A best friend of mine started this game at the end of last week to practice his Japanese. He was having a lot of fun sending me screenshots, as he had never played it before. This is a game I've played portions of a lot and already beaten growing up, so the nostalgia kicked into high gear and I decided to play it alongside him on my Super Famicom Mini. One weekend later, he was still only a couple hours in, and I had binged the whole thing and finished it over the course of a little over 3 days XD . I did almost everything in the game, and even then mostly by memory, and it took me around 30 hours. This was my first time ever even seeing, let alone completing, the game in Japanese, but I still started to appreciate the design and especially the story in a way I never had before.
The gameplay is like a weird mix of FF IV's set jobs for each story character and FF V's job changing system. Every character (out of the 14 properly playable) has their own set job and unique abilities (save for Gogo who, shoutout to my friend MrPopo who told me can actually use EVERYONE's abilities if you press A on their stats screen), but can also be assigned Materia at a certain part in the story to begin learning spells and magic that any of them can use. Everyone can use the same magics, effectively, but their own powers still make them uniquely useful in their own ways, which is a level of party customization that I am exactly comfortable with (it's not generally something I enjoy). Something I also only noticed this time is how the game slowly tries to train you for using a more diverse party. The game really opens up in its second half, and you can use a party of basically whomever you want, but the game uses the more linear first half to get you used to different party constructions. The game has a large ensemble cast rather than any one main character, and different scenarios have you taking control of different sets of members at different times. It forces you to get used to something like a party without a magic caster, or without someone who can can't not fight without MP. Given that the final area of the game forces you to use 3 separate parties (ideally of 4 members each), this is a really clever way to help prepare the player for that that I really only noticed this time through. Something I also only really started to appreciate this time through is the game's narrative and the larger themes that are present throughout the game (This section will contain massive SPOILERS for a 20+ year old game: You have been warned :b ). This being a Square RPG, it's usually trying to make some more serious commentary about something with its narrative, and this game is no exception. For the characters who have a decent presence in the story (Everyone but Gogo, Umaro, Mog, Stragos, and Relm), the main things linking their backstories isn't just being drawn together to save the world, it's a deep feeling of regret and apprehension about the future. Everyone is chasing something impossible to catch. Terra (Tina in this version) is trying to find an objective answer to what it means to be a human and a reason to live. Locke is trying to erase the mistake he made in his youth that caused the death of his lady love. Cyan (Ceyenne in this version) is trying to fill the hole in his heart left by the death of his wife and child by seeking revenge against their murderer. Edgar and Sabin are chasing other preoccupations to try and distract them from their responsibility of working together to fill their father's large shoes in running the kingdom of Figaro. Shadow is constantly running from a past he's ashamed to have committed and trying to erase past cruelties with new ones. The list goes on. Their time in the world before the cataclysm shows these efforts to be self-destructive and very difficult, perhaps even bordering on not worth it. And then the apocalypse happens. Their time in the World of Ruin changes them and forces them to confront these problems in uncomfortable but meaningful ways. Terra learns through helping raise a village of children that love is a feeling you have to find for yourself, and is something that in itself can give life meaning. Locke learns that, while you can't erase the mistakes of the past, you can always learn from them and use that knowledge to serve your future actions. Cyan learns that his wife and child are never truly gone as long as they're in his memory, and continuing to live meaningfully is one of the best ways to honor that memory. Sabin and Edgar learn that their most important responsibilities are to each other and to their people and that ruling them together, as their father's last request dictated, is really the best way forward. And while I certainly take issue with the (unfortunately typically East Asian, especially of the era) glorification of suicide in Shadow's ultimate decision to allow himself to be killed to finally stop running from his demons, in that context, it does ultimately still fit with the themes of the story. The ultimate foil to this is the main villain Kefka. Kefka is definitely someone I have taken issue with in the past as a villain who definitely isn't a character but more of a force of nature. However, he does actually have narrative purpose in being a human who just becomes the god of destruction (instead of a god of destruction pre-existing who so often fills the role of a FF game's final boss). Kefka is someone who never regrets his actions and feels no remorse. His response to things getting bad is to plunge them deeper and deeper into chaos and destruction, and the destruction of the whole world is up for grabs. In his final Bond Villain-esque Bad Guy Speech (TM) to the main party before the final confrontation, he preaches to them the futility of existence. Why is life worth living when death comes for everyone? Why build anything when the entropic winds of time grind all to dust? Kefka is emblematic of a depressive and self-destructive defeatism that is the alternative answer to the internal conflicts the party members face. He truly believe's he's doing the world a favor by seeking to outright destroy it instead of allowing it to suffer by existing. This playthrough really allowed me to see a method to his proverbial madness and appreciate his narrative utility in ways I'd never considered before. That's not to say the story is without its problems though. If you're not looking for deeper themes, it's fairly easy to pass over the story (as I had several times before this one) as a more disjointed series of vignettes that lead up to a greater whole rather than everyone working towards some greater unified narrative as a party, and there is regardless certainly some truth to that. The story is definitely more about each character's individual growth as a person, rather than a more unified party dynamic or personal relation to the main villain. The game also has some fairly jarring tonal shifts at times, and at more than one occasion will cut a very serious scene short with a comedic interlude to try and lighten the mood, often just ruining the whole thing. The very odd choice to give Ceyenne a samurai's accent (especially when his kingdom and even his own family don't talk like that) brings a weirdly dissonant and comedic tone to his otherwise tragic backstory (and this decision is probably my main beef with the original Japanese version's text as compared to the English one that gives Cyan a Shakespearean accent, which isn't quite so jarring, at least for me. Perhaps a Japanese audience has less of a comedic view of Ceyenne's accent than I found it). Verdict: Highly Recommended. I already had this game as one of my all-time favorite JRPGs, and this playthrough just solidified that opinion for me. It is up there with Chrono Trigger as one of Square's best JRPGs on the system and a timeless classic in the genre. Still as great as it ever was, and something that will always have a fond place in my heart.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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