My history with Final Fantasy & Mission Statement

It was 1987. I was 9 years old and my little brother was 6 when he received the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for Christmas that year. Man, what a Christmas that was, a technological marvel in the hands of two young boys. He and I would embark on many a long journey's on that system, playing the old school greats like Super Mario Bros., Mike Tyson's Punchout, Bubble Bobble, Solomon's Key, Double Dribble, Techmo Bowl... so many.

I got my very first taste of something like an RPG when we finally got our hands on The Legend of Zelda a year or so after it was released. We treated that gold cartridge like it was the real precious metal, and worth just as much to us. A perpetual game where we could build up a character and play over an extended period of time was unheard of to us, and we loved it. I was usually the player and my brother, bless his little heart, was the navigator keeping track of where to go and what to do. We would trade off, but I was usually the one to beat the tough opponents. At that age though, our attention span was short and while we got to dungeon 9, we never beat the game.

It wasn't until 1990, when my cousin from Texas came over to spend the summer with our grand parents who were also watching us for the summer, that I had my first experience with a true RPG, Square's 'Final Fantasy'. Now this was a real treat for us. A turn based adventure with not one but FOUR heros who we could build differently. We could buy and find them each new armor and weapons, new spells, and even accessories. There was a huge world map, deep dungeons, awesome bosses, it was... epic. We spent that whole summer playing that game almost every day with our cousin, and while the game was very difficult for us in spots, it only took that long because our other cousin hated the game and would frequently unplug it to ruin our fun and force us to play other things. We didn't get to finish it before our cousin left so my brother and I had to go out and buy our own, and we started it with the same characters with the same names, in memory of our cousin's game: a Fighter named Rex led the group with another Fighter named Max, a Black Mage named Zeke, and a White Mage named Jill (we didn't know it was a guy until the characters grew up and changed sprites). We got our maps and guides out and went to work, but again sadly we never finished Final Fantasy.

Some years later in 1997 Square, now Squaresoft, released a cutting edge, state of the art, hot new game called Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation. I didn't even know they had made a Final Fantasy two through six, how did I miss out on this? I was a Nintendo fan to the core, the PlayStation seemed odd and stupid and I felt like a traitor even thinking of buying one but I HAD to have this game, and I found for the first time that my loyalties lay more with Squaresoft than with Nintendo, I went out and bought a PlayStation with the 4 disc game (4 discs??? madness!!!). By this time my brother and I had a new video game friend, and the three of us embarked on yet another glorious, truly EPIC adventure. That game floored us again and again, it was and remains one of the best games of all time in my opinion, and none of the following Final Fantasy games have even come close to it. I was drawn not just to the game play or the graphics, but more so to the battle system, the materia system, the characters and most of all the story. And Sephiroth is to this day, still my favorite villian of all time. It was so good, that I actually finished it, and I was sad to see it end. A couple months later, I downloaded Final Fantasy 1 on my PC emulator and played through the game and finished that too, then Zelda too.

Eventually VIII came out, I played it a bit, maybe 70% of the way through, but eventually I put it down and forgot about it. I didn't even realize it when IX came out and didn't play it until I felt nostalgic about the series one day after X-2 had been released and went back and played it some, it was alright, but hard to go back to those graphics. When X came out, I was pretty pumped up to play it on the PlayStation 2. The game was good, the battle system and grid were good, but some of the culture and backgrounds were very hard to swallow, and I had heard it all ended up being a dream in the end. I had rented the game for 2 weeks from Block Buster and had been tearing through it as fast as possible, but I was unable to finish it before having to return it. I stopped about 2 bosses from the final boss in the cloud/dream world of Sin. When X-2 came out, I just bought it this time, but I absolutely CRINGED when it opened with the girl pop song. Horrible! What were they thinking? I still played it though and it remains my favorite merit/battle system of any Final Fantasy game. After a while though the girly crap got to me and I had to put it down without finishing.

Then the evil, evil, Square, now SquareEnix released Final Fantasy XI, an online MMO. I really didn't want to play an MMO, but I finally caved and got it. I wanted to make a thief but apparently the best thieves were girl cat characters... ugh! I made my mithra thief and got her to about 35, had my fun with SA TA, then quit and rerolled a guy thief. I played him to about 45 then quit again, the thief was getting tough. The game itself was ridiculously hard, the monetary system was horrible, it was run by gold farmers, the crafting system was impossible, you could de-level if you sucked, you couldn't solo even a rabbit, and sometimes you had to sit in front of your computer for hours just WAITING to play the game, because you couldn't find a healer or a tank for your party to play. So I rerolled again, a Taru white mage, I just wanted to play the stupid game, and everyone ALWAYS needed a white mage. I had been playing a healer type character in Earth and Beyond and Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft, so I figured I'd take a crack at it. Three years later I had a 75 WHM and a 73 SMN when I finally quit the game, because I couldn't take healing a party with Cure 2 on my 73 SMN anymore. But I was still completely in love with the world, the story, the job classes, the cultures, all of it, amazing, awesome. I still sometimes want to go back and play even though I've told myself I'm done with MMOs. I got to play with a lot of good people in that game, including my brother in law (who is now my video game PIC), his brother and sister in law, and a couple other friends of theirs.

Then XII came out, it was ok. I really expected better graphics after playing XI on the PC for so long, and I really hated the liscense system because you could just make all your characters the same. None of them had any uniqueness or special quality, lame...

Now XIII looms on the horizon, the first installment of Final Fantasy on a true next gen console. It looks absolutely gorgeous, I can't wait to play it and I intend to beat ever damned thing in that game that there is to beat. It releases on March 9th, 2010, and some other type of Final Fantasy 13 game releases next year, not sure what the difference between the two is... And following that will come Final Fantasy XIV, the new MMO. Another evil MMO, but this is the only franchise that could make me play another MMO. My favorite franchise of all time, SquareEnix's Final Fantasy franchise.

I didn't touch on the other Final Fantasy spin offs or movies that I played and watched because they are not the core, or the focus of this blog, but I'm a big fan of them as well. In retrospect, though I call myself a fanatic of the franchise, I feel like I can't say that without a twange of falseness since I've only really completed 3 of the 12 released games thus far. Enter the self assigned mission:

To complete (kill the final boss) of every single player core Final Fantasy game from a clean slate (i.e. not from prior saves) before the March 9th release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2010. [Final Fantasy I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII]

It's an INSANE task to try to accomplish in just over three months, but I'm going to try to see how far I can get.

The quest to become a true fanatic begins.