Final Fantasy a Casual Retrospective Part 0

Well, it’s a new year and that means I need another long-term project to work on. Something to distract me from the ever ongoing shitification of the world. But, you know what they say, when reality gets you down that’s when you turn to fantasy. And what better game for that then the one with Fantasy in the name.

Ah, Final Fantasy. A magical series of whim, whimsy and giant impractical anime swords. When you think of classic RPG series it’s probably the first one to come to mind. Well, either that or Dragon Quest, or Persona if you’re a Weeb, or maybe Ultima if you’re a super nerd and/or old as hell.

All joking aside though, Final Fantasy is easily one of the most recognisable names in all of gaming. It’s the series that helped popularise Japanese Role-Playing Games worldwide, is responsible for creating some of gaming’s most memorable characters and has told some of the most beloved tales the interactive medium has offered.

And I have barely played any of them. I won’t say I have no history with the series because I do. Unlike Dead or Alive or Devil May Cry where I had barely touched any of them, I have actually played quite a few games in the Final Fantasy series over the years, but I’ve only ever beaten two of them.

I haven’t seen many of the games to completion. I always dropped them for one reason or another. despite liking a good chunk of what I played. I even dabbled in a few of the spin-offs like Tactics with similar results. In fact, the only Final Fantasy related anything I ever got fully into and finished was Kingdom Hearts. I know, I know, I’m cringe.

I never really grew up with Final Fantasy. I was a bit too young to appreciate the series in it’s prime. I would always see it around in magazines and the like, but I was also only like five years old when it really took off, and I didn’t have many friends or family that were into them either.

It wasn’t until I was a bit older and I started going online that I started to become more acutely aware of the series through fans talking about it. Seeing reviews and parodies of it on sites like YouTube and Newgrounds. I even remember the first Final Fantasy related anything I ever saw.

It was this old Chocobo song by Legendary Frog on Newgrounds. I was going to share it, but the only version on YouTube won't show up on here so you'll have to search it yourself. I get a massive nostalgia high from that video. At the time I didn’t even understand the references, I just thought the song was catchy. I still hum it every now and then.

After that I would see more of the fan works. I saw the old 8-bit Theatre animations on Newgrounds and would even read the original comic, I saw the old Gametraiilers retrospective, and I even watched Spoony’s old reviews of the series. But despite having an interest in them, I only very rarely played them. I wanted to, but I just never got around to it.

Well you know what, that changes now. I’m finally going to sit down and play these games to see what I’ve been missing out on all this time. Although, that’s not the only reason why I’m doing this.

Another reason is to offer a different perspective. I’ve seen a lot of reviews and retrospectives of the games over the years, and while they all have different opinions on the individual games, they all look at the games from the perspective of a fan. Someone who has been with the series for a long time.

I want to look at these games from the perspective of a newcomer. Someone who is playing these games for the first time and trying to get into the series. I’m not going in completely blind, but it’ll be interesting to see how the games hold up without any nostalgic biases. It’ll especially be interesting when I get to the more divisive entries. Heaven help me when I get to XIII.

Which leads me to another reason. While Final Fantasy is still a well-known icon, it’s also a series that has noticeably been on the decline in recent years. While they’re still making games and a lot of them still get positive receptions, the sales have been largely disappointing, and its cultural impact is nowhere near as big as it was when in it’s prime.

I already broadly know the reasons why. I’ve engaged with enough reviews and retrospective content to pick that up. But it’s one thing to be told about something, and another thing to experience it first-hand. I want to see what happened. See the rise and fall and try to figure out for myself what exactly went wrong.

Now if you hadn’t gathered from the title, this is not the true start of the retrospective. This is more of a primer to set the stage and explain why I’m doing this and how I’m going about doing it. I explained the former, now it’s time for the latter.

First things first, this retrospective will primarily focus on the mainline entries. So basically, all of the numbered games, and also the sequel entries like X-2 and the XIII trilogy. The two exceptions being XI and XIV. Those I will not be covering.

Mainly because they’re both MMO’s with an absolute metric ton of content to cover. I simply don’t have the time to cover the two of them in full. That, and I need a subscription to play them, and I do not have the money for that.

I know XIV is free to play but only for the first few expansions, and that’s covering a very small portion of the overall game. It would feel wrong only covering that and not the rest of it. Also, XI is only playable on PC now and I don’t have a PC that can play it so, yeah, that one ain’t happening.

I’ll stick to the main single player entries. But, to make up for the games I skip, I’ll throw in one of the spin-off games as a bonus. One’s that have some connection to other games in the series for the sake of cohesion.

I’ll also be playing these games via the modern remasters. That includes the Pixel Remasters of I-VI. While for retrospective purposes it would be best to look at the original releases, and that is indeed possible to do via emulation, a lot of the older games are before my time. I simply don’t have the patience to deal with a lot of the jank in older RPG’s and the remasters do a lot to improve the gameplay experience.

As for why I’m looking specifically at the Pixel Remasters and not the other remade versions, it’s because they are the ones that I own, and the ones more widely available on all modern platforms. Pretty straightforward reasoning really.

Well, that, and the fact that these versions are closer to the originals. While they did receive graphical and musical upgrades on top of various quality of life improvements, they are still largely the original games at their core. Missing the major gameplay changes and new content of the other remakes.

Even the sprite work is largely based on the originals. It’s about as close to playing the original versions as a modern remaster can get. it just makes more sense to me to look at these. They are not exactly the same though. There were some changes, and I will mention the major changes during the reviews.

I will also go over the other versions in the reviews too and what they brought to the table. I won’t play them myself, but I will try to cover them as best I can. I want to try and stick to each games base design and whether or not they hold up without getting too caught up in bonus content and version differences.

On that note, I am going to try to play these games without using any of the quality-of-life additions the remasters added. I want to see how these games hold up without speed up features and the like. I will probably end up using them for the older games, but I will mention when I did because those are probably the times when the game pissed me off.

With all that out of the way, we can begin. So tune in next time for the very first part of the Final Fantasy Casual Retrospective. It’s going to be a long ride folks, let’s try to enjoy it.