Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy XII

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


After the so called great FFX, Square decided to make a sequel to it and also assembled a new development team to create MMO installments in the series. This lead to FFX-2, which was hated by pretty much everyone, and FFXI, a MMORPG that is still loved by many. What many people didn't know at the time is that these games, along with spinoffs were to tide over the fans while a new game was being developed. Hiroyuki Ito assembled a new team after FFIX to produce a new, ambitious project that would bring the classic FF formula onto the (then) most recent generation of consoles. The game was part of the Ivalice Alliance: a compilation of games with common themes and story elements that take place in the massive world of Ivalice, which has a half modern, half medieval setting akin to Final Fantasy VI. After six years in development, Final Fantasy XII was finally released. It is a very polarizing game among series fans. Most people hate it, but it has its fans, including me. Let's take a look at it shall we?

The Story:

This game brings back a classic FF story formula: "Rebels vs. Empire". It tells the story of a princess named Ashe who has had her husband and father taken from her when her kingdom was invaded by the neighbouring empire of Archadia. Meanwhile, another neighbouring empire, Rozarria, has declared war against Archadia and her kingdom of Dalmasca. The story is good. Not great, but good.  The narrative is pretty basic, but it does what it wants competently. The characters are what keeps it enjoyable. Some characters are better than others, though. Two of them, despite having backstories and reasons for fighting the empire, are there mostly to be used as a frame of reference for the audience when exposition is necessary. Fortunately, the others, mainly the sky pirate Balthier, are very likable and interesting. The ending in particular was very satisfying.

Overall, it's a good story with pretty good characters.

7/10


The Gameplay:

This game takes the classic FF formula and combines it with some MMO characteristics to create an experience with both a classic and a fresh feel to it, which is what i wanted from FFX but never got.
There's no world map, instead we have a huge MMO style massive world that is 100% open for exploration and has a huge amount of cities, optional dungeons, hunting quests and side-quests to find.

First, the good: The combat in this game brings back the ATB gauge for more lively battles, and is integrated into the world of the game, thus removing random encounters and battle screens. Combat still plays like a turn based game, where you assign commands to each character. Most spells, abilities, and other stuff are bought in stores like in the NES era. Because combat doesn't play exactly like the previous games, you will have to assign commands without ever stopping for anything, which is where the Gambit System comes into play. In shops you can get gambits, which assign automated actions for characters when specific situations occur. The most used gambits will of course be "Attack nearby enemies" and "Heal when HP is low", but there are others like casting specific spells or using certain items in even more specific situations. There are nearly milions of customization possibilities in this system, which can help you get through the game with less trouble. In fact, smart players will realize that they can grind without actually playing the game. This will only happen if the player goes out of his/her way to customize the characters that way, so it doesn't intrude on player interactivity. Not to mention that Gambits are completely optional, which will please players that dislike automation. It's a fantastic system and I could talk for hours about its possibilities, but what really makes it shine is that it makes the gameplay customizable to the player's comfort level.

Our character development system this time around is the License Board. Every time you kill a monster, you gain license points, which you can spend to unlock a license in the board. Every spell, weapon and armor piece in this game requires you to have its respective license before being equipped, which will prevent players from getting powerful stuff by going out of their way to get into one of the later shops and getting strong equipment before the story brings them there, thus preventing the possibility of having an overpowered party. The board is non-linear in structure, which means every character can get a license for everything in the game. The recommended procedure, though, is to develop each character depending on which job you want to him/her to have. Each time you unlock a license, one to four new ones will appear on the board, including the next license of its kind, which will allow for linear development, (For example, unlocking a black spell will make the license for another black spell appear) but people like me will be able to give the character a more diverse role in battle. The License Board is by far the best character development system in the series, for it allows absolute control over growth.

Now, the bad: For some reason, the developers thought placing invisible booby traps over the field was a good idea. You can be walking somewhere and all of a sudden you get a notice saying you triggered a trap and receive massive damage or get infected with status effects. It's just as annoying as it seems. I just can't understand why these exist. They don't add in any way to the challenge and don't require any gaming skill to avoid, so why are they even there? You can avoid them by casting the "Float" spell on yourself or equipping a certain accessory that prevents their activation, but come on, the player shouldn't have to deal with this. It's an annoying flaw, pure and simple. Another problem I have is that some dungeons can be painfully long at times, mostly because their puzzles can be unclear because of a lack of useful clues.

Despite these problems the gameplay is still fantastic. It is the ultimate evolution of the classic FF formula with amazing customization.

9/10


The Audio:

This is the first soundtrack in the series to be fully orchestrated and this time around, we have the composers that did the music for all the games from the Ivalice Alliance: Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masaharu Iwata and Hayato Matsuo. Their music is known for its cinematic feel, which helps give the game an epic feel and a great atmosphere. The music is very epic and listening to the three classic tracks in their fully orchestrated form is unbelievably satisfying. My only problem is the small amount of emotional pieces, but that can be blamed on the basic story. The vocal song, though not the best, is very good, even if it doesn't reflect the story or the characters. The voice acting is also incredibly better than the last game. The acting is very good, especially Balthier's actor.

9/10


The Graphics:

This game goes for an old school fantasy look thanks to Ivalice Alliance artists Akihiko Yoshida and Hiroshi Minagawa. The backgrounds look beautifullly detailed and the character design is cool looking if a bit weird at times. Monster design is also very creative and diverse. They may not be the best graphics on the PS2, but it's still gorgeous.

9/10


I personally love this game even if the story kept it from becoming the best game in the series. It's a fantastic game that in my opinion should be a blueprint for future games in the series.

Final Grade: 8.5/10

Join me next time as we take a look into the final game of this series of reviews: Final Fantasy XIII.

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy X

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


Well, here we are guys. The end of an era. In my opinion, this is where the FF series was ruined beyond repair. As always, with a new console generation comes a new era of FF games. Hironobu Sakaguchi was barely involved in development of the tenth game. Yoshinori Kitase had just been promoted to series producer and with that came a new way to run things. Kitase gave Motomu Toriyama (one of the cutscene designers of VII and VIII) the role of director. Toriyama is known nowadays for his controversially linear approach to JRPGs, so with this game came a radical change to the gameplay. I'm just gonna say it right now: I despise this game. I hate the story, I hate the gameplay and I hate how it strays away from what made the series charming to begin with. Let me reply to the negative comments I'm gonna get right now- "Oh come on, the story is so emotional and the gameplay is just a fresh new direction for the series" - No, i'm sorry but i don't see it. Let's get this over with, I don't want to waste more time than I have to with this so called game:

The So Called Story:

This time around we've got the story of a young man named Tidus who after a weird supernatural incident is transported to a world completely different than the one he was in. After meeting certain people that help him out Tidus starts a journey to try to find out about what happened to him.

The story is God-awful. It just is, plain and simple. I'm aware that this one is a fan-favorite. I'm aware that this is one of those sacred things that no one is allowed to dislike without being accused of being overdemanding. So be it. The story in this game is full of plot-holes, it's inconsistent, it's unbelievably drawn-out and is just plain boring and uninteresting. My main problem is that there's no heart to it. There's nothing genuine about it. It's one of those stories that takes every generic JRPG plot element and crams them all together without any care in making it coherent. The characters don't help either. Tidus is very annoying and doesn't get any better as the game goes on. Yuna is just the generic altruistic summoner that sacrifices everything for everyone without thinking twice about it. The rest of the cast is barely worth mentioning since their development is either nonexistent or insignificant.

The only good thing I have to say about it is one of the sub-plots, which is about three characters that lived years before the main plot. The same problem with FFVIII shows up once again. These characters are way more interesting and their story is actually genuinely tragic. Why? Why couldn't the game have been about this story? I felt like Square was trolling me with how I'm missing out on such an interesting story.

If you're reading this and are interested in details about why I didn't like the story, message me on my Youtube account and we'll figure something out.

Overall it's a terrible story with awful characters.

2/10


The So Called Gameplay:

Like I said before, this is a huge departure from the previous games: gone is the world map, gone are the dungeons and gone are the interesting NPCs. The open environments have also been replaced by claustrophobic hallways that completely eliminate one of the key elements of a Final Fantasy game: exploration.  I just don't get why would they do this. This is not innovation or evolution. They're just literally removing one of the main gameplay elements the series was known for. Because of this, the game doesn't even feel like what it says it is: The tenth entry in the main Final Fantasy series. The linearity is fairly well executed on its own merits but it's still very repetitive. Most of the gameplay is comprised of running and battling with an ocasional temple with puzzles as the only attempt at variety. The problem is that these puzzles are very drawn-out and don't have any logic to them. You literally just radomly place spheres in holes till you accidentally solve them. One particular puzzle that takes place in a moving maze is incredibly confusing, drawn-out and boring. I had to take a two day break because it frustrated me so much.

The character development system this time around is the Sphere Grid. I don't really like this system. This is basically the illusion of development control. After each battle, you get ability points and after getting a certain amount of points, the character gains a sphere level which can then be used to move one space in the Grid. Basically, the grid is a giant board full of nodes. Each node has a bonus for your character's stats, like "HP + 200" or "Strength + 4". This would be a great oportunity to give you great control over the character's growth, but there's one huge problem: the characters still have their pre-set stats and jobs. Why would I ever choose to significantly raise the physical strength of a black mage? Besides, the board is incredibly linear. You would think the board would have multiple ways to go, but instead you're just going on a pre-determined path without any deviation. Any alternate paths on the board are locked and can only be unlocked by a "Key Sphere", which brings me to another aspect of the grid: the actual spheres. After each battle, you receive various types of spheres that have to be used to unlock the bonuses from each node. A "Mana Sphere", for example unlocks the bonus from an MP node. There are other spheres that unlock any bonus of a certain kind without the need to move in the grid and even some that allow us to warp to any node instantly. I just don't get this system. Is it driven by choice or is it linear? Half of its elements contradict the other half. I'm sorry, Square, but you either give us control over development or you don't. You can't have it both ways. The only side attraction besides Side-Quests is Blitzball, our minigame this time around. It's boring, it's overly complicated and adds nothing to the game, it's just there.

Fortunately, there are good aspects to the gameplay: the combat is fast-paced, it's a nice throwback to the fully turn-based format from the NES era and a new feature that allows you to switch your party members mid-battle adds some strategy to the battles. Also, the very last puzzle of the game is radically different from the other ones and I found it to be enjoyable. It's not great, but it was a well made enough puzzle.

Despite that, the gameplay is just plain horrible. It doesn't know what it wants to be and lacks fun stuff to do.

3/10


The Audio:

For the first time, Nobuo Uematsu had assistance in composing the music. The new composers are Junya Nakano (Now known for the composition/arrangement of the FFIV saga) and Masashi Hamauzu(Known for being the main composer of the FFXIII trilogy). The soundtrack is pretty mediocre overall. There are a few good tracks, but most of them are forgettable or just plain bad. It should also be noted that this game doesn't have the main Final Fantasy Theme. Why, Nobuo? This is like making a Mario game without the classic Mario theme. You might say it's not important, but I disagree. You don't just ignore traditions like that. This, combined with a very different and mediocre instrumentation, results in a soundtrack that, for the most part, doesn't feel like a Final Fantasy soundtrack. The vocal theme song is just a mediocre and generic anime style song. I should also mention that this was the first game in the series to have voice acting. It's terrible though. Each voice is either bland, boring or annoying. With other games at the time that had much better voice acting, this is just another example of how lazy Square was with this game.

4/10


The So Called Graphics:

This game gets rid of the pre-rendered backgrounds and goes for fully 3d rendered environments to show off the PS2's capabilities, which gives place to some nice looking environments. My huge problem  with the graphics is everything related to the character visuals. The body animations are very weird and consist basically of characters waving their arms awkwardly when they're arguing about something. The facial animations are also very lazy and there was absolutely no lip syncing whatsoever. I don't understand why the animations are so bad. Kingdom Hearts came out around the same time and was vastly superior in all of these areas. Inexcusable. Another thing that really disappointed me in this game was the monster and character design. The monster design, while not exactly bad, is pretty mediocre. Now, the character design is just plain terrible. It reminds me of characters from the Star Wars prequels. Almost every character in this game has impossible physical characteristics and ridiculous clothing, which really pains me to say, because I'm a huge fan of Tetsuya Nomura's character designs. All of these factors make it really hard for me to take the story and characters seriously, because everything looks fake and/or laughable.

5/10

I'm sorry if you think I'm being too harsh with this so called game but i didn't enjoy a single second of it. After FFIX this is an unbelievable disappointment. The story is terrible, the gameplay has an identity crisis and the presentation is really underwhelming.

I recommend everyone who would like a more positive review of the game to check my friend T-Man's review as his is probably the best positive review of this game out there.

Final Grade : 3.5/10

Join me next time as we skip over FFXI for reasons i explained in the rules blogpost which you can find at the top of this review, so we can talk about one of the most controversial games among the fanbase: Final Fantasy XII. See you next time.

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy IX

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


While FFVIII was being developed, Sakaguchi assembled a new development team consisting of relatively inexperienced developers to create a game that he wanted to be a love letter to the franchise. A game that would take the best of all the previous games and put it all into one game.
This new team consisted of producer Shinji Hashimoto (Former marketing manager who later on went to produce games developed by this new team, nowadays commonly known as the "Kingdom Hearts Team") and animator Tatsuya Kando (Now known as lead animator of the KH series and creator of "The World Ends With You") among others. FFVI co-director Hiroyuki Ito directed the game and Sakaguchi wrote the story. The result was Final Fantasy IX, a game that has a very passionate fanbase despite its relatively low popularity. Let's look into it shall we? :

The Story:

This game tells the story of a group of thieves that is hired to kidnap a princess. Little do they know that the princess actually wants to get abducted and tries to sneak onto their airship. After escaping her castle, the princess and the thieves start a journey that leads to many adventures that will change them and the world. The story in this game is absolutely fantastic. The themes of love, prejudice, life and purpose are handled masterfully, mainly because of the wonderful characters that manage to be everything that's needed: complex, funny, sympathetic and tragic. The game is also full of big homages and neat easter eggs that reference various games in the series. There's even one part of the story that's clearly a reimagining of part of FFI's story. This is an FF game that loves the series it belongs to.

Overall it's a fantastic story with wonderful characters.

10/10


The Gameplay:

This game brings back the FFIV formula where each character has a single and permanent job according to his/her character. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of this formula, but it's a lot better here since the difficulty is higher than that of VII and VIII, so the lack of control over character growth doesn't bother me. The equipment possibilities have also returned to the FFVI way, so now you have more ways of equipping your character.

First, the good: The only new mechanic is the method of learning abilities. Each piece of equipment has up to three abilities that can be used while the item is equipped. Every ability can be learned by gaining ability points. After that, it can be used without the corresponding item. This mechanic applies to all abilities: spells, supporting abilities, knight techniques etc.
It's a very good system that rewards the player that puts work into the game.

Now, the bad: This game has some frustrating non-optional minigames that can bog down the experience. I didn't mind the card minigame in FFVIII because it was optional, but here there is a moment where you're forced to win two card game matches before moving on with the story. It's not that the card game is outright bad, it's just unnecessary and doesn't add anything to the game. The opponents are quite strong and can take a while to beat. I wasn't having fun. I just wanted to move on to the actual story and JRPG gameplay. The biggest gripe I have, though, is with a timed "Red Light, Green Light" style minigame that is terribly programmed and is one of those things that you just keep trying over and over until you luck out and win.

Another problem I have is with the random encounters. I tolerated them in the NES era, but after that, Square created items or abilities that would allow us to reduce or prevent random encounters to ease the frustration. However, here we have nothing of the sort. This wouldn't be so bad if the random encounters had a reasonable frequency like in VII and VIII, but they raised it back to the same frequency from the classics. This game came out in 2000, five years after Chrono Trigger showed the world that random encounters are not the only way to go in JRPGS. The frustration of entering a battle while trying to explore can become a big annoyance.

Despite the problems though, the gameplay is still great.

8/10


The Music:

After the disappointing soundtrack from the last game, Uematsu recaptures the magic of FF music to create another masterpiece. This soundtrack has everything: It's emotional, catchy, epic and triumphant. To keep the celebratory aspect of the game, Uematsu also brought back old tunes from previous games with great remixes. The main vocal theme is also a huge improvement over the previous one. It's sweet and punctuates the themes of the story.

10/10


The Graphics:

Like the other PSX games, FFIX uses FMVs and pre-rendered backgrounds to create a beautiful looking game. The animations and gameplay models are also stellar and push the PSX to its limits.
FFIX also marks the return of Yoshitaka Amano to character and monster designing, which gives the characters a classic fantasy look that resembles the first 4 games.

10/10


Final Fantasy IX is a game that falls just short of perfection, but it suceeds brilliantly in being a love letter to the franchise and its most devoted fans thanks to a fantastic story, great gameplay and wonderful music.


Final Grade: 9.5/10


Next time we enter the PS2 era with Final Fantasy X, the game everybody loves and i...well...don't. See you then ;)

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy VIII

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


After the groundbreaking Final Fantasy VII, Square was swimming in money. Things didn't look like they could ever go wrong after ten years of good games. After VII, Sakaguchi wanted to create a game that was a reflection on the past of the series. After reuniting a development team that consisted of mostly newcoming developers, he gave Yoshinori Kitase free reign to do whatever he wanted with VII's development team. The result was Final Fantasy VIII, the second game (The first being FFII) that divided the fans. It's really one of those games where you either love it or you hate it. I should warn you right now: If you love this game and can't stand anyone saying anything bad about it just stop reading my review.

The Story:

Once again, we have a Sci-Fi Fantasy setting. This game tells the story of a group of young members of a mercenary force called SeeD (Yes, this is how you spell it) that accept jobs of various kinds for money. Eventually, they find out that they're pawns of a messed up plan by the people in charge of SeeD and are thrown into dangerous battles for the fate of the world. The story of this game unfortunately is very bad for various reasons.

First, the bad: The storytelling is very confusing. It frequently lacks clear explanations for what happens, and rarely takes a break for the player to assimilate what happened. There are also a lot of plot holes and scenes that don't really add anything to the main plot. I'm serious, I could cut a lot of plot points that don't go anywhere and scenes that feel out of place. It should be noted that this is at the time of this review's writing the only game in the series in which the primary focus of the plot is a romance between two characters. I'm all for that, as I love me a good love story, but the romance in this game is not well developed, as the transition of one of the lovers from barely caring to doing anything for the other is very rushed and doesn't feel real. As for the other characters, some are better than others, but most of them lack personality. The most underdeveloped character is the main villain, who completely lacks motivation for wanting to destroy everything. I tolerated this in the NES era, didn't like it in FFV, and here it annoys me. I don't understand why are there so many pointless scenes in this game when they could have been used to develop the characters and their relationships.

Now, the good: There is a sub-plot about characters living years before the game's present time that feels well developed and contains genuinely heartfelt moments. I'm serious, I wish the story was about these characters as they are much more likable than the leads. Also, even though the romance is not well developed, there are well executed moments with the two lovers even though they're not enough to make the romance believable.

If you're reading this and are interested in details about why I didn't like the story, message me on my Youtube account and we'll figure something out.

Overall, this is a very bad story with a mediocre cast.

4/10


The Gameplay:

Despite keeping the core gameplay from the previous game, FFVIII decided to try something completely different with its gameplay mechanics. I'm all for that as well, but different doesn't necessarily mean better. Despite having exp based levels, the main way to make characters stronger is through the new "Junction System". Characters start out with only the attack command and the only way to give him or her new commands and abilities is by equipping the character with a Guardian Force (This game's summon creatures). While a GF is equipped, the character earns ability points after a battle which gives the GFs new abilities. The character can only equip commands if the GF has that command on its list of equippable abilities. MP is also gone. To use magic, you have to collect spells as if they were items. I don't really like this. In the NES era, treating spells as items was fine, but in a world that's supposed to feel real like this one, I have problems with collecting things that don't have any physical form whatsoever. It doesn't make any sense. Another problem I have with this system is that magic is mostly used to be junctioned to each of the character's individual stats to increase their value. This is the primary way of making characters strong. It basically means that casting magic against the enemies can be a bad thing, since it's one less spell to junction to your stats. I'm sorry, but this kinda ruins any control I would like to have in how each character grows. Trying to make someone primarily a mage is a bad idea as that character will have less magic available to junction to the stats everytime he or she casts a spell. Don't get me wrong, I realize a lot of early games in the genre were about paying attention to stats and increasing their values individually, but there's a reason they don't make RPG's like that anymore: It prevents each character from feeling unique, not to mention that it makes it easy to have an overpowered party. Also, this system pretty much makes leveling up characters with exp rather pointless. I've been told that apparently enemy levels are always around your character levels, but I can't help but feel that mechanic could have been done in another way. I completed the game with a lv. 23 character as my strongest and a lv. 9 character as my weakest. When this happens, I can't help but feel that the level up mechanic is there mostly for the sake of being there.

Despite all that, the game does have all the core elements of a Final Fantasy game and i do admit some of my problems with the Junction system are personal problems.

Overall the gameplay while not outright horrible, does have serious flaws and is very unlike what made earlier games great.

5/10


The Music:

After seven great soundtracks in a row, even Uematsu disappointed me in this game. Don't get me wrong, I think the OST is good. I don't think it's up to the standards of the series though. Aside from a handful of tracks, the soundtrack is for the most part not very memorable or affecting. It's all well composed, it just doesn't have the heart that the music in the series is known for. It should be noted that this was the first game to have a main vocal theme song: Eyes on Me. It's not very good though. The vocals are mediocre, the lyrics are not very well translated and the composition is forgettable.

6/10


The Graphics:

The graphics in this game are excellent. This game uses the FMV technology from FFVII brilliantly, which leads to great eye candy. The character models were also improved from the last game and now they actually look like people. The only problem with the visual presentation is the character and monster design. It's not that it's outright bad, it's just bland and not impressive at all. Some characters actually have bad designs(The main villain's laughable appearance makes it impossible to take her seriously).

7.5/10

I'm going to be honest: I hate this game. The story is uninteristing and badly executed, the gameplay is very flawed and at times boring and the presentation is not exactly stellar.

Final Grade:  5.5/10

Fortunately we still had one more masterpiece coming our way after this game. Join me next time when i review the sadly underrated Final Fantasy IX. See you next time ;)

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy VII

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


After Nintendo announced that the N64 would still be using cartridges, Square panicked. Sakaguchi's plans for the next game wouldn't be possible to accomplish with that format, not to mention cartridges are more expensive to produce than discs. Square had no choice but to cut ties with Nintendo and make a deal with Sony. Using CD technology, Final Fantasy VII broke new ground by seamlessly integrating FMV footage with gameplay models and using pre-rendered backgrounds as a way to disguise the console's limitations, thus creating a never before seen cinematic experience in a videogame. Before this game was made, Sakaguchi's mother had died and that's reflected in his input in the story, which he created together with his work colleague Tesuya Nomura. Besides the series' usual themes of war, nature and friendship, FFVII is a story of life and becoming part of something grander in the afterlife. It was acclaimed as a masterpiece when it came out and its popularity brought the JRPG genre into the mainstream. Let's see how it fares after 15 years shall we?

The Story:

Like I said above, this is a story about life and spirituality. It is also the first story in the series that takes place in a modern sci-fi fantasy setting. It tells the story of a group of rebels fighting a company named Shinra that's sucking mako energy (the primary energy source in this world) from within the planet (don't worry, the environmental message doesn't beat you over the head). Among them is a mercenary that used to work for Shinra, but left for mysterious reasons. The story of this game is fantastic and the characters are very complex. Definitely the most complex and mature plot the series has ever told. I have only one gripe with it: The script. For the most part it's very good, sometimes even brilliant, but there are also some grammatical errors that are actually pretty stupid. Also, why so much swearing? To make it feel mature? Reminds me of a certain other game that does it, except it's a million times worse. I don't mind swearing at all, but there are two characters that basically swear all the time and it gets old very fast.

Despite those problems, this is still a fantastic story with fantastic characters.

9/10


The Gameplay:

This game takes the gameplay from the previous games and adds its own new mechanics to it. We once again have a huge world map to explore with lots of stuff to do in it. It's basically the same structure, so let's talk about the new stuff.

First, the good: Our development system this time around is the "Materia System". In this world, magic, summons and abilities are only possible through these small spheres of condensed mako energy. There are five types of materia: Magic, Summon, Command (which gives you extra battle commands), Support (which adds certain effects to other materia) and Independent (which gives you abilities like "Cover"). You equip these materia in your equipment to gain their abilities and make them grow. As you win ability points in battle, your materia levels up and with that comes new abilities. Characters don't actually learn anything; each materia does, so you need to always mind equipped materia. Eventually, the materia will level up to its maximum, and as a result, it will create another materia of the same name, which means hard working players are rewarded for all their work. At first, the fact that you can only equip one weapon, one armlet and an acessory might turn off series veterans, but then you will learn that each piece of equipment has a materia growing rate of either normal (1x), double or none. This forces the player to equip the right equipment when leveling materia up. Another great addition to the gameplay is the now famous limit breaks. Each time a character gets damaged, his limit bar will fill according to the damage taken, and when it's full, the characters can perform special powerful attacks unique to each character. It's a neat addition that hepls to prevent the materia from taking away each character's sense of identity.

Now, the bad: My only gripe with the gameplay is the controls. Exploring the fully three-dimensional environments with the D-Pad is awkward at times. True, when this game was being developed, the Sony Controller still didn't have analog sticks, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a problem.

Overall, the gameplay is fantastic. It has everything that was great in the previous games.

9/10


The Music:

Just like the game itself, Uematsu takes the typical FF OST formula and takes it in a new direction. Certain tracks have a rock sound to them and the instrumentation is slightly different than previous games in the series. The result is a fantastic soundtrack with everything a FF OST should have with a fresh feel to it. One of the best soundtracks ever created for a game.

10/10


The Graphics:

Like I said before, this game uses CG movies and pre-rendered backgrounds to create a seamless cinematic experience. By today's standards, it's nothing special, but it was groundbreaking for its time. It should be noted that Yoshitaka Amano didn't design the characters this time, since Sakaguchi thought that Tetsuya Nomura's manga style would fit the modern setting better. This allowed for some great artwork, but since this game was made back when PS1 games had really blocky character models, the characters look really weird outside battles, where the character models are way better.

The monster design is also very creative. The graphics haven't aged well, but there's still great eye candy in there.

8/10


Overall this is a fantastic game. I don't think it's the best in the series like many others but i can see why people would think that.

Final Grade: 9/10

Join me next time when i review the first Final Fantasy that divided the fans: FFVIII. See you then ;)

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy VI

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first.


After five games, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, Square gave us Final Fantasy VI. For the first time, Hironobu Sakaguchi was just producing and directorial duties were shared by Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito.  It recieved universal acclaim from both critics and fans and it's still considered by many classic fans (including me) to be the best in the series. It's the first game in the series that had a perfect blend of the three main elements of the Final Fantasy series: story, combat and exploration. Let's dive right in:

The Story:

This game tells the story of a world ruled by an emperor who's hunting Espers (This game's summon creatures) and plans on using their power to conquer everything. A woman named Tina (or Terra if you prefer the official American name) that can use magic and was being controlled by the empire for their evil biddings is rescued by a resistance group and joins them in trying to stop the empire. It's more complicated than that, though. As we progress in the game we learn about the past of our main characters and their motivations. The story in this game is absolutely wonderful. It's an epic tale of romance, tragedy, war and even death. It can get very emotional at times but also has its scary moments (There's a sidequest in a haunted mansion that has a quite scary atmosphere, for instance) and its funny moments.

Overall, it's an excellent story with fantastic characters.

10/10


The Gameplay:

This game takes the gameplay from FFIV and adds a lot to it. The world map is the biggest one yet and has a lot of secrets and side-quests to find. You can also equip up to two relics - acessories that give you extra abilities - per character, which gives you more freedom to customize them. But what really elevates the gameplay into absolute greatness is the new "Magicite System". In this world, there are magical stones called magicite that have the power of espers inside. By equipping them, characters get the ability to summon the esper of each stone once per battle and also can learn spells. Each time you finish a battle, you recieve magic points, which are then multiplied depending on the spell's learning rate. For example, the "Ramuh" magicite teaches Thunder at a rate of x10, Poison at a rate of x5 and Thundara at a rate of x2. If you get 1 magic point in battle, Thunder gets 10 points, Poison gets 5 and Thundara gets 2. When a spell reaches the 100 MP mark, it is learned and can be cast without the magicite equipped. You also have to mind that each magicite boosts a particular stat every time a character levels up. For example, when you level up with "Ifrit" equipped, your "Strength" stat will increase by one more unit than normal. By equipping certain magicite stones on each character, the player can control how each character grows. It's an excellent system that manages to stay acessible despite its complexity.

Other noteworthy things are that there are a lot of characters you can recruit for your team - more than any other game in the series. All of them have their own unique combat commands like "Steal" or "Mimic".

Overall, the gameplay is fantastic. It really feels like the culmination of the work done in the five previous games thanks to how it puts everything that was great about them into one game.

10/10


The Music:

The soundtrack of this game is one of the best of all time. Every track is either catchy, efficiently emotional, epic or very memorable. The standout tracks are the main theme and the final boss theme, which are amazing. This soundtrack may quite possibly be Uematsu's masterpiece.

10/10


The Graphics:

The graphics are also amazing. They push the SNES to its limits by giving us environments with a huge scope and detail never before seen in the series. The animations also reach new levels of detail and help give the well-designed characters life. The highlight of the visual presentation, however, is the monster and boss design. Tetsuya Nomura joined the battle design directing team for this game and it definitely helped to improve things. The monster design is extremely creative and gives place to a lot of  "Wow, that thing looks awesome" moments. Quite possibly the best monster design I've seen in a JRPG.

10/10

Overall, Final Fantasy VI is a gaming masterpiece. It perfectly blends gameplay and story into an unforgettable experience that any fan of JRPGs should not miss.

Final Grade: 10/10

Join me next time when we enter the PSX era and tackle the Final Fantasy that needs no introduction to anyone: Final Fantasy VII. I'll see you all then ;) .

Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary Reviews: Final Fantasy V

If you don't know the rules of these reviews please read this first


After sucessfully bringing the series into the 16-bit era, Square decided to go back to the "Light Warriors" story formula and even bring back the job system from Final Fantasy III. It's a very good game that constantly walks the thin line between "great" and "very good" because of some serious problems. Let's take a look:

The Story:

As I said before, this game goes back to the "Light Warriors versus Darkness" formula and it's the last and also the best use of that formula in the whole series. It starts with our protagonist Bartz, who's a traveler that lives his life freely riding his chocobo called Boco. One day, a meteor falls in a forest near where he's camping and he goes there to investigate. He finds a young girl named Lenna and an old man named Galuf who are trying to get to the Wind Shrine, which is apparently in danger. After meeting a pirate leader called Faris, they eventually reach the shrine, where they find out that they have been chosen by the crystals as the Light Warriors. The Wind Crystal gives them the ability to switch jobs at will and sends them on a mission to save the other crystals, because if they get destroyed the earth will fall out of balance. The story is great, mostly because of the characters. All of the main four characters have very well defined personalities and are well developed and the secondary cast is also very good. Even Boco gets a chance to shine as a character. My only problem is the villain. He wants to destroy the world because he's just evil and that's how he rolls. This would be fine in the NES games, but after FFIV it feels lacking.

Overall it's a good story with great characters.

7/10


The Gameplay:

This game takes the FFIV gameplay, fixes the "front row and back row" and inventory problems(Thank You) and adds a reimagined version of FFIII's job system.

First, the good: Thanks to the return of the job system, you now have a lot of control over your party's development. Each time you finish a battle, you get Ability points, which are basically Exp points for jobs. Each time a job levels up, you learn an ability that allows you to do something normally exclusive to that job while in other jobs. For example, if you level up your "Black Mage" job, you get the "Black" ability, which, if you equip it to a character, he/she can then cast black magic even if his/her current job is White Mage. You can only equip one ability at a time (Unless you get the best job in the game that allows 3 abilities at a time) so the player has to choose each character's job and ability to form the best party for each situation. This was also the first game in the series where you could equip acessories or relics as they were called in the SNES era. These are optional equipment items that give you an extra ability like preventing your character from status ailments.

Now, the bad: My big problem with this system is that it lacks limitations. Correct me if i'm wrong, but don't the "White" and "Black" abilities kind of make the "Red Mage" job useless? My point is that these abilities render most of the different jobs useless since you can just learn their abilities and never have to use those jobs again. This should be called the ability system because it's really more about the abilities, not the actual jobs. Also, some of these abilities are overpowered. There's an ability that allows a character to physically attack a monster  four times in a single turn. Talk about holding the player's hand. The "capacity points" limitation is also gone, which means you can just switch jobs all the time if you want. My biggest problem is that you don't even have to be careful with how you level up. Every time you switch jobs, the character's stats immediately change accordingly so that you'll never have to worry about switching someone raised as a mage to a knight. All of these factors I just mentioned make the game disappointingly easy. This wouldn't be so bad if the battle difficulty was designed accordingly, but it isn't, as the monsters and bosses only get tough in the last third of the game. The main reason why I loved the job system in FFIII is because its limitations forced me to be smart and use the job system carefully.

Overall, though, the gameplay is still good. Despite the serious balance issues, the new job system still gives you a lot of control over character development.

6/10


The Music:

After two masterpieces, Uematsu falls back into "great" territory with this soundtrack. There are a lot of fantastic tracks, but some are kind of forgettable. It's still a great soundtrack that's more than up to the series standards, though.

8/10

The Graphics:

This game takes the graphical style of FFIV and adds a lot of detail to the environments. Monster design also reaches a new level of creativity. After being a debugger in FFIV, Tetsuya Nomura (Considered nowadays a Square legend) joined the monster design team. We also of course get more great character designs from Yoshitaka Amano (Reprising his role from the four previous games) and fantastic animations, resulting in a great looking game.

9/10

Overall, Final Fantasy V is a very good game brought down by unbalanced gameplay and a very low difficulty level.

Final Grade: 7.5/10

Join me next time when we take a look at the highest point of the series: Final Fantasy VI.