Final Fantasy Adventures

This February, I got an email from Green Man Gaming that included a special deal: pre-purchase Final Fantasy XV PC edition for just $40! As a PC Gamer / Nintendo fanboy with a long-time love of Final Fantasy, I had watched reviews and gameplay videos of Final Fantasy XV on the PS4 and Xbox One with a nearly obsessive jealousy, so I jumped on it. I added it to Steam and then waited three weeks for it to finally unlock on March 6th. That day, I came home and opened up Steam to find the game already installed and waiting for me. I was very excited. I clicked PLAY and got ready to start my adventure.

Except, my adventure started and then abruptly ended with the Black Screen of Death, the younger cousin to the infamous Blue Screen of Death. It turns out that my PC doesn't meet the minimum requirements. My only choice, of course, was to go spend $200+ upgrading my PC to just barely be able to meet the requirements. Or was it?

My misadventure with FFXV coincided with my recent discovery of the Retronauts podcast. I had somehow missed this awesome podcast and had been injecting myself with a steady overdose of retro gaming nostalgia. Literally the same day of the FFXV PC launch (mislaunch in my case), I had listened to their episode on Final Fantasy V. Like most Americans my age, I had originally missed FFV. Final Fantasy I had come out on the NES a few years after it came out in Japan, but Nintendo then decided that Americans weren't going to be prepared for the difficulty and complexity of the next two Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES, aka the Nintendo Family Computer) titles in the series. So, Americans wouldn't get another Final Fantasy game until the Super Famicom's Final Fantasy IV came to the American SNES as Final Fantasy II, which was actually simplified for American players. Then when the fifth game came out in Japan, Nintendo again decided that Americans just weren't ready for it, so we didn't get another Final Fantasy until VI, or III as it was known here.

This game is NOT a Final Fantasy game, guys.

I had actually first heard of Final Fantasy when I got my SNES in 1993 along with Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest. Mystic Quest was an overly simplified Final Fantasy game designed from the ground-up for American players and actually released here before it was released in Japan. The story is pretty standard NES Final Fantasy fare: there are some important crystals and some bad guys have taken them, so generic fantasy hero dude has to go find them. The combat and party system are very reminiscent of Dragon Quest 2 but the game itself is mostly very easy, though I never could manage to beat it as a kid. But my real introduction to Final Fantasy was two years later, when my best friend, Beau, brought over his copy of Final Fantasy III, the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI. This has ended up being one of my top five favorite games ever (stay tuned for that list in a future post). I would talk to you about it forever, but then who couldn't? Everyone loves FF6, right?

So, anyway, here I am, disappointed that I can't play Final Fantasy XV, receiving the blessing of my awesome wife to spend $200+ upgrading my computer, and the next podcast that comes up in my feed is talking about Final Fantasy V, a game that I've never played but which I have a copy of sitting in the drawer next to my TV. Several years ago, I had bought a whole bunch of Final Fantasy games for the PS1 and then proceeded to not play any of them. In all my years of loving Final Fantasy, I had only gotten maybe halfway through I, perhaps 2 hours into IV, beaten VI three or four times, a disc or so into both VII and VIII, not even 2 hours into X, and spent probably over 100 hours in Tactics building crazy parties and then never even coming close to actually beating the game itself. The podcast and the situation came together just right and I decided to give FFV a go.

Man, am I glad that I did. I'll post about it more once I've beaten it, but I'm currently about 10 hours into the game and absolutely loving it. The story is fine, though nothing to really write home about. But the mechanics! Oh, the glorious mechanics! Job systems like Tactics (introduced in III, but I haven't played that) but with static characters with their own backstories and silly, anime hair. Airships and ridable Chocobos and dragons! Dragons! This game is awesome, and I can't wait to tell you all about it. So, stay tuned, and if you have a copy, play along.

Later.