Still working my way through Final Fantasy V but I want to take a quick detour here and come back to the present for a bit. It's the year 2013. Final Fantasy is everywhere. Square-Enix has finally buckled and given us what we always asked for, direct sequels to Final Fantasy and apparently, the flood gates have opened and there is no closing them again. Many fans wonder about the future of the series and for the first time in 25 years, people are seriously questioning whether the series even should have a future.
It's impossible to do a blog like this and not be faced with the question: Is Final Fantasy dead? Am I just trying to reach the end of an already completed story? Now obviously Final Fantasy is still going on. XV is in development now, Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn is still bringing new content to the table and they're pumping out mobile games like babies in a crack den. But many fans say that the Final Fantasy that they grew up with is no more.
Let me go on record right now by saying that there has never been a better time to be a Final Fantasy fan. If you're questioning the future of the game, it's because you aren't looking in the right places. Let's start off with the classic games. Final Fantasy was great on the SNES and NES but let's be honest, the cartridges were really hard to find and cartridges were just a brutal medium, often succumbing to dust, damaged connections and other errors. Nowadays, all of the classic Final Fantasy games are available online including all of the fan translated games that were missed in the US. Even if you are anti-emulator, sites like ebay and half.com make it easy to find the original cartridges for relatively reasonable prices.
Past the SNES, 7-9 are available on PSN and 7 and 8 are also available on Steam now, all for really quite cheap. 10 and 10-2 are being remastered for the PS3 and the rest aren't that hard to find. All the games are getting ported to every console imaginable, too. Almost every handheld device including mobiles, GBA, DS, 3DS all have Final Fantasy games available. In fact, if you have a iPhone or Android device, you can get every Final Fantasy game through V right there, including IV: The After Years. I wouldn't be surprised if a few months down the line, VI will be available as well. Anyway, the classic games are easy to find now.
Fans were mixed when XIII was released. The fighting system was often lauded but many people cried foul about the extreme linear nature of the game that literally just had you walking down a path through the vast majority of the game. Even the open world felt blah and empty. The storyline was a major departure for Final Fantasy, telling the majority of the story through text and flashbacks while you played the aftermath of events that have already taken place. While many found it boring, it was an interesting experiment, if nothing else. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic here. Some loved XIII and many hated it. If you loved it, great, you got a sequel and another one on the way.
If you hated it, you may feel like you've been left out to dry. You're likely a fan of the older games and felt that XIII had way too much hand-holding. You're in luck, however. Square-Enix has not forgotten you, although you may feel like they have. Check out your phone and pull up Final Fantasy Dimensions. This game released to almost zero hype or fanfare but was literally a game designed with the mindset of create another SNES Final Fantasy. While it was originally episodic and I believe the App Store still sells it in episodes, the game is complete and Android users just pay once for the whole game. It's not a perfect game but it's still pretty good, fitting in perfectly alongside the SNES classics. The only thing that drives me crazy about it is that there is no native support for gamepads so you'll need to root in order to get a 360 controller to work with it.
Moving on over to the Nintendo handhelds, many people missed Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light on the DS. If you did and don't feel like moving backwards, I highly recommend grabbing your 3DS and checking out the demo for Bravely Default. Don't be confused by the title, this is Final Fantasy in every regard. It's actually a spiritual successor to 4 Heroes of Light and was made with Final Fantasy V in mind. The job system is a blast and it makes great use of Streetpass to add some interactivity. A co-worker and I played the demo at the same time and we had a great time sharing information about dungeons and equipment and job abilities. It felt like being a kid again.
If you ask me, the SNES was the greatest console ever made. No matter how great 3D graphics get, I feel at home with those well crafted sprites. As a JRPG fan, the SNES was heaven, granting us games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, V and VI, Secret of Mana, Terranigma, Tales of Phantasia, Star Ocean, etc. Still, games have evolved a great deal since then and much of that evolution is for the better. While you may have been driven to cynicism long ago, Final Fantasy XV looks great. Being developed from the ground up by the team who made Kingdom Hearts, I have high, high hopes for this game, which is more than I can say for XIII. Maybe you aren't a fan of Kingdom Hearts, that's fine. The battle system is still great, feeling quick and lively without ever dropping the difficulty meter. If you think that it'll be Final Fantasy easy mode, try playing Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 on the hardest difficulty. It's far from impossible but it'll definitely make you work for your win.
I haven't seen much about the storyline but it seems to be taking more of a Final Fantasy Tactics approach which makes me a bit concerned. No game since Final Fantasy Tactics has really done that well. Tactics Advance, A2 and XII all took place in that same universe but none of them really captured that same magic. Coming from the Kingdom Hearts director too, I fear that the storyline will stray deep into the realm of ridiculousness like KH did long ago.
Final Fantasy has been hitting some rough patches lately, killing a lot of the blind faith we once had in Square-Enix. Horrendous sequels such as Dirge of Cerberus and X-2 have been the gift we asked for but didn't realize we didn't want. XIII strayed far from Final Fantasy and made us question the direction the series was taking. Still, this is far from the end for the series. Final Fantasy was a series born from hopelessness, created out of a last-ditch effort by a company on the brink of toppling. It was the phoenix fire that helped Square to rise again and become the single greatest name in the RPG genre. Let's look at Final Fantasy XIV. The game was released and was instantly panned for being an absolute mess. They tried updates and patches but it just wasn't enough. Rather than sitting on their laurels and letting XIV live or die as it would, they ended up scrapping the whole project and re-released what is arguably one of the best MMO's on the market today. Sure it had it's rough patches but Square-Enix made it through. Final Fantasy made it through. XIV refused to be left in the dust and instead became reborn as something worthy of the name. I have hope that the Final Fantasy series will continue strong for many iterations to come.
Game on!
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