Is it dead in here or is it just Kefka? Anyway I usually use the excuse that I'm playing a lot of Final Fantasy games for my lack of posting, but Final Fantasy VI Advance took even longer than usual, even though the game itself seemed shorter than most! Ok, I've been lazy. Whatever. FF VI is awesome, and I completely see why Stan looks back on it with such nostalgia and considers it the best of the series. The story is pretty overwhelming- of the 14 playable characters, 11 have great story arcs spanning the whole game, most of which directly impact the main plot of the game. The easy parallels for me to draw include FF IX (the party constantly breaking up into different groups) and Mass Effect 2 (everyone getting a full and interesting backstory that's related to the mission at hand). Unlike many Final Fantasy games, this one never loses sight of the main story. The final villain is exactly who it should be (Kefka) and not some out-of-nowhere concept like Death or Chaos or some shit like that. Also unlike other villains who seek to destroy the world, Kefka actually does it, making him a leading candidate for best villain of the series. The music was superb, and the visuals were for the most part still beautiful after all these years, with the exception of wandering the overworld, where things often looked blocky. The combat is nothing out of the ordinary, but I have to note the awesome esper system, a great way to combine summons and magic spells into one category. It's very intuitive and makes me want to see more creative ways to level up- I've loved the few I've seen with espers, license boards and the sphere grid. Well, that's 8 down in the main series and 4 more to go, and here's the likely order in which I'll tackle them- the terrible but short FF II, the mixed reaction generating FF VIII, what many consider to be the greatest game of all time in FF VII, then finally the newest of the series, FF XIII. I'm almost there!
Congratulations on a job well done. And don't worry about the lack of posting. It's all of us! Interesting path you're taking through the rest of the series, but perhaps more interesting is that you started it like a year ago and have only one more game to play than I do, and I started it at least fifteen years ago. Womp womp. Looks like I need to pick up the pace on FF12, and since you played and loved FF6 so much, I probably can't put off RE4 much longer.
ReplyDelete