All right, I have a bit of a rant to get off my chest regarding my favorite series of games: Final Fantasy. That’s right, I’m an avid Final Fantasy gamer, if it wasn’t blatantly obvious with the level of RPGeekery stamped all over my bespectacled little face. Final Fantasy, in fact, was what got me into computer animation and sent me haring off to art school; Final Fantasy VII came out when I was in high school, back when the only exposure that I had to video games (due to a sheltered life and a technophobic parental unit) was an extremely old SuperNintendo system with Mario 2 that I got when I was...five, maybe? that came complete with over a decade of guilt-trip lectures on the evils of video games and how much she had to sacrifice to get that thing for me.
Final Fantasy VII was, without a doubt, the biggest breakthrough for the Final Fantasy series since the first Final Fantasy--pioneered by Hironobu Sakaguchi--pulled the once-failing fledgling Square Co., Ltd. out of the gaming-industry gutter. The platform jump from Nintendo to Sony and the sudden change from sprites to 3D was a shock that made Final Fantasy VII an instant success; it would have skyrocketed even without the compelling story and characters, and the definitive Final Fantasy quality that brought previous sprite gamers back for more.
I’ve played every Final Fantasy from the beginning through XI, even if I had to download old ROMS of the earlier ones or borrow a friend’s portable system for the games that weren’t in the main numeric lineage. One of the things that struck me as amazing about the series is that it never seemed to age; most game sets are ready for the graveyard after a trilogy, and anything after that is just beating a dead horse when you need to just lie down and let it die. (Heck, some sequels just weren’t worth making. Like Galerians: Ash.) Part of what kept the game fresh was a new set of characters and a new story every time; the art evolved but kept the same feel, the worlds had that mixture of magic and technology that was definitive Final Fantasy, the combat systems upgraded but were still familiar and welcome. Each game kept getting better and better; VII was the major breakthrough into 3D, VIII was an intense (if overly-long) epic storyline, IX bewitched with its engaging characters, the depth of their development, and the miracle of creating something so dramatic with a style that looked so childish....
....and then came X. X blew everything out of the water; sure, part of it was pure eye candy, with the upgrades in playable modeling allowed by the PS2 platform and the stunning FMVs that left themselves burned on your retinas and in your imaginations. The addition of voiceovers to the game made it another benchmark, and although the central character was a little annoying, the supporting lady a bit too wispy, the story had everything. It was like all of the good points of the previous three games rolled into one and then compounded to create a game of such action, depth, emotion, intrigue, betrayal, and complexity that nothing could ever top its challenge or its story.
Unfortunately, nothing has.
Since then we’ve suffered through the disastrous online multi-player RPG of XI, which lacked direction save for a thin shell of quests that did nothing to match the previous epics and was a pale shadow to X. It was obvious that it was an attempt to cut into the online gaming market; but if I’d wanted to play an EverQuest or Ultima Online ripoff, I’d have bought EQ or UO, and saved a heck of a lot of the money that I spent catering to the demanding FFXI system requirements through hardware upgrades to a Pentium IV PC that isn’t that outdated—though I’m sure the chatspeaking server-haunting game trolls would have been the same regardless of the game or the server.
And let’s not forget X-2. The very first Final Fantasy sequel game. What should have been a landmark was instead a visit to Barbie’s Dream House on the eternal search for Ken.
I’m currently playing X-2 just to hold me over during the long, painful gap between X and XII that XI failed to fill. I can’t say that X-2 is sating my appetite very well; while it’s a pleasure to return to the rich world of X—especially with the upgraded playable models, the improvements and changes subtle but still effective and pleasing--and the game features one of the most emotionally stunning, heart-wrenching game FMVs that I’ve ever seen, the story itself is lacking, the entire theme too pretty-princess pop for my tastes. The entire game’s timing is gratingly off, and while there are tantalizing tidbits of plot, there’s no solid meat for me to sink my teeth into.
