the world of their destruction of it- what does the human destruction of the planet matter if a force completely outside humanitys control is going to headshot the planet separately anyhow? Moreover, this very obvious existential threat and its immediate impact observable by everyone renders the continued conflict between the protagonists and the Shinra corporation nonsensical. Both wish to stop Sephiroth yet can't help but attack each other at nearly every chance they get. (The huge materia quest in particular is baffling here) Throwaway lines occasionally arrive as justification but everything feels thin and contrived, a far cry from what came before.
To be clear, I do not think FF7's story is markedly worse than the games that came before. These have still been, after all, lighthearted adventure stories with little weight to them for the most part. The disappointment here comes strictly from the fact that 7 starts so strong and with such potential before reversing course.
All in all, it's fairly easy to see what the fanbase latched onto here, even including that story. It really does make far bolder steps forward for the franchise than any other title before it save maybe 4? But 7 is also maybe the... messiest FF thus far as well. I'm willing to overlook a lot of it and give it credit for putting in the necessary work so that future installments may see the benefit. If you're interested in seeing how the franchise moved from its more simple dungeons and battles origins to the more explicitly narrative driven and varied adventures of the PS1, PS2 and onwards, this is the perfect title to demonstrate that transition. From its vantage point, one can see all that came before and all that will come after in its design. I think that's pretty cool.
Yes yes- the shift to 3D and prerendered backgrounds and CG cutscenes are the most obvious "progressions" from the outside. (Though I'd have a hard time saying the game looks better than its snes predecessors in the modern age) But those are fairly superficial as the level design is still firmly grounded in the 2D layouts and traversal of prior FFs. In fact, even its equivalent simpler layouts are more confusing to read than prior installments' thanks to the busier scenes depicted and fixed, often awkward camera angles forced by the prerendered backgrounds. It's a clumsy if necessary first step into this world and I'm willing to cut it a little slack as the first mover in the franchise, but it's not the upgrade that sets 7 apart now.
That step forward comes instead in objective/mission/scenario design. An early event in Wall Market sees Cloud and crew chatting up the locals in specific sequence to work out the solution to a problem they're facing. You'll run an errand for one person, compete in a minigame to obtain other needed items, and persuade another with an.... out of the box solution to let you where you need to go. As the game goes on, the player encounters more and more one off minigames, at a pace that would impress even similarly inventive more modern titles like Super Mario Galaxy.
Unfortunately, where a game like SMG holds a certain level of consistent quality between it's one off gimmicks, FF7 does not. You'll frequently be presented with an entirely new control scheme that may or may not hold up to any genre equivalent standalone titles, only further complicated by the fact you'll need to employ it in its entirety immediately with no ramp up time. Some are just plain boring. Others hold a spark of a cool idea but don't quite nail enough of the implementation to work for me. (A RTS lite scenario comes to mind here) Still others do a passable enough job at what they're attempting that the brief sojourn into a bike chase or submarine fight or whatever is a welcome curveball in the game's pacing. And other variations in the mission design come not from a minigame but in twisting the established franchise gameplay of traversing a map and battling enemies into new form. (I particularly liked a snowy expedition that tasked the player with using a crude map to navigate an expansive, open environment) All told, the changes here are numerous and, while again clearly clumsy at times, a firm leap into the kinds of variety the franchise would begin to refine for its dungeons and quests to come.
If its lavish production values, step into the world of 3d gaming, and more diverse scenario demonstrate its part in the evolution of the franchise towards the future we know today, where then does FF7 show its connection to the past- and FF6 in particular- as I alluded to at the start? Well, for one, the world and its societies continue to hone the more specific direction of 6's.... magicpunk? aesthetic away from the more generic fantasy adventures of the preceding adventures. Midgar, in particular, is the single most well realized setting to date in the entire franchise, with fairly clearly dileneated factions and conflicts that have put those factions where they're at. A cyberpunk dystopia drawing clear influence from the surge of material in that space in the 80s and 90s. Even if derivative of them in its own way, the grounded and textured nature of it is refreshing in a similar way to Narche from 6, only expanded much further.
Next, the materia system 7 utilizes for its character progression and building most closely follows its immediate predecessor over the job centric 3/5 (and i guess technically 1) or 2's experiment. Characters don't take on roles; they simply equip the item- materia in this case over magicite- that bestows capabilities instead. At first, I was hopeful this new system would prove to be an improvement to magicite. And it is, in some ways. Most notably, its placement in the context of equipment gives gear new dimensions through which tradeoffs can be presented- do you want more stats or materia, more materia or specifically more linked slots that allow for materia to modify other materia, (imbueing attacks with an element, enabling a spell to target all targets instead of one, etc) or will you give up those powerful links and stats for high growth rate equipment that enables mastery of the attached materia faster? As an aside, I saw some complaints about the simplification of equipment in 7 online after my playthrough and I just cannot agree with it on the whole- yes, each character is down to 3 equipment slots vs 6's 6 or the rest of the series' 5, but this addition of materia to the equipment alone just presents far more considerations at the equipment screen than any title prior has had for me.
It's not all positive, though, sadly. Unlike magicite, materia mastered abilities are bound to the materia itself rather than the individual using it. This, combined with the lack of even the character specific commands from 6, makes 7's party of heroes the absolute most interchangeable members yet. Limit breaks, which are rare considerations for normal gameplay and not teambuilding foundations of character builds, are pretty much the sole distinguishing trait here. Furthermore, managing this system in light of its materia bound abilities over character bound ones is a total pain as the story forces certain party members in and out of use. If you want to swap a characters loadout to another entirely, you'll need to individually unequip every piece of materia on their gear then manually add them back one by one to the new party member. (Magicite, by contrast, left all its learned skills on the character even when moved and if you did want to change it around to grant one character in particular usage of its associated summon, only one item had to be moved instead of potentially 10+) Some quality of life could have alleviated the managing the latter problem for 7's large party, but the former seems inherent to the system as is to me sadly.
The last bit of vital shared DNA between 6 and 7 I'd like to call out is that large party itself. While not quite as gigantic as 6's expansive cast, 7 continues in its footsteps with, at its peak, 9 disparate voices joining your ragtag team of ecoterrorists turned adventurers. The character centric episodes of storytelling remain as well, though this time integrated into the forced flow of the narrative instead of scattered about a technically optional series of quests like in 6's World of Ruin. It's not as impressive as the boldness of world of ruin's departure from series norms up till that point, but it does probably fit together a bit better at least? A less fortunate trait also inherited from 6 is the tendency to have those same cast members grow silent and sit on the sidelines for extended periods when their story isn't the one currently in the spotlight. (Two optional characters in particular get the worst of this, having very little in the way of commentary to offer on the main quest proper- especially baffling given Vincents proximity to the incredibly important events and actors that caused the narrative in the first place)
Speaking of the main story, let's actually talk about it. Final Fantasy 7 starts off with what is narratively and even probably scenario/mission design wise the absolute strongest stretch of game in the series to date in its Midgar portion. The player is dropped straight into the action, complete with a killer soundtrack- the iconic Bombing Mission, and they're handed the reins of.... ecoterrorists?! It's a bold move to make the protagonist faction the ones carrying out dramatic acts of violence, potentially ending innocent life while they're at it, for a change and FF7 both does that and doesn't shy away from debating the costs of their actions as well as the potential costs of inaction. For the first time, it really feels as though the franchise is grappling with a real thematic core and I was totally into it. Even once past the bombing mission itself, Cloud and crew's adventures continue in fascinating fashion through the city with a horrific twist on the way before leading to the obvious climactic confrontation at the Shinra headquarters. The whole section stays varied in what the player is tasked with, stays active on its narrative, and constantly incorporates the questions of its thematic content into the flow; it's legitimately a real achievement for the franchise thus far.
But then something happens. A new character arrives- Sephiroth, one of the franchise's, or hell even gaming in general, most iconic villains- and what that does to the story honestly.... kind of sinks it? That's not to say that Sephiroth is himself a bad character- I don't feel especially strongly about him one way or the other to be honest- but moreso that what he does to the story is to take this grounded (at least for FF) struggle with actual themes and completely derail it into a far more generic villain chasing quest across the world. It's not immediate, thankfully, (A desert storyline examining the lives of those left behind after corporate exploitation shows promise in particular and moments like the Fort Condor minigame can't escape the better worldbuilding established at the start) but slowly and surely, we get there. And our characters are no longer debating the lengths they should be willing to go to deal with their planet's slow murder but instead simply facing an evil that must be stopped. Like some other modern allegories that put the planets existential threat beyond humanity's flaws or even reach, he, in a way, absolves the humans of Shinra and the world of their destruction of it- what does the human destruction of the planet matter if a force completely outside humanitys control is going to headshot the planet separately anyhow? Moreover, this very obvious existential threat and its immediate impact observable by everyone renders the continued conflict between the protagonists and the Shinra corporation nonsensical. Both wish to stop Sephiroth yet can't help but attack each other at nearly every chance they get. (The huge materia quest in particular is baffling here) Throwaway lines occasionally arrive as justification but everything feels thin and contrived, a far cry from what came before.
To be clear, I do not think FF7's story is markedly worse than the games that came before. These have still been, after all, lighthearted adventure stories with little weight to them for the most part. The disappointment here comes strictly from the fact that 7 starts so strong and with such potential before reversing course.
All in all, it's fairly easy to see what the fanbase latched onto here, even including that story. It really does make far bolder steps forward for the franchise than any other title before it save maybe 4? But 7 is also maybe the... messiest FF thus far as well. I'm willing to overlook a lot of it and give it credit for putting in the necessary work so that future installments may see the benefit. If you're interested in seeing how the franchise moved from its more simple dungeons and battles origins to the more explicitly narrative driven and varied adventures of the PS1, PS2 and onwards, this is the perfect title to demonstrate that transition. From its vantage point, one can see all that came before and all that will come after in its design. I think that's pretty cool.
Final Fantasy IV
2021
The first SNES FF has a bit of a muted transition in some departments in the pixel remaster form thanks to squeenix sprucing up the prior entries a bit visually/a consistent level of treatment for the OST reworks. (Not a complaint of course even if I'm missing out on the excitment original players would have had) In other regards, though, the coat of polish given to the earlier entries still can't hide how signficant a step up this was- namely the battle system and story or story presentation, more to the point.
4 brings the arrival of one of the franchise's biggest contributions in the atb system. The most immediate impact of this, to me in this specific context coming off ffs 1 - 3, was the reworking of agility and turn order into something far more grokkable/pleasant to plan around. Now, when you tell a party member to do something, you can expect it to happen immediately (or relatively, in the cast of casting) vs having to wonder whether x move will land before or after a teammates ability or attack. Similarly, heal timing can be relied upon more easily- with the added risk management of casts being delayed so item based healing has more appeal in a pinch. You can also delay allied turns a second to respond to crucial enemy actions as quickly as possible or setup combinations of actions with teammates. And on top of all that, it just adds a feeling of speed and energy to the fights outside all the tactical possibilities.
That's not to say it was all a pleasant changeup though. The need to respond quickly can be gamed weirdly by just going in menus. (Although this can be disabled apparently? Not sure what the intended experience is here) That said, the player might want to keep it on intended or not as the UI is not set up to accommodate rapid information processing and decision making well at all. Your commands appear in the bottom left corner of the screen but the party member whose turn it is/turn order itself/health are all displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, so you have to glance all the way over sometimes to even know who youre giving a command to. Furthermore, enemy actions show up at the very top of the screen so if you ARE trying to base your actions or time them around what theyre doing, you need to look at third completely separate point. The game actually maximizes the amount of screen you need to take in at once for.... relatively few things you really need to even look at, which is just bizarre. It's a small quibble to be sure, but just felt it worth noting.
The progressions in combat don't stop at the atb introduction fortunately. Moreso than any prior FF, this game devises new and different strategic considerations from boss to boss and enemy to enemy. (At least, for a good chunk of them) Leveraging curative magic to fight undead is given increased prominence early on when, as a dark knight, Cecil can barely hurt them. Enemies can counterattack now, both generically and even selectively towards magic attacks or debuffs or physical attacks etc. and some of these counters are absolutely brutal- clearly not something the player is just supposed to tank/heal through- enabling the enemy design to demand more precise solutions than just setting your party on auto attack. A group boss battle sees one boss reviving the others if players prioritize incorrectly, another boss goes invulnerable thanks to a wind shield to all but your dragoon who must open up the shield for your party to attack, yet another repels or worse absorbs all attacks while his cape is open asking the player instead to actively utilize the ability of the atb system to let party members pick their moments, dangerous electrical enemies can be "reprogrammed" (ie Confused) with lightning damage to turn the tables, the list goes on and on. You can uncharitably call these fights and their solutions gimmicks, but its a definite progression from the series to date to see so many new ideas tried out across the encounters and it keeps the combat more fresh well into its endgame than prior entries have.
Which is needed coming off III, since the complete lack of any progression system whatsoever has made the naturally growing player investment in seeing their various builds come to life as the game goes on completely absent here. Stepping back from FFIII's true first try at a job system, FFIV sees each playable character in the story locked to a job as dictated by their position in the story. There's little new here too, as most/all? of these identities are built on jobs you could have chosen in III. A couple characters get pivotal job changes at specific story beats but otherwise everyone keeps those jobs all the way through.
While disappointing from a character customization and planning standpoint, it does feed into one of the other massive jumps forward FFIV makes for the franchise- building its character work and narrative moments on top of game mechanics themselves rather than just isolating them to cutscenes. There was the odd forced losing battle in FFII (and maybe the others? can't recall) but now a whole host of scenarios play out in the battle screen itself. The protagonists dramatic job change from dark knight to paladin doesn't happen in a menu or automatically- happens in a battle against himself where the player must very literally stop attacking and start defending to win, mirroring the change in philosophy such a job transition would actually accompany. When heroic sacrifices are made later, characters attempt to actively employ the game mechanic solutions to the problem- phoenix downs and a status remover- in logical fashion tying the two together more tightly. A powerful life ending spell for its user is available earlier in the game but cannot be cast with the characters mana pool, making the strain of the moment they do use it and take their life understandable not just at a narrative level but at a mechanical one.
This.... ludonarrative expressiveness? is the true triumph of the game's story to me. Yeah, the story gets more weight and detail than prior entries and yes the heroic sacrifices are better figured out here than FFII, since FFIV doesn't have a progression system that actively punishes getting characters later in the game and its departures aren't as telegraphed as II's "cursed" position 4. (Just about anyone short of Cecil is fair game for leaving the party) But honestly that stuff doesn't strike me as anywhere near as impactful. (And it's worth noting its heroic sacrifices will work against themselves with how much the game is willing to undo them too- not the last time this franchise will make this mistake!) Spoilers for the next review, but I even prefer the writing, pacing and actual story of 5- a game never really lifted up for it- more than 4 baseline. I'm just giving props where they're due here for recognizing the potential of the medium itself in telling these moments.
It was a tight fight overall in the end for me, between this and III, but the progression this does make for the franchise is just so substantial that even finding it a bigger step back in some ways than any entry to date has stepped back is not enough to keep it from taking the top spot. (Well, again, tell the next entry at least....)
4 brings the arrival of one of the franchise's biggest contributions in the atb system. The most immediate impact of this, to me in this specific context coming off ffs 1 - 3, was the reworking of agility and turn order into something far more grokkable/pleasant to plan around. Now, when you tell a party member to do something, you can expect it to happen immediately (or relatively, in the cast of casting) vs having to wonder whether x move will land before or after a teammates ability or attack. Similarly, heal timing can be relied upon more easily- with the added risk management of casts being delayed so item based healing has more appeal in a pinch. You can also delay allied turns a second to respond to crucial enemy actions as quickly as possible or setup combinations of actions with teammates. And on top of all that, it just adds a feeling of speed and energy to the fights outside all the tactical possibilities.
That's not to say it was all a pleasant changeup though. The need to respond quickly can be gamed weirdly by just going in menus. (Although this can be disabled apparently? Not sure what the intended experience is here) That said, the player might want to keep it on intended or not as the UI is not set up to accommodate rapid information processing and decision making well at all. Your commands appear in the bottom left corner of the screen but the party member whose turn it is/turn order itself/health are all displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, so you have to glance all the way over sometimes to even know who youre giving a command to. Furthermore, enemy actions show up at the very top of the screen so if you ARE trying to base your actions or time them around what theyre doing, you need to look at third completely separate point. The game actually maximizes the amount of screen you need to take in at once for.... relatively few things you really need to even look at, which is just bizarre. It's a small quibble to be sure, but just felt it worth noting.
The progressions in combat don't stop at the atb introduction fortunately. Moreso than any prior FF, this game devises new and different strategic considerations from boss to boss and enemy to enemy. (At least, for a good chunk of them) Leveraging curative magic to fight undead is given increased prominence early on when, as a dark knight, Cecil can barely hurt them. Enemies can counterattack now, both generically and even selectively towards magic attacks or debuffs or physical attacks etc. and some of these counters are absolutely brutal- clearly not something the player is just supposed to tank/heal through- enabling the enemy design to demand more precise solutions than just setting your party on auto attack. A group boss battle sees one boss reviving the others if players prioritize incorrectly, another boss goes invulnerable thanks to a wind shield to all but your dragoon who must open up the shield for your party to attack, yet another repels or worse absorbs all attacks while his cape is open asking the player instead to actively utilize the ability of the atb system to let party members pick their moments, dangerous electrical enemies can be "reprogrammed" (ie Confused) with lightning damage to turn the tables, the list goes on and on. You can uncharitably call these fights and their solutions gimmicks, but its a definite progression from the series to date to see so many new ideas tried out across the encounters and it keeps the combat more fresh well into its endgame than prior entries have.
Which is needed coming off III, since the complete lack of any progression system whatsoever has made the naturally growing player investment in seeing their various builds come to life as the game goes on completely absent here. Stepping back from FFIII's true first try at a job system, FFIV sees each playable character in the story locked to a job as dictated by their position in the story. There's little new here too, as most/all? of these identities are built on jobs you could have chosen in III. A couple characters get pivotal job changes at specific story beats but otherwise everyone keeps those jobs all the way through.
While disappointing from a character customization and planning standpoint, it does feed into one of the other massive jumps forward FFIV makes for the franchise- building its character work and narrative moments on top of game mechanics themselves rather than just isolating them to cutscenes. There was the odd forced losing battle in FFII (and maybe the others? can't recall) but now a whole host of scenarios play out in the battle screen itself. The protagonists dramatic job change from dark knight to paladin doesn't happen in a menu or automatically- happens in a battle against himself where the player must very literally stop attacking and start defending to win, mirroring the change in philosophy such a job transition would actually accompany. When heroic sacrifices are made later, characters attempt to actively employ the game mechanic solutions to the problem- phoenix downs and a status remover- in logical fashion tying the two together more tightly. A powerful life ending spell for its user is available earlier in the game but cannot be cast with the characters mana pool, making the strain of the moment they do use it and take their life understandable not just at a narrative level but at a mechanical one.
This.... ludonarrative expressiveness? is the true triumph of the game's story to me. Yeah, the story gets more weight and detail than prior entries and yes the heroic sacrifices are better figured out here than FFII, since FFIV doesn't have a progression system that actively punishes getting characters later in the game and its departures aren't as telegraphed as II's "cursed" position 4. (Just about anyone short of Cecil is fair game for leaving the party) But honestly that stuff doesn't strike me as anywhere near as impactful. (And it's worth noting its heroic sacrifices will work against themselves with how much the game is willing to undo them too- not the last time this franchise will make this mistake!) Spoilers for the next review, but I even prefer the writing, pacing and actual story of 5- a game never really lifted up for it- more than 4 baseline. I'm just giving props where they're due here for recognizing the potential of the medium itself in telling these moments.
It was a tight fight overall in the end for me, between this and III, but the progression this does make for the franchise is just so substantial that even finding it a bigger step back in some ways than any entry to date has stepped back is not enough to keep it from taking the top spot. (Well, again, tell the next entry at least....)
Final Fantasy II
2021
As contrasted against Final Fantasy 1....
Battle system for 1 and 2 is pretty much the same but with party formation changed slightly. In FF1 you line up your squad in a 1 - 4 order and the further they are from position 1 the less attacks they get hit by. To the best of my knowledge, FF2 doesn't retain this, using its front line and backline system instead to let the player control "aggro". Players on the backline will take half damage from melee but also deal half damage with melee. Ranged and spells ignore this. I slightly prefer FF2's method as I think it allows just a tad more agency since you can theoretically go all frontline, all backline or whatever combination you like in between whereas youre always going to have that 1 2 3 4 priority in 1. It's a pretty negligible advantage though and in general I found them pretty similar.
FF2 largely retains FF1's dungeon design- simplistic multifloor gauntlets with little to nothing in the way of exploration/puzzle mechanics but plenty of dead ends to exhaust the partys resources, exacerbated by "trap" tiles with particularly difficult sets of enemies and high encounter rate rooms (though the pixel remasters seem to have dropped the latter?)- while changing up its overworld design a bit. FF1 strongly regulates the players progression across the map with you largely proceeding to cities in a linear affair dictated by the items/power ups youve obtained. FF2 allows you to stumble into higher difficulty enemies almost right off the bat and rather than encountering its cities in a 1 by 1 manner, youll be exposed to most of them very early and go back and forth. Positives and negatives here- namely the world feels much more connected and theres more of a sense of a military campaign affecting the state of things but also more backtracking as a result. The one change FF2 does make to FF1's dungeon design- adding dead end rooms you have to load into rather than just having paths ending in the same map- is also a negative one. particularly since theyve dropped the high encounter rate aspect of them basically rendering them entirely useless lol.
speaking of the war campaign, the biggest difference between the two besides the level up system is probably how much more priority the story gets? not in terms of cutscene time or whatever (although that is increased) as you might worry about today, but theres an actual story here rather than the basic template ff1 offered. You can see a lot of the plot points that would come to define the series first show up here whether its rebels vs an oppressive empire with darker supernatural forces behind the scenes, ambiguous dark knight/judge/armored dudes, party members coming and going, heroic sacrifices, and even the series love of star wars here.
i guess the level up system, the other big deviation here, is the biggest point of controversy for the title. i played the game (and specifically the pixel remaster version) entirely straightforward, never once turning my own abilities on my party members or repeatedly entering/cancelling commands to game the system and level up quicker, and never grinding. the game is definitely more of a challenge than 1 but given that i was able to clear it playing like that and didn't find it too much trouble, id say you dont need to resort to any of the things ive always heard had to be done, at least in this specific version. i also think the added difficulty is in general a good thing, as FF1 kind of drops into autopilot after Marsh Cave's poison heavy assault all the way until its final boss who jolts players awake by actually demanding something of them after the preceding 10 - 20 hours have not.
i even felt like i had something to think about with character customization in this one thanks to the system, whereas ff1's very early form job system is a pretty linear affair. i decided early one what weapons each of my teammates would specialize in and made sure to tailor their gear to getting those skill levels, unlike ff1 and plenty of other rpgs where id throw the highest stat sheet value equipment on any teammate capable of wearing it with no regard for if they preferred swinging an axe or sword for example. white magic and black magic were similarly planned out early although I will say i think spells having levels on top of the magic stats is probably worse than just having characters level black magic/white magic comprehensively? (Case in point being that i received the "ultimate magic in existence" Ultima and proceeded to use it non stop till the end of the game but still didnt have it high leveled enough by the final boss to have it compete with the other things that character could do) Another perk was the system pushing me out of the "just have characters auto attack until a difficult encounter" loop you tend to get into in these games. youd try and figure out instead how many casts you could fit in before the next rest/resupply and cast all the way through clearing a dungeon as casting is how you level your characters magic abilities so you can't just sit on spells till a boss then use them. Similarly, it also kind of addresses the "healing magic only gets used out of battle" dilemma where making use of your limited actions in battle means not leveraging healing magic if possible and instead deferring them to post battle where you have effectively "infinite" actions via menu heals by tying your progression of your Spirit/healing stat to the use of healing magic in battles.
The one problem I will say i have with it is that i think its a mismatch with the rotating party members approach the series is trying for the first time here. You can plan out your focus for each of your permanent members but he changing party member slot can't be planned in advance. I like both these ideas separately but together its a poor fit.
The other big complaint I have about the game is that its encounter rate is just way too high, especially compared to 1, and that can bog things down. It's somewhat alleviated, however, by getting access to warp/teleport early for quicker dungeon exits, river encounters getting dropped, and more intercity/fast travel options being made available through Cid's air taxi, the boat rides, and the chocobo forest
Lastly, its obviously pure preference absent any kind of argument i can make, but, when comparing the pixel remaster versions at least, I found the FF2 OST a big step up. Really loved its battle track, preferred the overworld and just in general thought it had the stronger suite of tracks
Pleasantly surprised to end up preferring this one ever so slightly overall
Battle system for 1 and 2 is pretty much the same but with party formation changed slightly. In FF1 you line up your squad in a 1 - 4 order and the further they are from position 1 the less attacks they get hit by. To the best of my knowledge, FF2 doesn't retain this, using its front line and backline system instead to let the player control "aggro". Players on the backline will take half damage from melee but also deal half damage with melee. Ranged and spells ignore this. I slightly prefer FF2's method as I think it allows just a tad more agency since you can theoretically go all frontline, all backline or whatever combination you like in between whereas youre always going to have that 1 2 3 4 priority in 1. It's a pretty negligible advantage though and in general I found them pretty similar.
FF2 largely retains FF1's dungeon design- simplistic multifloor gauntlets with little to nothing in the way of exploration/puzzle mechanics but plenty of dead ends to exhaust the partys resources, exacerbated by "trap" tiles with particularly difficult sets of enemies and high encounter rate rooms (though the pixel remasters seem to have dropped the latter?)- while changing up its overworld design a bit. FF1 strongly regulates the players progression across the map with you largely proceeding to cities in a linear affair dictated by the items/power ups youve obtained. FF2 allows you to stumble into higher difficulty enemies almost right off the bat and rather than encountering its cities in a 1 by 1 manner, youll be exposed to most of them very early and go back and forth. Positives and negatives here- namely the world feels much more connected and theres more of a sense of a military campaign affecting the state of things but also more backtracking as a result. The one change FF2 does make to FF1's dungeon design- adding dead end rooms you have to load into rather than just having paths ending in the same map- is also a negative one. particularly since theyve dropped the high encounter rate aspect of them basically rendering them entirely useless lol.
speaking of the war campaign, the biggest difference between the two besides the level up system is probably how much more priority the story gets? not in terms of cutscene time or whatever (although that is increased) as you might worry about today, but theres an actual story here rather than the basic template ff1 offered. You can see a lot of the plot points that would come to define the series first show up here whether its rebels vs an oppressive empire with darker supernatural forces behind the scenes, ambiguous dark knight/judge/armored dudes, party members coming and going, heroic sacrifices, and even the series love of star wars here.
i guess the level up system, the other big deviation here, is the biggest point of controversy for the title. i played the game (and specifically the pixel remaster version) entirely straightforward, never once turning my own abilities on my party members or repeatedly entering/cancelling commands to game the system and level up quicker, and never grinding. the game is definitely more of a challenge than 1 but given that i was able to clear it playing like that and didn't find it too much trouble, id say you dont need to resort to any of the things ive always heard had to be done, at least in this specific version. i also think the added difficulty is in general a good thing, as FF1 kind of drops into autopilot after Marsh Cave's poison heavy assault all the way until its final boss who jolts players awake by actually demanding something of them after the preceding 10 - 20 hours have not.
i even felt like i had something to think about with character customization in this one thanks to the system, whereas ff1's very early form job system is a pretty linear affair. i decided early one what weapons each of my teammates would specialize in and made sure to tailor their gear to getting those skill levels, unlike ff1 and plenty of other rpgs where id throw the highest stat sheet value equipment on any teammate capable of wearing it with no regard for if they preferred swinging an axe or sword for example. white magic and black magic were similarly planned out early although I will say i think spells having levels on top of the magic stats is probably worse than just having characters level black magic/white magic comprehensively? (Case in point being that i received the "ultimate magic in existence" Ultima and proceeded to use it non stop till the end of the game but still didnt have it high leveled enough by the final boss to have it compete with the other things that character could do) Another perk was the system pushing me out of the "just have characters auto attack until a difficult encounter" loop you tend to get into in these games. youd try and figure out instead how many casts you could fit in before the next rest/resupply and cast all the way through clearing a dungeon as casting is how you level your characters magic abilities so you can't just sit on spells till a boss then use them. Similarly, it also kind of addresses the "healing magic only gets used out of battle" dilemma where making use of your limited actions in battle means not leveraging healing magic if possible and instead deferring them to post battle where you have effectively "infinite" actions via menu heals by tying your progression of your Spirit/healing stat to the use of healing magic in battles.
The one problem I will say i have with it is that i think its a mismatch with the rotating party members approach the series is trying for the first time here. You can plan out your focus for each of your permanent members but he changing party member slot can't be planned in advance. I like both these ideas separately but together its a poor fit.
The other big complaint I have about the game is that its encounter rate is just way too high, especially compared to 1, and that can bog things down. It's somewhat alleviated, however, by getting access to warp/teleport early for quicker dungeon exits, river encounters getting dropped, and more intercity/fast travel options being made available through Cid's air taxi, the boat rides, and the chocobo forest
Lastly, its obviously pure preference absent any kind of argument i can make, but, when comparing the pixel remaster versions at least, I found the FF2 OST a big step up. Really loved its battle track, preferred the overworld and just in general thought it had the stronger suite of tracks
Pleasantly surprised to end up preferring this one ever so slightly overall
Final Fantasy III
2021
I don't think I'm saying anything people familiar with the series don't already know, but 3 is a return to 1 spiritually in many ways. Job system is back although this time it actually earns the right to be called a job system instead of just sketching a basic template for your character creation foundation. (I don't hold this against 1 as it's obviously a more loose beginning, just clarifying that this truly is one this time) DND spells per rest is back/mp is gone. Traditional leveling with all stats attached to each level up and generic experience is back. (alongside new job levels that, tbh, I still don't particularly understand) And, the more basic warriors of light setting out to defeat darkness/a vaguely defined evil is back over the more complicated war/politics driven FF2 storyline.
But while I gave 2 the edge over 1 for that teensy bit of character building you could control with its leveling system, the jobs here and swapping characters to and from is easily the best of the 3 thus far. And unlike say a lot of modern games with selectable classes or roles for characters, this is a game that embraces the player capability to switch jobs with particular enemies or dungeon gimmicks that ask you to reconsider your setup rather than just settling into 4 jobs and never touching the menu again. This has the side benefit of rendering a lot of what was extraneous dungeon loot in prior games more valuable than just another form of gil- having a few different types of sets of armor/weapons on hand makes swapping in and out of classes supported and the thorough dungeon explorer will find they frequently have this even if they haven't grinded the gil to buy it all naturally.
The only real drawbacks here I noted were a) that there really is seemingly a desire from the game to have you leave some jobs behind permanently as you go on, as earlier jobs may not be quite as potent as later ones even with higher job levels at the time you get the newer fancier models and b) specifically the thief job. The big draw of the thief, as far as i can tell, is its ability to lockpick enchanted locks. Well, you can swap to a thief in front of a locked door, unlock any of them even at job lvl 1 as a thief, then swap back without ever having to actually take a step or fight a battle in the job lol.
The basic story, while drawing from the same well as 1, does sketch in more detail in each place you go than its predecessor. It functions a more episodic fashion I'd say than 1, where learning about the various troubles in the latest town you've popped into is as much or more a focus in the script as the connecting tissue of pursuing the 4 crystals. (the counterpart to 1's four fiends hunt) But this isn't really the reason I prefer its narrative over 1- no the primary advantage it has here is that this is really the first ff where we see them start to really embrace the comedic expressiveness of moving their sprites all around. There are quite a few skits and bits scattered throughout the story and while the core narrative surrounding them isn't anything incredible, they're more amusing than anything in 1 or the rest of 3. (I'd still give the nod to 2's more focused narrative overall though if including all 3 in the comparison)
The episodic/more loose nature of your quest at times though, can lead to more moments of directionless wandering than either of the 2 prior games. This is a big world and you get access to a lot of it fairly early on. It's not a strict downside though as it can be fun to find entirely optional dungeons, particularly towards the end of the game where the series first summons can be had as rewards for completing them. I will say the constant airship juggling is a bit tedious though- even if i ignore the hilarity of airships that can't fly that high despite being picture well above the mountain ranges or the "jumping" upgrade you get later to traverse mountains but only in short bursts, having to swap airships (which entails traveling across the entire map to where you left the prior one) to pick between going underwater or mountain hopping feels incredibly inconvenient in a series thats otherwise felt like its had these sort of edges sanded off in the transition to pixel remaster.
The dungeon design, on the other hand, is all welcome news. The dead ends and trap rooms of ff1 and 2 are now entirely gone. The paths you can go on always go somewhere. And while this does lead to more linear feeling exploration than before, some of that has been made up for with the series' new fascination with obscured paths in certain tiles/between entrances. Loot is frequently hid off the main path now and feeling around every corner will be rewarded.
I dont really know how to critique music so i may just start making lists of my favorite tracks from each game as i go through them lol. I missed FF2's battle theme here (and agree that the pixel remaster version of it is not to my taste) but plenty of other tracks came through great. Eternal Wind, Dark Crystals, The Forbidden Land Eureka, The Crystal Tower, The Invinceable, and Doga and Unei's theme were all varying levels of hits to me.
Lastly, what i didnt miss from ff2 was the random encounter rate. FF3 thankfully pulls back on that quite a bit. These remasters in general are on the easier side, but FF3 does steadily ramp up its difficulty towards the end, even if more of that comes primarily from boss hp just skyrocketing relative to player damage than it probably should.
But while I gave 2 the edge over 1 for that teensy bit of character building you could control with its leveling system, the jobs here and swapping characters to and from is easily the best of the 3 thus far. And unlike say a lot of modern games with selectable classes or roles for characters, this is a game that embraces the player capability to switch jobs with particular enemies or dungeon gimmicks that ask you to reconsider your setup rather than just settling into 4 jobs and never touching the menu again. This has the side benefit of rendering a lot of what was extraneous dungeon loot in prior games more valuable than just another form of gil- having a few different types of sets of armor/weapons on hand makes swapping in and out of classes supported and the thorough dungeon explorer will find they frequently have this even if they haven't grinded the gil to buy it all naturally.
The only real drawbacks here I noted were a) that there really is seemingly a desire from the game to have you leave some jobs behind permanently as you go on, as earlier jobs may not be quite as potent as later ones even with higher job levels at the time you get the newer fancier models and b) specifically the thief job. The big draw of the thief, as far as i can tell, is its ability to lockpick enchanted locks. Well, you can swap to a thief in front of a locked door, unlock any of them even at job lvl 1 as a thief, then swap back without ever having to actually take a step or fight a battle in the job lol.
The basic story, while drawing from the same well as 1, does sketch in more detail in each place you go than its predecessor. It functions a more episodic fashion I'd say than 1, where learning about the various troubles in the latest town you've popped into is as much or more a focus in the script as the connecting tissue of pursuing the 4 crystals. (the counterpart to 1's four fiends hunt) But this isn't really the reason I prefer its narrative over 1- no the primary advantage it has here is that this is really the first ff where we see them start to really embrace the comedic expressiveness of moving their sprites all around. There are quite a few skits and bits scattered throughout the story and while the core narrative surrounding them isn't anything incredible, they're more amusing than anything in 1 or the rest of 3. (I'd still give the nod to 2's more focused narrative overall though if including all 3 in the comparison)
The episodic/more loose nature of your quest at times though, can lead to more moments of directionless wandering than either of the 2 prior games. This is a big world and you get access to a lot of it fairly early on. It's not a strict downside though as it can be fun to find entirely optional dungeons, particularly towards the end of the game where the series first summons can be had as rewards for completing them. I will say the constant airship juggling is a bit tedious though- even if i ignore the hilarity of airships that can't fly that high despite being picture well above the mountain ranges or the "jumping" upgrade you get later to traverse mountains but only in short bursts, having to swap airships (which entails traveling across the entire map to where you left the prior one) to pick between going underwater or mountain hopping feels incredibly inconvenient in a series thats otherwise felt like its had these sort of edges sanded off in the transition to pixel remaster.
The dungeon design, on the other hand, is all welcome news. The dead ends and trap rooms of ff1 and 2 are now entirely gone. The paths you can go on always go somewhere. And while this does lead to more linear feeling exploration than before, some of that has been made up for with the series' new fascination with obscured paths in certain tiles/between entrances. Loot is frequently hid off the main path now and feeling around every corner will be rewarded.
I dont really know how to critique music so i may just start making lists of my favorite tracks from each game as i go through them lol. I missed FF2's battle theme here (and agree that the pixel remaster version of it is not to my taste) but plenty of other tracks came through great. Eternal Wind, Dark Crystals, The Forbidden Land Eureka, The Crystal Tower, The Invinceable, and Doga and Unei's theme were all varying levels of hits to me.
Lastly, what i didnt miss from ff2 was the random encounter rate. FF3 thankfully pulls back on that quite a bit. These remasters in general are on the easier side, but FF3 does steadily ramp up its difficulty towards the end, even if more of that comes primarily from boss hp just skyrocketing relative to player damage than it probably should.
Death Stranding
2019
this game is like if jodorowsky listened to every bjork album at the same time and then said, declaratively: "i deeply respect the US Postal Service"
BioShock Infinite
2013
The game that dared to ask if Slaves were as bad as their owners