Inexplicable Video Game Review: Final Fantasy III / VI

Everyone (and by everyone, I mean nerds) has a favorite Final Fantasy game, or if you're like me and you've played all of them multiple times, a grouping of games that you tend to prefer. However, I will say that there is a clear winner to me when it comes to being amazed and wowed by a game - Final Fantasy VI, the second American release for the series on the Super Nintendo.

A note to those casual gamers and light fans of the series - The numbering and naming makes little sense. All of the games are called Final Fantasy, which is comical because we're into a 13th installment now, and the first game came out in 1987. The first game came out for the NES then, followed by two more NES games that weren't released in America. Therefore, the next American game was called Final Fantasy II, even though it was really the fourth installment, and came out for the SNES. Square then inexplicably skipped releasing the fifth game in the states, and the sixth was released instead... and called Final Fantasy III.

Things finally got to "normal" with Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation, but this is a relative term with Square. Past games were ported for release on new systems, and the American numbering system was completely abandoned. Also, all of this applies to just the main series with the numbers - There is still plenty of chicanery going on with Square's side games. For example, there is a tactical RPG called Final Fantasy Tactics that I love. What was the successor to that game called? Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, since it came out for the Game Boy Advance. There is also the incredibly shitty Final Fantasy Mystic Quest that's final boss can be beaten by Cure spells, spin-off games from the main series like Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy: Dissidia, and legitimate Japanese series (Seiken Densetsu and SaGa) that were slapped with the Final Fantasy label for the initial American releases (Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend).

Basically, Square is pretty fucked up when it comes to naming. However, getting back to the topic at hand, Final Fantasy VI definitely made the biggest impression on me upon its initial release. The tight but flexible gameplay and bright, colorful visuals in a genre normally known more for text helped separate it from any other game of the time. While the story tends to get overrated - II has a much better narrative - the characters are pretty distinct, which is impressive when 14 of them are playable.

I'll add that my most vigorous complaint about the game comes with people who insist that it is non-linear. Yes, the second half of the game is open-ended when it comes to recruiting your party, but hints are still offered about a preferred order, and you HAVE to recruit at least Celes, Edgar and Setzer. (Stupid effing Setzer.) It's not like there is another ending, and the order you recruit people in has no effect on dialogue, except for minor instances. Also, unless you have a craving for a more difficult game, you're going to recruit at least 12 character anyway to beat the final dungeon.

One thing I've loved about the game is how many bugs and little tricks are in it, many of which have only been recently discovered. For example, did you know that you can make the entire game crash by having an empty party? Did you know that if you only have three party members, you can recruit Shadow in Kohlingen and bring him to the opera? (Note: He leaves, of course.) Did you know you can play large portions of the game without Celes? And if you have the GBA version of the game, you can easily maximize your character stats via a level reset glitch.

Dear NES, how did I ever beat anything on you?

Back in the day, I used to be a voracious devourer of video games. (To some extent, I still am; this entry is significantly delayed because I was powering through the end of Final Fantasy: Dissidia.) Of course, my first game was Super Mario Brothers, followed closely by Duck Hunt and World Class Track Meet, since all three were on the same cartridge. This game was so prevalent that used game stores refused to even give you $1 for it, and actively turned me away when I just tried to give them my copy.

From an age I can't even remember, to about 16 or 17 (when the pursuit of and mostly failure of getting girls took over), I played anything I could get my hands on, with an emphasis on RPGs and adventures. At this point, I had a NES, Game Boy, SNES, N64 and PSX (in roughly that order), and once I hit 18 I picked up a PSX and Genesis on the cheap. I picked up a PS2 my senior year of high school, and this carried me all the way through college.

However, reflecting back on all of this gaming, two questions sprung to mind. The first is relatively minor - How the heck was I ever exposed to a NES in the first place? I dimly recall that my friend Brian had a NES, along with a couple dozen games, but I also remember that I also had one at this point because I would always try to borrow games from him. (Back in the day, the only way to get new games was to shell out $50 for them, bum them from friends, rent them from Stop and Shop, or look through the classifieds. Funcoland wasn't around in Rhode Island until I was 17 or 18.)

I have no other memories of my early gaming, except that it happened, and that one night my day snuck a rental copy of Super Mario Brothers 2 in under his coat, which I had been nuts about playing. Its release date was October 1988, meaning I was around 4 or 5 at the time.

Secondly: How the heck did I ever actually beat any of these old RPGs and adventure games? I did have a subscription to Nintendo Power, but only for a couple years. The Super C issue was my first in May / June 1990, and I never even owned that game. I'm positive that the magazine helped me through some tricky parts in Castlevania 2, and it and my parents helped me with Shadowgate. (Incidentally, this is the only game they both ever got really into. My mom played and beat the original Dragon Warrior, which came free with Nintendo Power for a little bit.)

However, I distinctly recall beating Zelda 2 on my own, which required doing esoteric things like finding magic to turn yourself into a fairy to get through certain keyholes. The same thing happened for Zelda 1, although my aunt did show me how to use bombs. (Give me a break - I was like 5.)

The later Dragon Warrior games? All me, with no help from guides or Nintendo Power, and in the case of the second one, no instruction manual. The third one did contain a nice little guide in it, but it was fairly linear anyway. The second one was a monstrous ordeal, where you basically had to sail your little ship around the world and hope you didn't accidentally land on an island way too tough for you.

Past the NES generation, games began to self-regulate and clean up their act a bit. While you could get stuck in Final Fantasy 2/4 if you didn't play for a long time, and thus forget what your current task was, generally the people in your party could tip you off. The same thing goes for the third installment, which was also much more linear than people want to claim. This gameplay clarity made it a lot more frustrating when a game was a throwback, like Breath of Fire 2, which had plodding pacing and randomly made you use characters that sucked (looking in your direction, Sten and Jean).

Writing orgy

[Left] This picture doesn't have anything to do with anything, but I enjoy it. Maybe you will too.

At times, I'll just go into ridiculous writing sprees. The fact that I'm working a fairly easy slacker job at a driving range right now helps – I sit around for three or four hours, so unless I want to stare out at the grass, it leaves plenty of time for typing, reading or writing by hand. (Yes, I still do that from time to time.)

In a way, the lack of Internet is a good thing, because it forces me to be productive. I sometimes liken myself to Bill James, the baseball statistics pioneer who worked long hours as a security guard. When I read about that, my mind immediately thought, “So he was like me, and had plenty of down time to just sit around and think about baseball statistics.”

When I'm at the range, I am ridiculously productive, and I'm not sure why. As an example, in the previous three hours, I've typed 2,500 words. Most of these words were for three professional pieces that I'll actually be paid for and that people will actually read considering me a “professional” as they read it. That statistic doesn't include this entry, whose 200 words (as of this sentence) I typed in about five minutes.

However, these sprees lead to tremendous lows, and I'm not entirely sure why. For example, when I'm at home I'll often just stare at the empty Word screen for a minute or two, and then immediately find something else to busy myself with. Sometimes, it is in a productive way, such as playing a video game that I'll review later, moderating and posting at the Adam Carolla Show message board, or catching up on some decent journalism at Slate.com. But often, it's just sloth and wasteful on my part – Replaying Final Fantasy 4 or Earthbound for the 700th time, reading on Wikipedia about the X-Men, picking through Roger Ebert's archive for reviews on films I've already seen.

As I just suggested, these moments make me feel a bit slothful and wasteful, but should they? They sort of provide a subconscious reinforcement of my existing thought pattern and generate thoughts for my “idea bank,” for lack of a better term. If my writing and blog entries are full of random wanderings that people seem to enjoy, should I be trying to curb that rambling instinct in what I do in my “free” time?

... This is a sort of abrupt place to end an entry, since I normally go much longer, but that's the extent of my thoughts on the matter. I suppose I should start typing new. But maybe I'll play a game of Tetris instead. (See what I did there?)