Blog: Thoughts on Final Fantasy VI (3)

As part of my ongoing tour through my childhood, SNES RPGs, I recently played through Final Fantasy VI (or 3 if you're from around where I was in space and time). As a kid, this game was the pinnacle of what a game should be, an rpg, full of adventure, drama, swords, magic and airships (sorry Earthbound, we'll catch up later). Replaying it, I found that the game generally holds up, but it definitely has some flaws. The characters were great, the story was very good and the combat was alright, but it also got in the way the characters and the story telling.

Final Fantasy VI as I remember it. (From GameFAQs user JagDogger2525)

This post covers my thoughts about Final Fantasy VI and it includes some spoilers. Incidentally I played on my SNES, so didn't have to deal with the *cough*crappy*cough* remake. (If you're interested, I did enjoy this article about what went on with the remake).

Things I Liked

Final Fantasy VI has an amazing sense of cinema, right from the opening cut scene. It isn't afraid to change up the gameplay to strengthen that cinema. The opening cutscene of the game provides a feeling of a cold and desperate team and that sense carries over as you start to get to play but you also get the added feeling of power as you have the magitec suits and are fighting really squishy minions. Other things like the rafting scene, the opera scene and the breaking of the world scene are also really interesting moments where you do something other than the normal game play but all in service to the cinema.

A strong opening (From GameFAQs user VinnyVideo)

The music and sound design are also really well done and serve that sense of cinema. The music may not be my overall favourite for a SNES game, but it's very very strong as you're entering new scenes and helps you to understand at a visceral level what a scene or location is about. The sound design is beautiful and I like the way the game uses sound effects (although some of that is a bit of nostalgia).

The thing I liked the most about Final Fantasy VI, is the characters. The game has twelve main characters, all protagging, and the story doesn't feel muddied. I think there are two main reasons why this works as well as it does. First each character is well written, with a clear arc, goals, dreams and flaws. Second the game is very good about managing when characters take up the story stick and when they don't. Characters, whether they're currently the main playable character or not, step up when it's their scene and contribute to the story. When it's not their scene they don't steal the show, but they do contribute. This lets the game have twelve main characters running around, all contributing but only a few holding the story focus at any point in time.

As I mentioned the characters are well written and that improves the game immensely. The heroes are all complex and the NPCs are interesting. For example, the character of Gsetahl leaves you guessing as to whether he was deluded, tricked, had a face-turn (or a heel-turn). Other characters,have a similar level of complexity through out the story and this helps flesh out both the world and the story.

Our enemy, but an honest man? (From GameFAQs user VinnyVideo)

Finally, there's Kefka. I think Kefka's may be one of the most interesting villains because he doesn't have a motivation, he's just crazy. In the same way Batman's endless resources are irrelevant in the face of the Joker, Kefka takes away all of the advantages the heroes may have and also that you have as the player. In terms of story, this has to be used sparingly (if too many games implement this then it's not special) and implemented carefully. You only really interact with Kefka a handful of times in the game and so it's surprising when his true nature is revealed and the world is destroyed. It also changes the nature of the story from a save the world story to a get revenge story and I think that's interesting as a less common video game story.

I quite like the story itself. It's Final Fantasy, so it inevitably gets to the point where you have to go save the world, but I prefer the ones where the saving the world is incidental to the rest of the story (this is one of the reasons why FF XII is probably my favourite Final Fantasy). I also like, as I said that this is the game where you don't save the world. The stories of video games tend to fall into a much smaller range than a lot of other media and so any game where the story does something unusual is a nice addition.

The strength of the story definitely comes back to the strength of the characters. Much of the story is based on the characters resolving problems that had been going on before the game began, but now heightened by the back drop of of a world war and the eventual end of the world. The characters aren't ever the chosen ones so much as the ones who are currently there who can probably do something.

The dialog isn't great, as it's suffers from early 90s translation and Woolseyisms (thought "Son of a Submariner" is and will always be a great line). But the story shines through the writing and especially now that it's been a few months since I finished the game, my feelings looking back are that the story was well done.

Finally, I liked the setting. As a kid FFVI was the game I set all other games by. Is it an RPG? Does everyone get a sword? Ok I think it'll be a good game (like I said, sorry Earthbound). So at it's heart the concept of an early industrial world powered by magic really appeals to me. The world is a little thin, there's not too many actual towns and not too many people in those towns and the towns are all very similar.  Still the game does a good job of making each place feel different and the people in each place feel different both from people in other places and from each other.

As with many games (especially from Square) at the time having spent hours walking across the land you get a really deep feeling for where things are and who's doing what. Then when you get the airship and can suddenly take in the whole world at once you get a real feeling of scale and speed, which supplements the adventure you'd already felt.

Final Fantasy VI really doubles down on this with the World of Ruin. After you've spent a long time getting attached to the world and the people in it, you're then forced to go around the world again and find where towns have gone and who managed to survive. So you get a very "home from away" feeling, which I think also heightens your attachment to the world.

Things I Didn't Like

The cinema of Final Fantasy VI is well served by the game play except for one big problem, the random encounters. It's pretty standard to bitch about random encounters, you're trying to get something done and then the game cuts into your peaceful walk with a loud clang and a messed up screen and then you have to fight a bunch of numpty little somethings that get killed without you actually paying any attention to what's going on.

Yay! A fight! Again! ... (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

That's annoying. It certainly ruins the pace of the game and I think it's a reason why people have significantly fonder memories of games where this doesn't happen (Yes, yes, Earthbound, I'll get to you, I promise). I think that the problem in FFVI is a little more specific though.

The specific problem with random encounters in FFVI may be best illustrated by one instance in the game where having arrived at the top of a tower to fight a boss (and sorry I don't remember which tower or which boss), and watched the boss spar verbally with our heroes I then had to walk six tiles up to fight the boss. At this point I fought two meaningless random encounters before making it to the boss.

Gamewise of course this messed up my carefully refilled health and mp, but it also totally derailed the story. Suddenly the tension that had built up in the story was gone and the fight with the boss was a little anticlimactic. The game mechanic got in the way of the story.

The application of random encounters in FFVI creates this effect quite often (sneaking through an enemy base? Well don't forget to fight an endless series of soldiers). The game mechanic (which may have felt more relevant at the time) overrides the story and forces you to remember that you're playing a game. I'm not saying that the inverse, story overrides the game mechanic, isn't also a problem, it's just not the problem that FFVI has.

The other big problem the game has is that while in story each of the large cast of characters is interesting, in game play they're not. There tends to be a wide disparity in the usefulness/effectiveness of character's powers when fighting, some characters (such as Sabin) are so overpowered that you'd be dumb not to take them, but then they end up getting more power. However using underpowered heroes feels useless a lot of the time, since even if they get more levels their power is never useful (such as Setzer).

The crew is large and talented ... and at least Setzer brought the airship. (From GameFAQs user Super_Slash)

Square has done a lot of things in the following Final Fantasy games to try to manage this problem, but I think it largely comes down to it's hard to have a dozen interesting game mechanics in the same game.

The game also suffers from my pet peeve of unexplained status effects. Poison seems to mostly make sense both for the heroes and the monsters, but there's a lot of effects where I'm not sure what's happen or if anything is actually happening. The giant monster sprites are pretty and kinda cool, but obscure information really badly. As I've said in a few other of these posts, I think that status effects are by far the most interesting part of an RPG's combat system.

Finally the game is unnecessarily slow. I say unnecessarily because there's an item you can equip which makes the game faster. I recently realized that this might have been their attempt to include the concept of encumbrance, but really it just means that you're slightly less effective at fighting (very slightly considering that most random encounters last one round whether you have the sprint shoes equipped or not). This goes against what I think is one of the basic tenants of design, which is not to waste people's time. 

Things I'd Include in a Game

My favourite part of the gameplay from FFVI is the parts where it splits the party and lets you work through different parts of the action (or story) with different teams. It's certainly the most interesting game play (especially if you're used to cruising through fights with your over levelled team) and I think given a cast this big it's also the best way that the story gets told. So I think that's one thing I'd love to take forward, especially if you can start to include some of the concepts like party-chats you see in more modern RPGs.

I also like the way the game balances the gameplay and the story telling / cinema. Obviously the amount of ludo vs narrative you want in any game varies depending on what you want, but I think for a game about story this one does a pretty good job of managing the two, at least if you can ignore the random encounters.

Not enough opera simulators coming out these days (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

Finally, I'm reminded again about how good a clear system for status ailments is. FFVI has really pretty enemy sprites, but as a consequence, it's almost impossible to see if you've inflicted an enemy with a status. It's also not very clear from the game generally what status effects are supposed to do and when they've worked or not (and why). So that's a thing I'd like to do better.

Final Thoughts

I love this game. I don't love it quite as much as I did when I was a kid and my replay has dropped it behind FFXII on my list of favourite Final Fantasy games. It doesn't have quite as much polish as I'd like, and I think having Chrono Trigger around puts it in a slightly dimmer light than it might stand it on it's own. I really like the story and the efforts the creators went to in realizing using cinematics and game play in a really balanced way.

A fight at the end of the world (From GameFAQs user KeyBlade999)

I like any game that doesn't involve "you are the chosen one now go save the world" and while this game has shadows of that, a the story isn't that one. I like how you're chosen by dint of being the only ones there and your saving the world has a lot more to do with getting revenge on the evil clown who's already destroyed everything.

If you haven't played FFVI, you should, or at least you should find a good Let's Play of it. I would be careful since apparently the new remake has some problems, not the least of which are really poorly implemented graphics. Still, it's a worthwhile game and I think it's an important part of gaming history as one of the strongest games before the dawn of the 3d era.

The End (From GameFAQs user noidentity)

Blog: Video Games of March 2016

I seem to have split my time a little more between a few games in March than I did in February. Partly at least because I finished XCOM and really didn't feel like picking it up again and partly because most of the other games I was playing really limited the amount you can play at a time.

My top five games of the month (by play time) were:

1. Stardew Valley - I resisted playing this game because I usually end up feeling a little empty after playing any of the open farming kind of games, and also because I tend to play games like this a little too intensely (cough, 17 hours in 7 days, cough). But a few friends were interested in it and I watched how excited ProJared and Pushing up Roses were about the game and I somehow found myself buying it.
   
   
   

   

   Down on the farm, where the cat watches all.

   
   
   So far I've really enjoyed it. I think it has a little more to it than the Harvest Moon games I've played over the years and I think it also smooths out some of the hichoughs that most of the Harvest Moon games have too. You can see the amount of care and polish that went into the game and continues to go into the game.
   
   I've also tried to play the game in a very gentle way. I try (although I don't always suceeed) to keep the play sessions short and I've also worked to avoid min-maxing any aspect of the game. I'm working on roleplaying just a guy who needed a break from life and got a farm and I have to say I think it's really helped me relax while playing. My only real complaint with the game is that there's no save option except over night, which occasionally makes me keep playing after I'd really rather stop.
2. Super Mario Maker - I really hadn't expected to play this much Super Mario Maker. I spent quite a bit of time (for the first 3/4 of the month) playing a little bit each day. I spent a lot of time thinking about how to make better levels and I think I'm getting better. The problem is that it's so difficult to get your levels played by anyone that you end up shouting into the void.
   
   
   

   

   The levels from Nintendo are also usually really great to play, here you played the same level 3 ways to get the three starter pokemon.

   I finished my "First World" with 1-3 and 1-4 (completing 1-1 and 1-2) and I think they're okay, if not great. The did inspire me to start trying to do things in a more creative, less linear way and so I came up with I Ain't Afraid.
   
   I've also been playing a bit more and I think that's helped improve my platforming and it's been fun (for the most part) too. I think the new components Nintendo has been introducing are pushing people to create levels that are more playable and less kaizo or automatic. Also, I think it stands to reason that at this point people who really like making levels are the ones still playing.
3. Final Fantasy VI (or 3) - I finished it. Finally. I'm working on a thoughts on post on the game. I enjoyed it over all. I thought the story was interesting and it has a lot of interesting types of game play.
   
   
   

   

   I'm not sure what it is, but we're fighting it. Also Setzer? Really? - From GameFAQ's user KeyBlade999

   
   
   Sadly it also has combat, and that's the thing that makes this game a real slog. I think my play-time was totalled at about 60 hours and much of that was trying to wade through the combat to get the right spells on the right person at the right time. It's still worth it, but I'm glad there are newer games that are a little easier to play.
4. Marvel Puzzle Quest - So, usually the casual games don't make it this high on the list, but between trying to keep up for the Alliance and the fact that the revitalized the progression system, I've managed to play quite a bit of Puzzle Quest over the last little bit.
   

   

   Match 3. Punch Robots. (or Ninja or Purple Guys or Melty Guys, or Soldier Guys or ....)

   
   I'd hit a point where I didn't want to play that much since I wasn't playing enough to get the high level characters, but they changed the way you level characters up and now it's been worth while and more fun. So one bus ride at a time I've manage to rack up the time on this one (it's also my game with the most play sessions for the month by a wide margin).
5. Europa Universalis 4 - So ... I started playing this again. Um, I guess my ill feelings faded and both Extra History and Hardcore History have been talking about the Middle East and it left me feeling like it was time to try to lead the Ottomans to glory again. At least I seem to have my play times down to a more manageable length of time.
   
   

   

   It's not that we're the centre of the world. It's just that we're the centre of the world.

   
   

I also started to play Mass Effect again this month. I was a little influenced by all the talk about Andromeda, and it's also just been a really long time since I played. I only played a few hours (since the game is much much slower than I remember). I'm still finding some of the charm that I remember from the first time(s) I played the game, but it definitely hasn't aged as well as I'd have hoped. My last play through I played he-shep Calrin, so this time I thought I'd play fem-shep Maria (who looks really unfortunately exactly like Ashley). I also had forgotten how bad the character models were for the first game in the series. Still it does feel a bit like home after all's said and done.

That's my Normandy. Also how effing hard is it to take a screen shot Mass Effect?

I think that tracking my play time has been good. I think I've been more mindful about what I play and how I play it. I think I've also felt a little more comfortable playing less, which is good since the next little while is going to be pretty busy.

Here's my total play time for games in March:

And here's my total number of play sessions:

Finally, here's the graph of my play time / day:

So it turns out that google is really weird about exporting charts. I'm not just bad at it.

Blog: Video Games of February 2016

XCOM 2 came out this month and that's really all you need to know about the video games I've played in February. Beyond that I've had fun keeping track of the games I've play for another month. I think it's been interesting to be mindful about what I'm playing and making sure that I'm getting the most out of my XCOM ... I mean games.

My top five games for the month (by play time) have been:

1. XCOM 2 - I played 42 hours of XCOM 2. That's ... a lot of playing. A bit of that is that at $80 (CAD) it felt really expensive, so I felt like I really should be getting my money's worth out of it. The other part is that the game is pretty great.
   
   

   

   The wanted posters are a really great part of XCOM 2.

   
   I found XCOM 2 really hard in the first little while. I mean really, *really* hard. Eventually I knocked the difficult down and it got to the point where I could at least play it. The game was still pretty tough but now that I've played a lot (and I think I'm near the end) it seems to have balanced out (to a bit easy, which is good since I was playing on the easiest level). The new easiness seems to be one part the XCOM hill (oh wow aliens are hard to kill, oh wait this is a new gun, hahahaha take that aliens) and a bit that I've figured out what the designers were going for.
   
   I will say that I really like what they did with XCOM 2, in most missions now there's an imperative (usually a ticking clock, but not always) that you have to push your soldiers out into the field and take on the enemy. That combined with the new generated maps has kept me really enjoying the game. I feel like there should maybe be one more set of enemies to fight, but it's a little hard to say how far along I am, so I've got not complaints right now.
2. Final Fantasy VI (or 3) - It's interesting that this game is the "runner up" for the second month in a row. I had intended to play a little more of it and to try to play more games with narrative. It's suffered a little bit from three problems. 1) XCOM 2 2) I'm tired of random encounters and 3) the Final Fantasy game decompression.
   
   

   

   Looks perfectly safe to me - From GameFAQs User KeyBlade999 

   
   The decompression happens in a lot of final fantasy games (but it sticks out in my mind in VI and VII particularly. Because the games are so heavily based on narrative for the first part of the game (half, two-thirds maybe) when they get to the "open world" part at the end, it can be difficult to feel like you're doing anything other than ticking off the items on the list to make sure that you're as powerful as you can be to beat the boss. I think later games in the series did a better job of fusing side quests into the story, but at this point I have three dragons to kill and I'm not that excited about it.
3. Hearthstone - It's jumped up the list to third but I've actually played a little less this month (again, have I mentioned that XCOM 2 is good?). I've been trying to take more meaningful breaks from work during the day and I can play a round of Hearthstone in about 15 minutes so that works pretty well.
   
   

   

   I've really got to remember to take these screenshots during the month. #imbadathearthstone

   Oh! Also I can now say, "to hell with you Dr. Boom!" I'm looking forward for the switch to standard (where old sets will be rotating out). I had a long layoff from Hearthstone, and while I don't play enough to be totally stocked with legendaries in any event, I definetly am missing the most cards out of Goblins and Gnomes. Also could someone please explain to me how these got to be "the old cards"? This time travel thing is rough.
4. Super Mario Maker - I'm still chugging along with this. It runs a little towards the work end of gaming, between the thought necessary to build a good level and the thought necessary to play through all the other levels pushed out there. It's still a little rough, with some levels being really unplayable or trolling you after several minutes of play, but I think the "meta" is levelling out to produce a bunch of pretty fun levels.
   
   

   

   Jitter and Jump

   I've been messing around with making more playable and fun levels. The one thing the game is a little short on is players, so it's a little tough to see what's interesting and what's not. I'd also love to see the game give you a little bit more information about how people have played your level. If you're interested in playing some of the things I've worked on I'm interested in my 1-1 and 1-2. Apparently my most popular is Jitter, so I'm also trying to follow up with that.
5. Mini Metro - Well I'm definitely not as addicted as I was in January. Mini Metro is good, but I'm not terribly good at it, so I find that a lot of my play sessions end up about the same way. I've also played through all the pre-made maps and now time I play is also a little the same. Stations appear in random locations, but the rules for each area are still the same.
   
   

   

   I'm sorry to all the shapes who live in this town.  You are going to be late for shape work.

   
   Still the game is good and it's fun. I definitely don't regret playing for a few minutes each day. It's also interesting how the achievement "Play the Daily Challenge Each Day for a Week" has kept me coming back. I keep not making it, so I've stuck with it. It seems to have slid into a nice niche with Bejeweled and Zuma Blitz.

So that's the top five by play time. I also tracked the number of sessions which left me with a top five of Bejeweled Blitz, Mini Metro, XCOM 2, Zuma Blitz and Hearthstone. I think this stands to reason, it's mostly the games I play for a couple of minutes at a time ... and XCOM. January had about the same results.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about Diablo 3. I've basically never played Diablo or Diablo 2... (It's ok, you can pass out from shock. I'll wait).

Xin is mostly glad she found pants over the course of my play-through.

(Are you back? Great!) So you can play the first bit of Diablo 3 for free and since I have the Blizzard launcher open often enough I was finally tempted to install it and play the demo. I had fun, but I'm not about to jump in and play the full game right now. One reason is XCOM (surprise) both the money I put into that was my video game budget for the mont (and then some) and it also took most of the playing time. 

Another reason is that the game ends the demo really oddly, instead of popping up a message going, thanks for playing the free part now you can play more if you pay us, the game just stops generating new content. So you can run around all you want, but the world just doesn't do anything. I actually ended up googling to see why the game was broken and even there it wasn't communicated very well (mostly it was people trying to figure out why they got the demo when they'd paid for the full game).

So, I think that's it for the second month of game tracking. I'm still having fun, so I guess you'll see more next month.

Here are my total play time and play sessions for February.

Blog: Video Games of January 2016.

A little while ago, I decided that I'd like to put together a "Game of the Games I Played this Year." This tends to be a little difficult though because I never actually remember what I've been playing after a little while. So, I thought it might be fun/a good idea to keep track of what I played this year.

I seem to have pulled it off, so far, and now, by time played, I have six "top" games for the month:

1. Europa Universalis 4 - I played a lot of EU4 and I did it all in about 4 days (see the chart below). I don't think it would be weird to say I have some very mixed feelings about it, and not just because I'm now terrified of the Commonwealth.  
   
   
   
   
   I like EU4. It has a lot of depth and strategy, (which I'm still miles away from mastering) and the AI is good and not cheating too obviously.  Whenever you sit down to play it's always engaging and you get to make interesting choices and plans.
   
   It's also the worst "one more turn" game I've ever played. I've sat down to play an hour or two and stood up four or five hours later feeling a bit like you've lost control of your life. I found especially I'd only quit after the game punished me badly for making poor choices (see Polish Commonwealth) and so I'd leave with a mixed, my life sucks because I've played one damn game all day, and my life sucks because I just killed 100,000 troops and had to give up six provinces.
   
   EU4 also gets into your brain. I found myself spending a lot of time thinking about plans for the Ottomans and how I was going to expand, or fix a treaty, or get those damned provinces back from the Polish. This tended to make it a little to easy to fire up EU4 and start up again. I had to make a pretty conscious effort to put it away so I could a) actually get real work done and b) play anything else (like Final Fantasy).
   


2. Final Fantasy VI (or 3) (for Super Nintendo) - Since I broke up with Ogre Battle (which I'll write a post about some day), I still feel like the dark days of winter are the days when you're supposed to play fantasy RPGs and Final Fantasy VI is a great game in that category.
   
   
   
   
   I was playing on my original SNES. Which gave me the full Woolseyized text, son of a submariner and all. I tend to think of the SNES version FF3 (with the arabic numeral) verses Final Fantasy VI (with the roman numerals), which applies to the later versions of the game. That may be a crazy thing to do, but it's what's been going on in my head for a while.
   
   Generally I've been having fun. The story feels a little strangled by the translation, but generally is good and once you get going is fun. Combat is good, but random encounters are evil (especially when you're trying to tell a story). There are slightly too many characters for the game to manage and not quite enough reason to trot them out in any quest. There's a button you can push that makes a ninja drop from the ceiling and you can fight him. (Also why are all ninjas undead?)


3. Dishonored - I really like Dishonored (which should really have a u in it somewhere). It's fun and it's easy to slip back into, even if I haven't played in a while. Beyond that I'm feeling excited that we'll get to see Dishonored 2 some time this year (hopefully) and I also want to try my hand at a Let's Play and this seems like a good game to start on.
   
   
   


4. Mini Metro - Holy crap! This little strategy game where you manage a metro system on a metro map is awesome. I played it a little bit when they had the web-only beta version running a while ago. Then it came out for real. I lost a day (oops) to the web-only version on my laptop then looked it up again when I got home and realized that the Steam version was on for $10 (CAD). So since then I've played a lot. I seem to max out most maps at around a 1000 passengers, but I like the variety of maps they have and the daily challenges. The only problem I seem to have (other than the lost day) is that it seems like you can't do the daily challenges all at once.
   
   
   


5. Super Mario Maker - I don't usually set out to play Super Mario Maker that often, it tends to be a game where I see the box sitting by the TV and think, "Oh, I should play an hour." I really like designing levels as an exercise in thinking about game design and I also try to spend at least a little time playing other peoples levels since I think the game is a little low on players vs creators. Since I'm thinking about it, I do have two levels that I made recently that I'm kinda proud of, New Buzzy Lair and Always a Way. You can also see my profile page.






6. Hearthstone - I don't play Hearthstone everyday, but I do like to play at lunch when I can and then occasionally while I'm watching the hockey game or as a way to wind down before bed. I'm not good and I'm lacking a lot of the high end cards to really get me moving (one day, Dr. Boom, one day), but I still have fun. It may not be exactly fair, but I do enjoy that feeling of watching your opponent make a mistake and leave you the opening to get your board control up and stable so you take the game over.
   
   
   

If you're interested, here are my total times in January for every game I played:

The units are in hours, I'm still a little baffled about pivot tables.

and I have a chart of which games I played on which days:

Sorry this looks janky, I'm definetly still trying to figure out how to embed google docs.