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  • No surprise it's FF VI. Absolutely peak final fantasy. Classic Uematsu soundtrack, great story with an iconic villain and a lovable cast. Active Time Battles and a phenomenal Esper system for customization. Square at the height of their pixel art powers with some beautiful sprites. Ultros, the opera scene, train suplexing...

    It's a shame they kind of butchered the pixel remaster. I'd try playing a romhack version on an emulator if you're interested, preferably something based on Woolsey's wonderful translation (son of a submariner!).

  • Of course it's not FF7. Every FMV used different models, half of the second disk has dialog for Aerith, the weapons (that you fight) felt like half a battle each, and the story was an absolute mess.

    It's still the best one, it just felt like it had so much more potential.

    • Which is why it gets so many offshoots and spin-offs and got a remake before anything else.

    • Are you talking about the chibi models vs. more realistic models? I think that was an artifact of an FF trope left over from the NES era where the world sprites were limited to one tile due to NES hardware limitations while the battle sprites were more detailed 1x2 tiles, and this was kept all the way up to FF6 where they finally used the same sprite for world and battles.

      I have no clue why they went back to using different/less detailed models for world exploration in FF7 (if I had to guess they were unfamiliar with the PSX hardware and the chibi models used fewer polygons), but that go a long way to explain why the FMVs sometimes used different models--IIRC, the FMVs with chibi models played directly from the field, and the ones with more detailed models had some kind of scene transition into them, or otherwise were used for major plot beats. It's good they abandoned this entirely with FF8 onwards, though.

      • The more simplistic models being used with the FMV backgrounds was done to keep the framerate of the characters high while the PSX was busy with MPEG decoding.

    • Also, if you go looking at speedruns and people who look at the code, this game is held together with spaghetti code, bubblegum and duct tape. So easy to just break something.

      • Original FF6 broke easily as well. There's that girl character that has that ability to paint monsters and then mirrored versions of the monsters attack for you. Often the game was left in a corrupted state and crashing after a while. I usually loaded a save immediately but once the last save was a long time ago. I managed to enter a cave, a town, or something. Loading fresh data meant the game would no longer crash. All my item inventory slots were filled with random trash, though, which I sold to get rid of. Afterwards I had so much money, I could max out my equipment, potions, etc.

    • It famously launched unfinished, though not quite on the level that Xenogears was unfinished.

  • Kefka. That's why. He is the only villain to win by losing. He got what he wanted and drove everyone into his hand. He is by far the most cerebral villain in the franchise. So many stories leave out that having a phenomenal big bad is what makes a hero a better hero.

    • I've been thinking about this while I switch back and forth playing Elden Ring's DLC and Infinite Wealth.

      In Elden Ring my motivation is simply that they are in the way and I want to go through them. The excitement of defeating someone is only strengthened by how many times I didn't before I finally do.

      Infinite Wealth, on the other hand, introduces complete assholes you want to beat up and then you get to. Which is just way more cathartic and the build up is always going to be the same for nearly every player, because the bad guy is actually shown doing shit most people hate so you start to actually hate them and want to defeat them.

  • Between this and weighing in on what defines Final Fantasy (in the original interview), Sakaguchi sure didn't shy away from the controversial topics in the fandom.

    “I understand and know that this is a very widely debated topic, but I really think it has turned into something that has a different meaning for everyone,” says Sakaguchi. “If I had to give some kind of core ingredient, I would say it’s the story and world. These two are a must for any Final Fantasy and the common denominator across all of them. The world setting needs to contain some kind of thematic element that is loosely tied to current events. I think the world itself needs to have some kind of thematic backbone or message that gives a different perspective, or a thought-provoking prompt for players.”

  • The beauty of Final Fantasy is that, with each entry being different from the others, every game of the series ends up resonating differently with different people.

    The "best" Final Fantasy varies greatly depending on who you ask, for a combination of factors, including nostalgia and subjective opinions on the different aspects of the game (story, characters, gameplay).

    It's what I love about this series. You may play ten games, but the eleventh will still surprise you in some way. Even if I don't like a specific entry, I can still appreciate that they tried something new and unique, and I always look forward to playing the next one.

    • There’s no doubt about this. My favourites in the franchise usually differ from other people and fans that I know. It really does make it a pleasure being a fan of Final Fantasy as it holds such a diverse fandom that conversations often hold interesting takes, views and more.

  • "In terms of the Final Fantasy that I think is the ‘most complete'; I believe Final Fantasy 6 comes close, and does stand out above the other Final Fantasies, especially because it was the last Final Fantasy to use pixel art in all of its visual expression," Sakaguchi said.

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