Final Fantasy Turns 20

1up has a massive quartet of features up this week, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Final Fantasy series. Starting with 'Origins', the site looks at the beginning of the series, an event that was supposed to spell 'the end' for Square. The company lived on, of course, and in 'Everyone's Fantasies' series author Nadia Oxford looks at the rise of the Final Fantasy dynasty going from 8-bit obscurity to the 'mega-fame' of FFVII. Her final piece in the set 'Fertile Fantasy', examines how Square/Enix is now franchising the heck out of the name. To wrap up with 'Future Fantasy', Jeremy Parish looks at the staggering fifteen games with the FF brand due out in the next year. "Even if all of Fabula Nova Crystalis slips to 2009, that's still one title per month -- and we haven't even seen what's on the roster in the way of announcements for the new year. Clearly, Final Fantasy is going strong, but Square Enix's franchising efforts may be doing as much harm as good; of those 15 titles, only one is a new 'true' Final Fantasy game. True, the series has always supported its share of spin-offs -- even blatant name-whoring back in the Game Boy days. Still, we can't help but worry that the Final Fantasy name is being spread a bit too thin; if Square Enix really hopes to keep the series alive for another 20 years or more, they'll need to reconsider what the name Final Fantasy really means."

Four white mages...

...'nuff said.

Re:Four white mages...

FF1 is a great game. Anyone who likes older console games and hasn't played through it should. It's kinda hard though, harder than later members of the series at least.

Here's a breakdown:

- Run away. The dungeons are hard. (especially the marsh cave - the first real dungeon, the ice cave, the fiend of wind's dungeon(s) and the final castle) There are a small handful of really efficient places to level up. When you aren't actively leveling up, you should run from just about everything. Once you have protection from death effects and reusable healing items, you can be more lax with this, but in general run away. This, by the way, is what the much-maligned Thief is useful for; he's got the best chance of getting away. But in practice, the fighter, red mage, and black belt get away about as often.

- Starting right after you get your first orb lit up, keep 99 heal potions at all time. The game lacks effective healing (except for 3 vital items you find in the late game) so you'll want to have access to the at most 2970 points of healing the potions offer. However, white magic isn't all that great. It's pretty viable to not have any healing except potions.

- Here's where to level up: until level 8 or so, walk around outside towns. After level 8, make sure you have Fire 2 and ideally Harm 2, and go to the tip of a little peninsula east of the second town. There's hard but not too hard monsters that will give you 600-1000 XP per encounter; just be sure to nuke the frost wolves a.s.a.p. Later, there's recurring undead on a square in the waterfall, and once you have ProRings, the Eye at the end of the Ice cave can be fought again and again. Much much later, the vampires on the penultimate floor of the final level are the fastest way to reach levels 30-50.

- Though it lacks flavor, the party of 2 fighters and 2 red mages is so good as to be something of an easy mode. Black and white magic are both kind of underpowered, and having a team that can all take punches makes up for not getting Harm, Heal, and Nuke. Make sure you don't skip Fast, Invs2, Exit, all the Cures, all the Fires (for undead, the other attack spells aren't nearly as important). Life and the aElement defense spells are pretty good. Everything else is either useless or good only in a specific fight (e.g. sleep against the pirates) or is available too late (aRub). Really black magic sucks in the game. It's useful against a handful of obnoxious encounters with massed enemies, but not so much against any of the bosses. Red mages much better than black mages.

- If you do want a black and white mage instead, I'd still put a second fighter in as #2. The first two positions absorb the lion's share of attacks, and having both get to wear full armor is amazingly useful. The upgraded thief gets almost as good of armor as the knight and he can cast Fast, so a thief is a pretty viable option. Black belts only get better than fighters at the very highest levels, and they have the most boring upgrade. Red mages aren't really strong enough to stand in position #2; it'll be hard to keep a second-in-command red wizard alive in the final dungeon.

- Use the floater in the desert southeast of the volcano. If there's a clue to do this that's placed in the game, I've missed it. I think everything else can be figured out by talking to people.

- Use attack magic to kill enemies that have ugly mass attacks or instant death effects. Hit bosses with swords.

- Don't throw away magic items just to keep lousy helmets and shields on non-knight/ninja characters. You want a fire item, a harm item, a lit item, 2 or (much better) 3 heal items, and the white shirt.

- Speaking of items, the swords and armor that are extra strong against certain elements or types of enemies don't actually have any effect. There's a patch out there for the ROM that will enable this feature. It's worth seeking out, as Square *did* intend the Dragon sword to be good against Dragons etc. But if you don't use it, don't hold o

!Final

What's sad is that 20 years later, FF1 is still the best. With the possible exception of FF Tactics.

Upcoming Final Fantasy DS Games

I'm looking forward to seeing our favorite spoony bard in 3D for Final Fantasy IV. I'll buy Tactics Advance 2 only if the plotline doesn't pander to the 12 year old crowd. Us 20-somethings play the DS too - just look at the success of Hotel Dusk.

Amazing Series

I completely missed most of the history of the FF games until recently. I pretty much thought they were just the same games made over and over again with better graphics each gen. But now that I've started playing a range of the games going all the way back to the first two I can see why the series is so wildly successful, IMO. Even though there are many recurring aspects Square keeps reinventing the series in major ways each new generation. I was shocked to see the large range different gameplay mechanics that have been employed over the years.

It is going to take a long, long to catch up to the rest of the FF fans who've been playing the series for so long. Can't wait for FFXIII to see what Square can do with a 50 gig BluRay disc, standard harddrive, and a machine as powerful as the PS3.

HOWTO: Final Fantasy Fan

Feeling left out from the Final Fantasy lovefest? Regretting you never played any of the games? No problem just follow these easy steps to get you up to speed in any FF thread:

1) Pick a FF game between 1-12 - This is your BEST FF EVAR!!! title. Make a note of it.
2) Pick a DIFFERENT FF game between 1-12 - This is your WORST FF EVAR!!!. Make a note of it.
3) Pick one or more random reasons why your random choice from 1) is the ONLY TRUE CHOICE. Best battle system, greatest story, best characters are good picks.
4) Pick one or more random reasons why your random choice from 2) is the COMPLETE GARBAGE. Worst battle system, worst story, worst characters are good picks.

You are now ready to jump into any FF thread on any message board on the net.

Have fun!

PS. Don't hold back! Never be afraid you are 'going too far' or are being a bit 'over the top' with your FF comments. Feel free to savage mercilessly anyone who dares to not hold your exact same, randomly, picked FF favorites choices...

Damn I'm old...

I remember playing the first FF, but really didn't get into it until FF 3 I think. That and the Dragon Warrior series got a lot of playtime on my Nintendo. I remember how bummed I was when Dragon Warrior 3 I think it was messed up and lost my saved game. Made me so mad, I quit playing those types of games until the Playstation came out with memory cards.

Great Memories

I've been a gamer for almost 3 decades now, but in 1987 I played Final Fantasy 1, and that game I hold responsible for inspiring me to aim my career towards the game industry (something I've since built my career out of successfuly).

I hold that first NES FF game responsible for the direction my whole life took, so there's some serious gravity to this series for a person like myself. The series has undergone many changes, but I don't know if there will ever be a point in my life where I can't appreciate it on some, purely nostalgic level for that reason. :)

Still the best

While not quite the original console jRPG, it's still, in my opinion, the absolute best, and continues to try to change and improve, in some fashion, with every subsequent entry. While many argue whether these attempts are successful, I think it is evident that, although the series is being milked, there is at least a fundamental attempt to make each game new and fresh.

Yeah, there's nothing hugely revolutionary in this post. Just thought I'd offer it before the "OMFG JRPGS SUCK PLAY MASS EFFECT" starts.

Final Fantasy series

I've enjoyed the Final Fantasy series quite a bit over the series. I'm no fanboy of the games but a few of them have interesting characters and a semi-decent plot. Others have pretty fun gameplay, unfortunately these don't meet very often in the series, but a lot of them are worth playing. I even enjoyed FFX-2 simply for the hyper fast battle system and the classes available (yes, you can turn off the magic dress changing sequences). I think my favorite of the bunch is FFX, a solid story and some very fun gameplay that's been ripped off a bunch since. I think my least favorite may well be FFXI, as that left me with a very bad taste in my mouth that I can still gag up every once in a while.

I'm sure this series will still be around in twenty years, but they'll probably only be on something like FF17 by then considering the development cost and times on these games is consistently near the highs of the industry. Twelve mainline games in twenty years seems awfully quick looking back.

8 bit obscurity?

Ok, when FF debuted, 8 bit was IT. The NES was only a couple years old, and a massive hit. Final Fantasy was Square's bet-the-house gamble, and it was a smash hit. It was THE seminal RPG for computing platforms. It solidified game systems and computers as the next great frontier for role playing games, relegating tabletop games to a mere niche in comparison. It singlehandedly saved Square, and yet again made the NES the must-have system. It was one of the top selling games on the top selling system, and changed the game (no pun intended) almost overnight for competitors. How the hell is that obscure?

Pass it on

After 20 years, there's a whole generation who may not have even heard of the earlier some of the Final Fantasy games. With the holiday's approaching (or here, or never coming, depending on who's above you), now'd be the perfect time to pass it on to the next generation. Hop over to eBay and yoink a copy of FFVII and Tactics, and a used Playstation, and put it under someone's holiday-specific-gift-covering-item. =)

1Up is not the be all and end all

So there are other web sites out there doing good FF history stuff. Look at GameTrailer's Final Fantasy Retrospective [gametrailers.com]. It's not 20th anniversary, but whatever. It describes in video and narrative pretty well every FF game there is. Disclaimer: I actually like FFXI and I prefer the Tales series and more importantly, the DQ series

Fantasy of Finality

Contrary to the mods' opinions, this is actually a good point.

The title "Final Fantasy" is another example of Engrish. The Japanese meaning of the title is "Fantasy of Finality," as in, each game is a story about the end of the world being thwarted by a small band of misfits.

Re:Fantasy of Finality

What nonsense. Hironobu Sakaguchi chose that name because Square was nearly bankrupt in 87, so he expected their next game to be the last.

Re:Fantasy of Finality

The title "Final Fantasy" is another example of Engrish. The Japanese meaning of the title is "Fantasy of Finality,"

OK, you've intrigued me. How can the title have a Japanese meaning when *it's not in Japanese!* (Yes, the game has the same English title in Japan. No, it's never had a Japanese title).

Chris Mattern

Re:A long-running series...

Should we get off your lawn now?

In all seriousness, I disagree. The FF series is still damn good, and in fact, I consider the post-VI entries to be far stronger than the pre-VI entries.

Re:Square-Enix

Rereleasing games on newer platforms with updates is a great trend that more publishers should pick up on. Why the $^%$# doesn't somebody release an updated X-Com? Or fix up Planescape Torment so a new generation of console owners can experience it?

These are known good games. That's a valuable thing. The only thing they have to do is clean up the graphics and interface, and they have a hit.

On a related note: I'm playing Fire Emblem on the Wii. Best Wii game out so far, in my opinion; it caught me by surprise, because I've never played a fire emblem game before. I went back and dug up some Fire Emblem roms for the SNES emulator, and it is amazing how untouched the gameplay really is. The core of a game is timeless.

Re:Square-Enix

Actually, it is "Square Enix" (or more accurately "SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD.") according to their own website [square-enix.com].

Re:And after all this time...

So have you ever watched a movie you liked? If not you're not normal. If so, then you appreciate the type of artform that Square's cutscene heavy games convey. Some RPGs are utterly egotistical, where everything is about gratifying the player. But many japanese games are just telling a story, and you get to act out parts of the story. It's just a matter of taste, but obviously the final fantasy series has contributed a lot to the world. I think it's very weird to be completely put of by the idea of FF games. FF12 didn't even have a main player for you to pretend to be, and that was odd, but kinda cool. I think it's better than the world of warcraft style game, where you pursue bettering your character as though that's worth something. Games should end, stories should revolve around ideas and characters that are unlike the player. At least, that's my preference.

I hate movies, generally, but I also hate the total opposite. FF games aren't super great or anything, but I appreciate the hybrid.