I realize I've been blowing through these games. In part I think that's because, as someone who has lived through the evolution of the genre, I've got a better handle on how games like these work - like that it's good to dump a bunch of gil on potions to heal up between fights, for example. I've also been pretty good at recognizing how certain enemies work - a number of "Grenade" enemies, I discovered, would detonate after taking any lightning damage and destroy not just themselves but also all the other monsters you're fighting, making fights with them trivial (as long as you could survive long enough for someone to get their spell off). Similarly, I figured out fairly early on in one of the last dungeons that some enemies would essentially get the "Confuse" effect if you hit them with lightning, so I could make those encounters a lot easier.
As I said with my first post about the game, IV seems like the first Final Fantasy game that really feels like what I've come to expect from the genre. There were gestures toward something approaching a plot in II and III, but here we've got characters that have arcs, a decent amount of levity (though also some darkness - darkness that the game, in its final act, seems to kind of take back).
The Active Time Battle system certainly takes getting used to - I definitely spent some of the early game gawking at the screen when I had characters ready to go.
I also think that, much as I had wished in the previous entries, there are fewer random encounters, but they feel more impactful. This does mean that my healer (primarily Rosa by the end) is getting a real workout. That said, it also feels like the spellcasters have a deep enough MP pool that you can generally cast a spell on each turn, and it only starts to feel limiting in big marathon areas (though with save points where you can pop a Tent or a Cottage in most dungeons, even this isn't such a bad thing).
Essentially, of this run of the entire series, IV is clearly the best game so far, but naturally one has to recognize that they needed the first three to get to this one.
I do suspect technical capabilities played a role in making a more sophisticated game as well - I don't know what the data capacity of an SNES cartridge is like compared to that of an NES one, but I suspect there was more room for dialogue, which naturally helps flesh out the characters.
Indeed, I've marveled at the amount of music in FF7 Rebirth, and I think that's in large part due to the fact that we've gotten to a point where it's not a terrible burden to have a 100GB game. Audio, comparatively speaking, is minuscule, so the challenge is not fitting it in, but producing it in the first place.
Anyway, I'm at a point where I'm pretty sure I can go to the game's final dungeon, but I have a number of side quests to take care of. One might be moot - looking it up online (sue me) it seems the point of going to one of them is to discover that a character you thought was dead is alive, but I've already seen the guy. The other is largely to enhanced Rydia's summoning capabilities - getting extra summons like Leviathan and eventually Bahamut (I went through a later dungeon where I had to fight through three Behemoths - easily some of the hardest enemies I've fought in the game - only to discover that I hadn't done the necessary prerequisite quest).
After this, I know that V re-introduces the Job System as seen in III, but I'm told implements it better (Here's what I'd love to see: make it less of a pain to level up a new job, don't give us jobs at the end of the game that make all the previous ones irrelevant, and maybe limit what jobs certain characters can choose - I'd love to see, say, a character who only gets to pick offensive spellcasting Jobs or one who's all tanky, melee-focused ones, to retain something of a personality).
Of course, this is all building to VI, which seems to be in contention with VII as the best of the series. That one I have played a bit of, and I'm excited to see how it feels.
And, if I feel up to it, I might get whatever latest remaster of the original VII is available. Naturally, I've got a bit of a sense of that one having played through the two existing thirds of the Remake trilogy, but it would be cool to see the original "text."
No comments:
Post a Comment