Back and on the offensive

Getting back on the blogwagon should be interesting. This summer will hopefully afford me as much time for reading and writing as I want it to, so long as I make a point of doing that writing. But enough about me, it’s time to go on the offensive.

I saw this article from GamesRadar and decided to give it a read. Certainly, everyone has an opinion about games they feel don’t deserve accolades, but why vocalize my own when I have columnists on fancy-schmancy gaming news sites to do it for me?

I vehemently agreed, however, with the final page of the article (link here or those of you who don’t want to click through all seven pages) where they nominate Final Fantasy 7 as the top game that doesn’t deserve nostalgia. And why might I vehemently agree? My own tortured relationship with the Final Fantasy series will provide the explanation.

I’m unashamedly a user of emulation and ROMs, particularly from the SNES era. When told I would have to shell out $70 for a copy of Chrono Trigger (and this was around the turn of the century, it’s probably worse now, scary as the thought is) I turned to…well, underground resources. And that’s what gave me the first taste of Final Fantasy. FF6, FF5, and FF4 were all explored in quick measure, with 6’s rock-solid magic system and impressively large character class really snagging my attention. Sometime around this I purchased the PC version of Final Fantasy VIII, and it also held my attention pretty well.

But really, if we’re talking about nostalgia, I feel qualified to speak. I’ve returned many times over the years to Super Nintendo-era titles. Many have held their level of quality–both Mario Worlds are as fresh and tightly-controlled as the day they were released, titles such as the Mega Man X series remain impressively well-rounded, and some games, such as Super Metroid and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past remain bastions of how to design a game that achieves Greatness with a capital G.

RPGs are a trickier bunch. Perhaps it’s a sign of growing up but I don’t have a lot of patience when replaying old RPGs–I have to use an emulator just so I can skip through random encounters faster and speed up my action bar. I won’t deny an unabashed love of Earthbound, whose quirky sense of humor and all-around solid fundamentals keep it cartridge-playable. Likewise, I would nominate a real-time RPG like Secret of Evermore to such “nostalgia-worthy” titles (though it is still a weird, classification-defying game).

But Final Fantasy VI…I cannot stress enough how this game, above all others, really hit the nail on the head. The characters were deep and quite emotive (compare to titles such as Chrono Trigger, which suffer from the typical silent protagonist-gearhead-princess-robot-frogman-cavewoman dichotomy, and yes, I’m kidding here). The combat, as I’ve said before, was rock solid. The fact that, given enough time, you could maximize everyone’s magic use, was impressive and is a leap some games still never will take, but yet characters were still individuals–something just felt right about putting Edgar and Sabin in a party together, even if they weren’t quite as potent as someone else.

Which brings me to Final Fantasy VII. I have never played Final Fantasy VII, and I have no compulsion to–honestly. I’m still amazed at how much crap I get when I make that statement. I have vague ideas floating around in my head about “Knights of the Round” and “Emerald Weapon” and how the whole game is supposed to be some kind of memory-lane wonderland. I’m not buying it. I’m familiar with the plot, in a broad sense, I’m adequately familiar with the cast of characters, I’ve seen Advent Children, and for whatever reason Final Fantasy VII offers no enticement for me to play it.

Perhaps it’s the graphics, in part–FF6 was delightfully old-school, but 7 looks dated in a way that seems weird but I think is understandable. The cast seems flat to me as well–the character I have the most investment in, never having played it, is Rufus–he seems like a pretty cool guy*. Perhaps it’s just that because everyone likes the game, and was so stunned when Aeris died, that I would much rather keep on enjoying Earthbound, or Evermore, or some completely forgotten title like Terranigma instead of tracking down a PS1 and a copy of FF7.

In conclusion, I suppose it was nice to have such a resentment of rampant fanboyism validated after all these years. And if you’ve got a flame, please post it. This blog could use more comments.

*eh fakes geostigma and doesn’t afraid of anything.

Tagsfinal fantasy, GamesRadar