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A Final Fantasy Retrospective and Analysis - The SNES Era
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- Опубликовано: 30 мар 2024
- The second part of our journey through the Final Fantasy series covers the SNES trilogy, Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI.
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Final Fantasy V getting the respect & praise it deserves
While the fight to become a Paladin is the culmination of Cecil's journey up to this point, it's interesting how the gameplay leads you there. Cecil is, up to this point, (one of) your strongest character, and before arriving at Mysidia, he got an OP weapon that makes him an absolute threat. Parom and Polom struggle to stay alive, because they're just kids, but Cecil can easily 1 shit everything.
Except, in the Mt Ordeal, populated by the undeads our weapons are ineffective. You have to let the frail kids (and the old man you encountered on the way) deal with the enemies, and offer more of a supportive way. You have to learn that fighting isn't always the option, which you'll directly apply in the final test. And you will (temporarilyl) lose some offense in favor of bulk while becoming a Paladin. It's quite a good way to put you into Cecil's boots
"the door that sucks you off" is a boss we should all remember
I don't give ff6 as much praise as you do but I can do nothing but agree with how amazing the world of ruin is. My only problem with it, at least when compared with the first half of the game, is that now kefka is just chilling in his tower for the rest of the game and while that does make perfect sense I still missed the fun moments where things seemed to go great and then Kefka appears and says: "Lmao time to do some war crimes lol". Other than that world of ruin is peak fr.
I feel like the the funny lines in this retrospective so far are often comfortable being embedded in the text in a way I'm not used to seeing in video essays. Usually, even in like a really good script by creators like Hbomberguy or Eyepatchwolf or Contrapoints (my knowledge of video essays is limited), the funny asides are relevant but are presented in a way that draws attention to the joke. Here, so far at least, there'll be a line in which Harold Bloom gets called a grinch, but the pace of the narrative doesn't have that serious and then funny and then serious again hiccup kind of thing going on. I kind of like it, I feel like it fits Bopper's voice well. I don't necessarily think "hiding the joke" or "drawing attention to the joke" are either one definitively better fits for the format, I just think it's cool and kind of rare to be trusted to pay close enough attention to catch the bits as they come.
For one last example what I mean, the Everybody Loves Raymond bit is one of those rare loud jokes, but the "Don't worry, anyone yelling at me, I am also yelling at me" line that comes right after it is a lot quieter.
I don't know, this feels like an odd comment now that I've written it, but I'll make up for it by commenting something about ffVI, I love ffVI, it's ffVI!
Final Fantasy IV's narrative is deeply, deeply silly but it takes itself very seriously. I think it's one of the funniest FFs, entirely by accident.
We've got tons and tons of heroic sacrifices (that are all later rendered moot), spoony bards, mind control, moon people, magical stompy robots and space whales.
It absolutely does contain deeper themes but it's just so hard to take them seriously with all the madness that's going on! FFIV feels like a teenager's attempt at writing Shakespearean drama. That sounds snarky, but it was 1991 and video game storytelling was still in its infancy. It's impressive for its era but that doesn't change my visceral reaction to it.
I just beat FF5 the other day and you really nailed why it’s so great. It’s simple, and that simplicity is its greatest strength. Gilgamesh might become my new personality…
First, just want to say I just found your channel earlier this week and I love the content. I'm a casual FE player and it's nice to have a creator that understands the little guy lmao. Also a big FF fan so when I saw you had part 2 ready I couldn't stop myself from joining the patreon lol.
Next, THANK YOU for giving FF V the flowers it deserves! I feel like so many hear that it has a "weak story" and never even give it a chance. It's an awesome game that I think holds up really well today. It's also my favorite so I'm a little biased I suppose.
FF IV on the DS was the first FF I ever beat. I think due to its difficulty it's a great entry point for younger gamers or those new to RPGs. It has been awhile so apologies if this isn't fully correct, but something I like about the Cecil class change is that I believe it happens in an area where you are fighting lots of undead. So Cecil is starting to have limited usefulness as a death knight. But then you become a paladin, which can be scary to essentially change your main character against your will, but he just annihilates everything he was struggling to fight before. I think it was a really creative way to use gameplay to enhance how you feel about the character.
Always here for FF5 praise, especially Exdeath as a Skeletor-ass-MF'er.
- 31:15 I didn't notice on previous playthroughs that Neo Exdeath's battle sprite is one continuous growth with his "trunk" in the background. Gnarly.
- Franchises are always in conversations with themselves, and Galuf's last stand might be the most conspicuous -- and best -- example in FF. The obvious reference is Tellah in FF4 as a similar elder, sorta-mentor figure, but really the series already had a long line of desperate sacrifices across FF2 and 4 more broadly, so Galuf going out like a champ feels like a tone-setting subversion of an established trend. But also: Galuf _absolutely_ watched Tellah's death and said "Nah, I'd win." It's such a lovely inversion, with the villain being the one frantically slinging devastating spells as the hero just does not give a shit. That Galuf is just breaking the rules of the game also makes it feel totally appropriate that potions and phoenix downs don't work afterwards.
- FF6's World of Ruin gets a lot of praise, and rightly. But also, FF5's map transformation is my favorite in the series. It does such a great job of recontextualizing the space without needing umpteen increasingly-tortured airship upgrades. (Hi FF4.) Chrono Trigger still takes the crown -- Robo restoring the forest just hits all the right notes -- but this is way up there.
- One other thing I love about the job system is that the jobs _grow_ differently. White and black magic are practice-makes-perfect, just requiring you to grind it out. Learning new blue magic means tracking down monsters and experiencing their moves firsthand, sometimes requiring some trickery to do. Summons are bosses you need to find and defeat. Bard songs demand you travel the world, meet its people, and play piano a bunch. That adds to mechanical diversity -- more opportunity for my game and your game to look and flow differently -- but also makes the world feel richer than just a bunch of random battles and magic swords.
- Along that line, I feel like those job differences are FF starting Minigame Shenanigans in earnest, with FF6 being a restrained-but-still-definitive step in their direction. I expect more talk of this in the 7-10 era, but to get ahead of it: I love them, despite Square getting self-indulgent with them. The point of the motorcycle sequence in FF7 is not that it is actually a good game -- it is budget Road Rash, and my memories of Road Rash are as tepid as they are probably-inflated. The point is (1) it's totally sick, and (2) it acknowledges that the world of these games could contain anything, not just the same combat system copy-pasted onto yet another superboss. When they're used as brief palate cleansers, they do a ton of lifting for the experience as a whole.
There is a key difference between Tellah and Gaius though. Tellah wants to die. He lost his daughter, and outright rejects the only person that could share his pain, Edward, that damn spoony bard! He is motivated only by hatred and self destruction. He could never truly win this way.
Gaius fights for his friends! For his daughter! He's fighting because there are precious lives worth saving in this world. He's literally offering his experience to his daughter so she can keep fighting in his stead, supporting the newer generation as the cooler older dude, and unofficial party dad.
Actually he may be closer to FFIV's Cid, the guy who exploded himself and survived out of sheer will
I’m very guilty of FFV favoritism, but Galuf’s death hit me way harder than a certain other infamous FF main character death scene because of how it hit me in chunks.
1: his death isn’t the internet’s favorite spoiler so I had no clue.
2: he has that amazing final stand and while playing it my high school brain worked through what the actual consequences would be of a character continuing to fight past 0 HP… and then he die and all the story beats that come with that…
but then 3: I thought “wait a second, he mechanically can’t die, the FFV job system takes way too much investment to just-oh Krile just received all his stats. Fuck he’s actually dead.
Nearly 20 years later and I’m generally pretty critical of games that remove gameplay consequences from story death, but I think it really works here. It served as this meta nail in the coffin that he was gone. The job system is my favorite because it allows for so much customization while also forcing you to really invest in each characters build (instead of swappable material/esper/junction loadouts. Each character develops their own gameplay character arc similar to an FE Iron Man, and because of that, Krile really feels like she’s carrying on her grandpa’s legacy in a way that doesn’t happen without the specific gameplay elements of FFV. I love it so much. I would highly recommend that you try doing a Four Job Fiesta run of FFV-put simply you get 1 job from each crystal randomly. It’s handled via a Twitter bot each year as a fundraiser with all sorts of different options but at its core it’s a simple challenge but brings out the best aspects of the job system and my first run of it cemented FFV as my favorite in the series in the exact same way that my first FE iron man brought out a brand new appreciation for everything about the series.
One detail I've always appreciated about the Krile-Galuf replacement is that Krile isn't a completely 1-1 carbon copy of Galuf in terms of mechanics. Character stats in FFV are mostly determined by their jobs, but each of the 5 playable characters do have slightly different base stats. Krile and Galuf actually have pretty much completely opposite base stats, with Krile being strong in Speed and Magic while Galuf is best in Vitality and Strength. The net result is that no matter what job you have them in, Krile will always have +4SPD, +3MGC, -4VIT, and -2STR compared to what Galuf would have had.
The difference is ultimately basically negligible and not worth worrying about, but I think the fact that there is still some degree of irrevocable change after Galuf's death is pretty cool. It makes it feel like Krile is carrying on Galuf's will, rather than just being his clone.
For what it's worth, I had FFV's big death 100% spoiled for me, yet had the privilege of not knowing about that OTHER one, due to playing it when it came out. With all that said, V's death hit me way harder than the more famous one did. It may just be where I was in my life playing both, but I think V did a fantastic job portraying Krile's grief in the face of having the torch of "Savior of the World" forcibly passed to her.
Aerith's death is so meh. Plenty of other JRPGs before it have pulled off characters dying with an impact but FF7 gets a pass for some god damn reason
@@HughAverageHomoMan probably because ff7 was most people first jrpg in 1997.
@48:36 You mean to say there is no singular "protagonist". Kefka is most certainly the singular "antagonist" of FF6. BTW I am happy to see you branch out from FE content. Keep up the great work!
I didn't know I needed high school teachers in my life until it was too late, thanks for filling that void
Found you from the FE Among Us videos. I guess I didn't expect this to be a channel covering other rpgs, and definitely didn't expect it to bring in the sort of literary and philosophic analysis that is my cup of tea.
Everything you say about the job system in FFV describes exactly why I had so much fun playing Bravely Default on the 3DS. The job system there works very similarly to that of FFV, with a main job that determines your stats and weapon proficiencies alongside a single sub-job whose abilities you can use. It was so much fun creating combinations like a primary knight with a white mage sub-job to create a rudimentary paladin, or a monk/dark knight to drain my huge health pool with Phoenix Flight only to deal the missing amount with Minus Strike for consistent 9999 damage attacks.
The most memorable emergent gameplay I experienced was an optional late-game boss (or well, 5 of them at once), all of whom, I noticed, boasted immense physical single-target attacks. The knight class has an ability where they can take the entirety of a single-target attack for the specified ally. So I had Tiz and Edea reclass into knights to protect Agnes and Ringabel, loaded them up with a combination of defensive boosts and abilities that take effect after taking damage, and had them basically stonewall the entire battle alongside Agnes' magic healing and support and Ringabel using the aforementioned monk/dark knight combination to steadily cleave through each boss. Bravely Default has a lot of memorable moments, but that fight will always define my experience of the franchise in my memory.
“I don’t want any other games to catch a stray… but if you ask I’ll probably tell you one”
Okay, do it, tell me one please 😉
A really cool thing with FFIV that I didn't exactly catch on at first is that most of the early modes of transportation you get are living beings, actual characters in their own right. Boko is Bartz' Chocobro, not any other Chocobo, and it's clear the two are very close. Hiryuu is an important part of Lenna's backstory and internalized guilt (which you'd only learn after going to the top of a late game optional dungeon). And Syldra is a hero.
Even the unnamed Black Chocobo has their sassy dances that immediately makes them so immediately personable (especially coupled with their goofy tones)!
It adds so much personality and fun to even the simplest travels!
As to the Sylph Cave in FF4, I assume the game tells you because its such common knowledge but maybe it doesn't, but casting Float on your party does allow you to completely bypass the drain tiles. Makes it much less cumbersome.
It’s been about 10 months since I actually beat IV, so I could be wrong, but what I specifically hated about Sylph Cave were the enemies + recasting float on every single floor
who tf is Vivian Aladren
What a cool vid, super excited to see how the rest of the series will turn out.
Watching this finds me wanting to replay VI again. Even if the characters like Locke do get flattened towards the end a bit, the small vignettes and endings they do have if you do choose to save them have always mattered to me. (And I find myself itching for ffvi fan fiction more because it feels like there’s so much there)
Once again I really appreciate your narrative focused analysis. I think FFV deserves more credit than it gets, and I like what you say about its very unique tone
Recently beat FFVI, glad to see you liked it too because I adored FFVI. I didn't know you could save Cid at the beginning of the World of Ruin, but I think his death and Celes's ensuing fall into despair was incredible in driving home how much Kefka destroyed the world, even if she does find a way off the island afterwards. Everything about Terra is also awesome. Absolutely loved that game. Oh also Cecil is cool too lol
This is probably my favorite overall era of Final Fantasy, they’re all great. As a kid, I was really taken with FF4’s cast, and thought that Cecil having to face his dark half and overcoming via pacifism was peak. FF5 I didn’t like because I was bad at video games, but coming back for the pixel remaster, was probably my favorite of that bundle. It was such a charming experience, and I was surprised to have such a non-serious cast leave such an impression. I know he’s a side character, but I love that you gave Gilgamesh the time he deserves. I think the breakdown of FF6’s themes you provide really does show why that game resonates so strongly. It does have a lot of narrative strength, even if it wasn’t my personal favorite. Desperately curious now about your #1 moment, though.
I really enjoy all the connections to classic literature. I think it adds a lot in showing how video games can craft a narrative that examine the same themes in comparable depth, and shows what they can be as an art form.
I was so excited to see this just come up in my feed I've been waiting for it since the last 1.
Loving the allusions to your ff13 analysis, which I cannot wait for.
The way you talk about and reference FFXIII here and there throughout makes me really hopeful that you can appreciate it, unlike so many others. I'm looking forward to all of your Final Fantasy videos, but especially when you will cover XIII. I am someone who, despite being with the series from the beginning (I started with the original at six years old back in 1990) I can say confidently that for me, XIII is one of the best in the series, if not my most favorite. I recognize it's not perfect, but I appreciate its unique charms and intentions, and engaging gameplay systems.
5:48 It’s fascinating to cite Harold Bloom when he, of all literary critics, might have been the loudest voice declaring that video games cannot be satisfactory narrative and literary experiences.
Fantastic video as always btw 🎉😊
42:21 love the game crashing transition
When I heard Bopper was doing a video essay series on Final Fantasy, I had high expectations. But I have to say, those expectations have even been exceeded. Not only is the analysis interesting (especially for someone like me who has little background in literature), but it's also extremely easy to follow, well-paced, and enjoyable to listen to.
Now I need to go back and watch part 1, because I somehow missed that that was already out (I was probably busy around the time it came out).
What a nice Easter surprise! 🐇
What FF6 did better than the previous games, and I would say better than a number of games in the series that came after it, is not just have a good story but tell that story extremely well. Bopper mentioned the opening scene (animated by Tetsuya Takahashi who created the Xeno games by the way) as well as the opera scene and the scene in the hut with Cid. These scenes showcase the ability of video games to tell stories in ways that people seem to think are only the domain of great literature or film. These aren't just great story moments; they're great story *telling* moments. I honestly can't name another game where the world is destroyed and the bad guy wins and the only thing you can do to distract yourself from the horror is to try and help one of the only people you know is still alive to survive for as many days as you can. You can't even go out and fight monsters or something. You can't craft any weapons or plan your revenge or learn new skills. You just have to feed him fish and sit with it. And you are the former bad guys who helped cause this.
I don't know. I can't express just how good the storytelling in this game is. It's my favorite FF game, because it showed me what it was possible for games to do and to be. And I don't want to hate on any other FF game specifically... but certain other lauded FF games just left me very disappointed in that aspect. So I'm looking forward to what Bopper has to say about them.
Comparing FFV to Gulliver's Travels in terms of tone is wonderful, and something I wouldn't have connected by myself.
Loved the video. Looking forward to more gushing over Final Fantasy in the future!
finally watched this!!!! ooooh it was so interesting. If your goal was to make me want to play Final Fantasy 5 you have succeeded. If I had time for jrpgs I would be so powerful...
Absolute blast of a video, I want to meet the video game Gilgamesh now. Thank you for the craft analysis Professor
I love your Fire Emblem videos, and honestly this Final Fantasy series I feel like I could listen to it all the time. You talk with so much passion and knowledge combined, it makes even games I wasn’t a huge fan of feel much better, like V (even though all games are amazing IMO, but II and V didn’t click as much to me as the others). Thank you so much Professor, I’m a huge fan of your videos!
Thanks for the Easter Surprise I’ve Started Final Fantasy VII again cause of the last video.
Criminally low views on this video/series. I hope your channel blows up and I can say I was an early subscriber of yours.
57:57 Wait, *I* killed Cid?!
If it can reassure you, his death is apparently canon.
They gave you the chance to save him, but It was made deliberately obtuse and difficult to save him. Not even counting the damn seagull that is here for storytelling purposes.
You are expected to fail, but you can succeed, and this was such a great choice!
While I enjoy IX more than VI, I do feel that VI is the "best" FF game by whatever limited objective criteria one can put on art. And V is a solid third on my favorites list after the previously mentioned.
Also you don't need to do any tower to rerecruit Strago. Just show up to his cult line with Relm in your party.
I indeed beat FF4 since my comment on the last video, and it's definitely relevant to the game's identity that writer Takashi Tokita had aspirations of theatre and voiceover before settling on making games. Tokita's FF4 writing fingerprints are all over Live A Live as well (a game which I cannot recommend enough) and even pop up here and there in Chrono Trigger, which he co-directed.
I said elsewhere that FF4 is melodramatic and "silly" and I stand by that but seeing it as a really ambitious stage play makes me respect its writing a lot more.
Guess that makes FF5 a really campy comedy play... a pantomine?
Trails in the sky music! He's not a hater after all!!!
I disagree with Vivian, insofar, that Cecil is redeemed and "gets to be the savior of the world." His transformation into a paladin is the first step, and his journey to safe the world from the evil he helped unleash is rest of the journey.
Earned a sub! Very nice work!
FFVI is one of my favourite 16-bit RPGs. An easy recommendation for fans of the genre.
Great freakin’ stuff, Bopper.
Professor giving me a heartattack at 33:54 saying FFXIII are the peaks of gameplay I very much look forward to hearing this part down the road for that take.
Don’t know if it changes your excitement, but I’m talking strictly battle systems, which is maybe less of a hot take for XIII? I dunno. Either way XIII is A tier!
@@ProfessorBopper
It still keeps up my excitement! With maybe just my poor gaming abilities my time with 13's battle system was spent leveling up and wishing that the bosses would die faster then the doom counter as I mashed the X button and switching "modes while feeling like I wasn't have as much of a choice in my moves as other RPGs.
Something silly I also realized is when I got to the part of the game side quest open up I just kept on going towards the story because I was enjoying the story so much I didn't want to put a pause on it which seemed to not a big surprise make the challenges up ahead that much more difficult.
I say this while I still had an incredible time experiencing these characters and story!
Similar to your 5 years in the past childhood I played XIII on a CRT TV that I could bearly read any of the text also significantly reducing my ability to interact with the game's systems.
FF4DS is one of my babies. It's such a heartening experience to me.
I played that game not having any clue how to effectively access augments until my last playthrough where I used guides online, and even with them it can be really hard!
I greatly appreciate that aside comment calling out the mentality that a villain being sympathetic, is in some way a requirement for a high quality villain.
Allow me the honor of telling you of the religious undertones in FFIV which are even more blunt in Japanese.
Firstly, Kain is Cain in JP. They changed the C to a K in English to make it more exotic and less on the nose, I guess. But Cain and Abel from the Bible, basically. A foreshadowing of his multiple betrayals.
Leviathan and Rydia are Jonah and The Whale.
In Mysidia, the, "House of Wishes" is actually the, "House of Prayer."
Mt. Ordeals is The Mountain of Ordeals. In Japanese its areas are labeled as stations as you would find on a marked mountain path. They are the 3rd and 7th station, referencing the Stations of The Cross from Catholicism, the stations where Jesus stumbled or fell while carrying his cross.
When Cecil becomes a Paladin, the Light in Mt. Ordeals is the Soul of his father. It is a Holy Ghost. The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. Cecil's Paladin form is not just a mark of penance, but a shining manifestation of The Trinity.
The Four Fiends are from Dante's Inferno.
The Tower of Babil literally leads to the Heavens.
FuSoYa reveals the truth behind it all being Ancient Aliens from The Fifth Planet that became the asteroid belt, meaning that FFIV didn't just reach into romanticism for its characters and world, but tried to paint them up as a reflection of our Earth.
At the end of the game when facing off against Zemus, Zemus is first defeated with violence. His name, Zemus, is an Aramaic word from an offshoot of the language that means, "Prayer." Zeromus is a play on words "No Prayer."
And the party is given the strength to stand by the prayers of the people of the Earth, praying for them from a House of Prayer as well as from the prayers of the deceased.
That through line of forgiveness makes a lot of sense.
8:12 did i just hear you say rizzless mixed in between all them grandiose and complicated words?
bopper, we are on the same obsession cycle
CC's never get Kefka's name right XD
Been looking forward to these! The GBA ports were my first exposure to them and by far my favorite games on the system! (sorry Fire Emblem)
Great video, keep the good work!
The second best thing to happen on Easter Sunday
Feel free to pin and heart
I love ALL Professor Bopper videos!!!! ❤
exodus really wouldn't make sense as a translation though. His JP name is エクスデス which is literally the Japanese pronunciations of "X" and "death" after one another. "exodus" would instead be something like エクソダス which is pretty different
Okay, great video: Just like with part 1, I'm disappointed it has ended. I think chapters would be nice, but my breath is already bated for part 3.
Great analysis truly
The opera might be better without the lyrics of the pixer remaster, but it is beautiful in both versions. I have heard and belive that FfIV is like a playable opera, all of it, the melodrama, the music, the cast
My least favorite final fantasy game is 4 and my favorite is 5
I've yet to encounter that combination before, it's very unique!
Yeah I agree, ff4 is too damn linear and it also doesn't have customization.
24:55 Go on, start cooking the criticisms please
Peaks of...13? I must have missheard?
Just finished first playthrough of ff2-5. 4 was good but not great, 5 was unbelievable 9/10. Before watching the video, I trust you will have the correct opinions. Who am I kidding, I know how bad your taste in fire emblem is. Just poking fun, excited to watch!
Here's your Superbowl Ring: My comment! Kupo!
I know this is my second comment but, hell yeah, dude!
I loved the first part, and I enjoyed this one equally so! Listening to you talk about literature, mixed in with some little jokes or breaking the seriousness for an instant is something that feels very welcome, I feel like this is a continuation of my English class with my favorite high school teacher
final fantasy 5 :)))
You cannot go straight to Kefka's Tower when you awakening with Celes in the World of Ruin. You can only enter the tower after recruiting Setzer and acquiring the Falcon Airship. That's the absolute earliest you can face Kefka for the final time. You'd be stuck with just Celes, Edgar, and Setzer in three teams of only one character each.
Also, you forgot about Final Fantasy Mistic Quest on the SNES.
Mystic Quest isn’t a main line game
Kefka is a phenomenal villain. I picture him threatening someone at gun-knifepoint saying "Wanna know how I got these scars?"...oh wait that's the wannabe kefka from 14 years later
respectfully disagree, Kefka starts off good but gets BS plot armor numerous times and then becomes boring. not as bad as Sephiroth but pretty close.
I still don't like that the pacing completely flatlines and the villain completely disappears for 15+ hours once the world is ruined. ImO completely destroys one of the best villains, and severly hurts 6. Because up to that point it definitely is one of, if not the best Final Fantasy. But then the world of ruin happens, and i can't think of any game in the series that does its latter half worse.
6 being a "reiteration" on 4? it's obviously a "reiteration" on 2 (and so is 4)
You managed to sell me on FF4 when I knew barely anything about it before. Would you recommend the pixel remaster for a first timer?
I would recommend all of the pixel remasters for a first timer. They all go down smooth as butter
FF4 is good with some really repetitive issues that make it feel like the devs blew their idea load too early and couldn't figure out how to clean it up
FF5 is great, even if the encounter rate is awful and the story kinda falls apart near the end. honestly the scrapped element of the story would have fixed that.
FF6 is a mess imo, its lopsided, their idea of "no main protagonist" very obviously gets tossed out the window fast and a certain choice they made during the development period, while interesting, ends up making half the game a stretched out build-up to a payoff where the game stops being interesting, but gets more fun.
FF6 is still my favorite FF game.
Yeah FFIV is wild, at one point you show a battle scene with a 4 man party and literally nobody in it but Cecil is making it to the final battle
The difference between Cecil's internalized suffering & guilt and tendency to suffer in silence and Kain's more external tendency to Ruin Everything is explored more in After Years, which is overall real bad but that one aspect is alright. Actually the character work in that game in general is pretty good it's just *motions at literally everything else*
I feel like the World of Ruin is the weakest part of VI just because of everyone turning into some weird gestalt character, it makes a lot of it not feel "real". Some characters like Celes and Terra get at least some kind of arc but 90% of the party is just kinda There.
The After Years is... interesting. There are a few parts that really land, and some that absolutely flop. I like Edward, and the twins' development, but Luca is terrible...
The Gameplay takes inspiration from Suikoden, which really lend to some wild party composition.
It's a lot, and pretty mediocre overall, but since FFIV really is my game, I can't help having sympathy for it.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740 same, i like it but i cannot in good conscience call it good, at all
Cecil's family + Kain does well for themselves though Ceodore's coming-of-age story gets undermined by the fact that he sucks in battle. At least Cecil is worth catching up(despite being barebones as ever) due to having a million combo moves. he fights for his friends.
spoony bard!
Gilgamesh has to be one of the best recurring characters in the series. Loved him in 7 Rebirth
ive tried playing ff6 twice and i just can't bring myself to fight dogs. hoping 4 is a good entry point based on your vid :)
VI is worth is when you close your eyes and get past the dogs and accept you're playing as the villains when that happens. Otherwise, 4 is a very good starting point
think of it like this: they're probably dogs the empire abused/experimented on for maximum aggression. you're doing them a favor by putting them out of their misery
Holy shit the vid starts with a Harold Bloom quote. You truly are the apex nerd.
I'm joking I love media criticism and analysis.
He's lowkey an awful, awful writer who definitely snorts his own farts, but his ideas are interesting. The Anxiety of Influence was like one of the lynch pins of my uni paper on music copyright.
Bloom is 100% worth it for his Shakespeare writing, but so much of what he wrote outside of that was bad or suspect.
What, no love for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest?
Only covering the main series in this video! I’ll be doing sequels, remakes, and spinoffs in another series
I just beat Rebirth and goddammit why did they have to change the story? They butchered every emotional impact the original had. Took every story beat and stretched it out needlessly, and just killed my whole vibe. OG FF7's story is so well paced, remaking it should be the easiest layup in history, but nah let's separate it into 3 parts so I have to wait another 4 years to play as Vincent in FF7: Recontent.
because Rebirth is a weird pseudo-sequel reboot mess that FF7 Fanboys eat up since they have nostalgia for a mid game
Just beat FFVI last night so i can finally watch this...gosh darn FFVI is such a brilliant game.
As someone who has spent the last several years dealing with anxiety, I was really taken by FFVI's focus on grief-based depression and how we manage to find a purpose in life in spite of terrible events in our past and present. Not every character gets the same amount of depth, especially in the SNES version which is what I played, but the fact that almost every character in the ensemble seems to have their own straightforward but really compelling struggle makes the world as a whole feel alive. While I did find out about Kefka's backstory from the wiki, it's basically never mentioned in the original SNES game. Kefka does these terrible awful things because he can, because he believes that the only purpose of life is death. To me, he doesn't really represent what Terra and Celes could become, he's effectively a god of destruction, more just a force of nature like Chrono Trigger's Lavos. But unlike Lavos, Kefka is given personality and dialogue throughout and effectively serves as the antithesis to the game's themes; he's not Terra and Celes' biggest fear, he is the embodiment of fear for the entire world (ala Necron, from my understanding of FFIX). Accepting Kefka means giving into your depression and supposed lack of purpose.
On an aside, my personal favorite part of tge entire game is the very start of the World of Ruin with Celes and Cid. It's a bit confusing what you have to do, but it feels so intentional; I for one ended up killing Cid, and the scenes that follow, as heavy as they are, made it 100% worth it. But in the confusion of just how much fish you have to feed Cid and the lack of music, I naturally got curious and stepped onto the world map, and it truly felt like the end of the world. The isolation of your tiny little island, the desertified land, the sky being an eternal sunset, and the best part of all, the battles. You get the fun battle music, only to realize you're fighting those weak squirrels from the very start of the game and they naturally take damage every turn, often dying before you can land a hit. The entire world is dying, and it really feels like there's hardly anything you can do.
God FFVI is so cool, great to see that we can interpret the game in very different ways