11 Things We Miss From Final Fantasy
If these returned, our Fantasies would Finally come true.
A new Final Fantasy game is automatically one of the most hotly anticipated on the market, and not without good reason. Hironobu Sakaguchi's last ditch effort to make a mark on the industry in 1987 resulted in a long-running franchise that has carved out a reputation for itself as one of the most stellar in the whole business.
The first nine games in the series were exemplary, but now there's a danger that it is starting to turn the way of Sonic. Though the past few Final Fantasies have been by no means bad, there's the distinct feeling that the games just aren't what they used to be. Betraying their roots with innovative new gimmicks has proved largely detrimental, and watering the brand down by insisting on milking every last drop out of it has not helped. Even the most ardent FF fan is beginning to lose confidence.
Taking a long-running franchise down a different path isn't necessarily a bad thing - there are some that could greatly benefit by this (Pokémon, perhaps?). However, methodically dismantling a series of what once made it great is never wise. Yes, today's Final Fantasy titles have all the artefacts of the games' legacy - chocobos, moogles, fancy summons, airships, and so on. But little by little, they've lost the fundamentals that made them so great in the first place.
Playing the most recent Final Fantasy XV demo, and judging by early videos of the Final Fantasy VII remake, it's hard not to worry that the series is set to lose even more of the crucial elements that once made it such a pleasure. The fact that something as simple as remaking one of the most popular games of all time - simply a case of the same thing with a new lick of paint - has resulted in a completely new episodic game of an entirely different genre is cause for alarm.
You can plaster all the chocobos and moogles you like into a generic s*** JRPG and it wouldn't suddenly transform it into a good Final Fantasy title; it'd remain a s**t JRPG, albeit with a Final Fantasy theme. Leave the chocobos and moogles out, but provide it with those integral features that once defined the series, and you get a wonderful game (also known as Bravely Default).
So what are modern Final Fantasy titles lacking which once made the series such a hallmark of quality? Here're eleven to get you started...
11. Random Battles
Nostalgia can do funny things to a person. The passage of time causes us to reflect fondly on things we once greatly disliked. Like school, or Moira Stewart. It's easy to wistfully yearn for those carefree 9am-3pm days with little to worry about besides getting the lurgy from touching a member of the opposite sex. Childhood, eh?
How we forget how much these things actually annoyed us. Going to school was just an impediment to staying home and playing games, and the last thing we wanted to do when we got in was sit and watch the news, with Stewart detailing the latest emergence in the Bosnian War in her authoritative, flat tone.
No, we wanted to rush upstairs, turn our SNES/PlayStation on, and settle in for a night of Final Fantasy. And with only a few hours before bed time, random battles represented nothing but a hindrance to our progress.
So why do we miss them now? Is it merely a function of a longing for the heady days of childhood?
Partly. But random encounters actually had their benefits. The system of enemies roaming the map introduced in Final Fantasy XII completely changed the way the game played; encounters were now on polar ends of the spectrum - either entirely avoidable or annoyingly obligatory. Our entire path through a dungeon was essentially pre-determined, with no possibility of lucking out and bypassing a battle whilst there was a roaming monster at the end of every corridor.
Final Fantasy XIII made the problem even more egregious, as the set pattern of foes rendered grinding an even more tedious chore. It's a strange state of affairs when one longs for that crushing sense of disappointment as the battle sting hits five metres from a save point.