Rudra no Hihou

Rudra no Hihou ("Treasure of Rudra", rendered as "Treasure of the Rudras" in the fan translation) is another late-to-the-party Squaresoft RPG for the Super Famicom, and while it has gained a small following over the years it remains one of their more overlooked games.  It was relatively unique in its time for being primarily based on elements of Hinduism, though a few Biblical references also appear.  Somewhat like Live a Live, the game follows different characters with separate narratives, though unlike that game, they also all take place in the same time period and interconnect in small ways - one character can leave behind a relic for another to pick up later, for example, and at certain points you can even swap to another character's narrative and come back to the other's later.  The final chapter of the game has you take control of a fourth character, uniting with the other three protagonists to that point in order to face the story's antagonists.  Said storylines are broken up into "days" counting down to the end of the world, though this is simply a measure of progression; resting "overnight" at an inn does not cause it to increase.  Rudras' presentation is a step above most RPGs on the platform, with fully-animated character sprites in battle (including all enemies and bosses) for even mundane actions like using items and normal attacks, and just some gorgeously detailed spritework in general.  The gameplay is pretty standard turn based combat and mechanics, although one interesting twist is that elemental resistances have mutual exclusivities - you can't become resistant to fire and ice at the same time, for example, so tweaking your loadout requires a bit more thought.  The real selling point of the mechanics, though, is the magic system - by entering combinations of up to six katakana characters (or just typing combinations of letters in the translated version), you can create new Mantras with a wide variety of added effects.  For example, "Ig" is a basic fire-elemental attack, but adding "Na" to create "IgNa" will cause it to hit all enemies instead, or "IgRex" will increase the damage it outputs.  As the game progresses you'll learn new prefixes and suffixes to add to a core effect.  Bosses will also frequently give clues to spells you can create and use yourselves and you can even try just punching in random words to see what you get, although more often than not you'll get something weak or outright useless.  Other special words can also be used to create powerful effects, like "Epymetheus" creating a powerful water-element spell that can freeze enemies, "Peace" being a guaranteed flee from battle, or "Saintelmo" for a powerful lightning-element attack.  There are countless possible combinations to find and surprisingly nearly all of them do at least something, so it adds a great deal of experimentation to the game.  While not Square's best RPG of era, it is an interesting game with some unique elements and certainly worth a look.  Hopefully one day it gets an official localization or remake so a wider audience can appreciate it too.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Released: 1996
Platforms: Super Famicom

Bahamut Lagoon

Bahamut Lagoon was one of many late era Super Famicom RPGs by Square that came out just a bit too late to be considered for localization; the Saturn, Nintendo 64 and PlayStation were all out by then and steadily building up their audience, so putting in the time and effort to localize a game in a still-niche genre for a soon-to-be-retired console didn't make much sense from a business standpoint.  Still, the game got attention from fans in subsequent years, getting a fan translation and numerous requests for a remake that have thus far gone unanswered.  Gameplay-wise it feels a bit like a mashup of Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle, with each protagonist leading a squad of up to four units that can engage the enemy from afar with spells, or in turn-based battles in close quarters.  Each squad also commands a dragon; you cannot control it directly, but rather give vague commands to engage, retreat or stay alongside the squad and assist with attacks.  Dragons can also be fed between battles to boost their stats, change their elemental resistances or even alter them into different forms, granting advantages in future battles.  The game is quite impressive visually with its detailed backgrounds, smoothly-animated segmented characters and elaborate spell animations; in fact, it might just be the best looking Square RPG on the Super Famicom, which is no small feat from the company that previously brought us Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG.  It all adds up to a game with Square's usual blend of depth and presentation and a few clever gameplay quirks (like freezing water with ice attacks so land units can cross over it), but the slow pace of it all gets to be a bit annoying - battles can easily take upwards of 30 minutes in the early chapters and only get larger (and longer) from there.  The overall plot is largely formulaic and the characters fall into the usual fantasy tropes, so it's nothing too spectacular there either.  Still, it is at least worth a visit as a mostly-overlooked curio of a legendary company, and I still hope it may one day get a polished-up and rebalanced remake as Live a Live did in 2022.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Released: 1996
Platforms: Super Famicom

Live A Live

An experimental Square Super Famicom RPG that was passed up for localization for nearly thirty years, but acquired a dedicated fanbase through the avenue of fan translations.  It's also one that proved ahead of its time in several ways and is credited with laying the groundwork for later hit titles like Chrono Trigger.  But is this odd outing one that's still worth trying out today, or was it left in Japan so long for good reason?

In the days where the Internet was starting to become mainstream, Square quickly became known as much for their localized games as for the ones that most English-speaking players never got a chance to play.  Hell, some of my earliest memories from surfing online were learning about the world of emulation and the vast number of games that never got brought over to our shores, and I actually tried out some early efforts at fan translations for games like Final Fantasy 2, 3 and 5, often with unfinished text and corrupted graphics (and more than a few instances of cringey, shoehorned-in swearing to make them more 'adult').  Live a Live wasn't one I tried out until quite a while later, and I didn't get too far owing to its strange format and offering the player quite a bit of openness and choice compared to JRPG norms.  But, with the game getting a surprise remake on the Switch twenty-eight years after its initial release, I figured it was time to finally give it another go.

Live a Live is one of Square's first attempts at an "anthology RPG" format; that is, telling several shorter stories rather than having one large, overarching plot that carries throughout the game.  Indeed, there are a total of seven stories to pick from and play through in any order, with each character coming from a very different walk of life and a totally separate time period from the others.  Each also brings at least one unique gameplay twist to the format. 

• A caveman in a chapter which contains no dialog (as spoken language was yet conceived in prehistory), but the story is conveyed entirely through character gestures and animations.  It puts emphasis on a crafting system too, having you combine sticks, bones, rocks, hides and other items to create equipment.
• A ninja sets out to infiltrate a palace in feudal Japan, and has a bit of a stealth element - you can press a button to hide behind a "screen" that makes you invisible to foes (even if you put it up while in their line of sight), and there are multiple hidden paths through the palace to take, with the story's outcome depending on which enemies you choose to kill (or if you choose to kill none at all save those strictly required).
• Set in imperial China, an aged shifu is looking to pass on his arts to several prospective students; accordingly, he starts off the chapter with a wide variety of skills and quite high stats, but cannot advance them any further, while his students must learn his moves and boost their stats through training with him.
• The Old West chapter stars a wandering gunslinger who must defend a town from a gang of bandits, utilizing traps to weaken and disable them to make up for being severely outnumbered.
• In present day, you play as a fighter in training, who slowly learns moves by observing them in battle with other fighters.  This chapter also has a character select screen and pre and post battle taunt screens reminiscent of many fighting games from the '90s, though the actual combat still plays the same as it does elsewhere.
• In the Near Future chapter, you play as an orphan with telepathic powers, seeking out a biker gang to avenge his father's death.  Fittingly, it also contains many science fiction and cyberpunk tropes, and even features a giant robot (complete with theme song) as a central element.
• In the Distant Future chapter, you play as a robot named "Cube" who builds bonds with the humans aboard a spaceship transporting a dangerous cargo, and it plays out like a visual novel more than anything else, having almost no combat at all outside of an optional minigame.

After finishing all seven, you unlock an eighth chapter, which appears to be a more traditional fantasy RPG at first, with a sword-wielding hero, magic-users aiding him and a medieval setting, and the way it's completed will set up how you play the ninth and final chapter.  Each chapter in the game is only a couple hours long (in fact, some can be 'finished' via a bad ending in far less time) and, as mentioned, they vary quite a bit on overall style; some put heavy focus on combat while others are just about telling a story.

Live a Live's combat system was a relatively unique one, too.  Instead of a side-view combat system like Final Fantasy, Live a Live has more of a top-down perspective, and has both enemies and allies positioned about a 7x7 grid.  The Active Time Battle system from Final Fantasy is still sort of here, though 'time' only advances when you move about a grid or select an action to perform, with some of your more powerful spells having a considerable delay before they're actually cast (and if a character is knocked back or felled before then, it won't activate).  Each character has a list of skills to pick from, with all of them having unique attack ranges - they may be usable against enemies in any of the eight surrounding squares, in a straight three-square-wide line, in eight directions with only the closest square to the character being out of range, and so forth.  Each also has a unique element and may inflict status effects or debuffs on hit, which adds a nice strategic bent - you may not do a lot of damage with a particular move, but weakening an enemy's attacks or chance to hit for a short period may make it worth using anyway.  Even items follow these rules, as you need to be next to an ally to heal them, though the upside is that items also have relatively wide ranges and can heal (or harm) multiple characters at a time.  There's a little touch of the later SaGa games in there too, as one a character is downed they can be revived, but if they're hit again while downed they're removed from the field for the rest of the battle.  Leveling up is pretty brisk compared to most RPGs, too - characters typically gain levels in only 1-3 battles, but that's little surprise considering how short each chapter is.  One can also rather easily evade enemies if they don't wish to fight, as monsters are visible on the maps and you almost always succeed when you try to run (unless a scripted event dictates that you can't).

Being a game spanning numerous time periods, Live a Live has quite a bit to offer both visually and musically, with some inspired tunes and art styles fitting each of the periods and quite distinct character designs, with even some well-known mangaka getting involved; one in particular that surprised me was the Feudal Japan chapter having character designs by Gosho Aoyama, best known for creating Detective Conan/Case Closed.  (Incidentally, this also contributed to the game not seeing a re-release or remake for so long, as they would have to seek permission from their publisher to do so.) 

 The Switch version of Live a Live provides much the same experience as its original incarnation, but with some improvements made to its presentation and overall balance.  The sprites stay in line with Square's classic style but are redrawn and updated for this version, and they mesh surprisingly well with the 3D backdrops that utilize large-pixeled textures.  Most dialog scenes are now given high quality voice acting (for the most part; the accents are often more than a bit phony-sounding), the soundtrack is beautifully redone, the UI is substantially improved (with health bars and weakness/resistance indicators, among other things), and as someone who found the HD-2D gimmick lacking in the previous games utilizing it, I think it actually looks pretty good here - there's far less ugly stretched textures, pointless blurring and harsh contrast than earlier attempts, and while it contains numerous added flourishes like lighting and particle effects, they never feel overdone or distract from the beautiful 16-bit styled spritework (likewise updated from the original).  For the first time I think HD-2D has actually been done in a respectful fashion, enhancing and updating a classic game to modern standards and adding something to the underlying 2D component rather than clashing with it.  If anything, Live a Live proves that this visual style works much better for enhancing games from an earlier era rather than making new games that try to somehow look 'retro' and modern at the same time and fail at both.  It's not without its weaknesses (still some very prominent pixelation in textures and a few elements do look quite odd), but overall it's the best application of the style I've seen yet.

So, while its individual stories were quite short even in the timeframe of the late '90s, let alone by modern standards, and the overall simplicity of its mechanics may be offputting to some, I still think that Live a Live is worth a visit for any genre fan.  It's an interesting, experimental title that tries to do a lot and mostly succeeds, putting the player in several short stories, changing up its gameplay in each of them, and capping it all off in a surprisingly satisfying finale that brings all of the protagonists together for one final challenge.  Hell, its multiple story paths and range-based tactical combat system also arguably served as prototypical elements for classics like Chrono Trigger, SaGa Frontier and Bahamut Lagoon.  Speaking of... can we get a remake of Bahamut Lagoon, Treasure of the Rudras or Chrono Trigger next, Square Enix?  Please?

Developer: Square, Square Enix, Historia
Publisher: Square Enix
Platform: Super Famicom, Switch
Released: 1994, 2022
Recommended Version: The Super Famicom version was famously fan-translated many years ago and enjoyed a small following among obscure RPG enthusiasts, and is certainly worth a look from a historical perspective.  However, the Switch HD-2D remake is the one I'd recommend now, as it's a substantial refinement gameplay-wise and aesthetically and, hopefully if it sells well, we'll see more old Square/Enix RPGs redone in this style.

SaGa Frontier 2

SaGa Frontier 2 is noted for being a vastly different game from its predecessor in almost every way, changing up its aesthetic, its gameplay and even many of the fundamental elements of its design.  But does it prove to be a worthwhile adventure regardless, or is it just too much of a changeup for even fans of the highly experimental SaGa franchise?

The SaGa series has never been a hugely popular one outside of Japan, but it has nevertheless found a niche fanbase, with its fans praising its experimental nature and open-ended design that draws influence from western RPGs.  Indeed, most games released under the name were almost entirely open-ended, having the player build a party, train them up and explore the world and all it has to offer at their leisure, only stumbling upon the main plotline after much wandering.

2000's SaGa Frontier II, on the other hand, was almost a complete 180 from that school of design.  Instead of being allowed to freely explore the world, its gameplay was almost entirely linear, having the player pick scenarios from a simple map menu that highlight points along a linear timeline, spanning its protagonists' entire lives.  Some are simple, non-interactive story segments, while the rest would stick the player in a small geographic area and having them advance through it, only being allowed to save their progress after completing it (though they can create a temporary "quicksave" in the interim).  The overarching plot follows two distinct storylines; the tale of Gustave XIII, a prince exiled from his country for lacking Anima (magic, essentially), and the other Wil Knights, a "Digger" (treasure hunter) in search of a legendary artifact. These two plots take place in the same world, with events in one story affecting the other, though the two characters never directly interact until close to the end of the game.

On the other hand, this does afford the game a degree of character depth that few other titles in the series offer.  Gustave is easily one of the most complex protagonists in the series, having low self esteem as a result of his upbringing and generally being manipulated by those around him as a result, even being dragged into a war with the country of his birth that he's reluctant to fight himself.  Wil, on the other hand, comes from a long line of treasure hunters and deals with rivalries and family drama throughout his story.

SaGa Frontier 2 is also a stark contrast from its predecessor in presentation.  Whereas that game was set in a bizarre world of fantasy creatures and science fiction elements, with CGI graphics and quite a lot of synthy electronic tunes, 2 opts for a strictly medieval setting and a "hand-crafted" style.  Sprites are hand-drawn and cartoonishly exaggerated, backdrops are finely-detailed watercolor paintings and the music is much more mellow and instrumental in sound, with a lot of piano tracks throughout.  It's easy to mistake it for an entirely different franchise at a glance, and it easily could have been if not for the handful of game mechanics tying it to the SaGa brand.

Case in point, combat in SaGa Frontier 2 remains perhaps its only largely consistent element.  You get a party of up to four characters and battle enemies when you make contact with them on the map, taking them on in a turn-based system.  The controversial weapon durability system returns from the earliest game in the series (though steel weapons have unlimited durability), and attacks are powered by either SP (for magical attacks) or WP (for special moves performed with weapons).  Skills are still randomly learned through battle, with odds for gaining them becoming better as you battle stronger enemies than yourself, and stat gains are also randomly awarded after battle.

A few change-ups are introduced, however.  One prominent one is that winning a battle doesn't restore all of your HP; just a portion of it.  Perhaps as a result of this, any character can now restore HP even if they don't have access to skills or items for that - they can instead spend one of their LP at the top of a turn to fully recharge their HP.  You also don't necessarily have to defeat every enemy to win.   Sometimes defeating enough will end the fight in a surrender, or you can attempt to negotiate a truce, chasing enemies from the field or, if you're outmatched, pleading for mercy can sometimes cause them to spare you.  Certain skills can increase the odds of such negotiations being successful, though I didn't end up using this feature a whole lot during the time I played.

As the game centers on a battle for the right of succession, I suspected that the game would incorporate some Suikoden-like elements, and I was actually correct in that regard.  Somewhat similar to Suikoden, there are three types of combat - the aforementioned SaGa style battles, one-on-one duels, and large-scale war battles, though they don't bear too much resemblance to that game's counterparts.  Duels are a somewhat strange beast, operating largely similar to the standard combat system save that you pick 3-4 moves per turn and watch them play out before choosing again.  Some attack moves can be chained together for extra damage, while other commands exclusive to this mode can do things like enhance the power of your next attack, give you a greater chance to block an enemy's attack, or increase the chance of hitting with your next move.  Its design is a bit overcomplicated, though - I won almost every one of these by simply choosing to Charge, then picking my strongest attack to deal extra damage with it.  Do that for two or three turns, maybe throw in a Parry or two, and most enemies will have their HP depleted long before you ever do.

Larger-scale war battles are also here, and they play out a bit similarly to the war battles from Suikoden III.  Each side gets a number of units that move across a grid, and when one side's moves into the same space as the other's, a clash occurs, playing out like a single round of the standard combat system.  The side that sustains more damage during this is declared the loser and driven back to the place they last moved from.  Interestingly, though each unit can only have four active characters at a time, fallen ones will be replenished from a supply of reinforcements at the top of each turn, one at a time.  Therefore, if a unit loses a character or two during a clash, it's often a good idea to have them retreat for a turn or two so they can regroup and join the fray again later.

SaGa Frontier 2 is arguably the oddest game in the series, doing away with almost everything that drew people to the franchise (and particularly its predecessor) in the first place.  The series trademarks of open-ended design, a surreal science-fantasy setting and even open-ended character customization are largely discarded in favor of a linear fantasy tale that puts heavy focus on interpersonal drama.  In fact, if it weren't confirmably written and directed by series mastermind Akitoshi Kawazu, I'd swear the franchise had been co-opted by an entirely different team of developers for this entry.  But in a way, it also encompasses what SaGa has always been about - an experimental series that takes unconventional ideas and inspiration from western RPGs and tries to make an interesting experience out of it.  The game certainly succeeds on that front, telling a complex and personal tale of two very different protagonists embarking on their own journeys, then coming together at the end to save the world.  But in a time period when RPGs were beginning to become more open and strive for a realistic sense of scale, making you feel that you were exploring and interacting with a huge living world, SaGa Frontier 2 certainly stood out like a sore thumb for its restricted design.

Developer: Square Product Development Division 2
Publisher: Square, Square Electronic Arts
Platform: Playstation 1
Released: 2000
Recommended Version: N/A

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Four years have passed and 199 full reviews have been written! So let's look at another favorite of mine to celebrate #200. 

A collaboration between Nintendo and Square in the twilight days of the SNES console, which seemed like a dream come true for fans of both companies.  But is Super Mario RPG a game that combines the best components of two legendary companies, or does it just shoot for the stars and collapse under the weight of its own hype?

Both Nintendo and Square were on top of the gaming world in the mid 1990s; the SNES had pretty definitively won out over the Genesis with numerous high quality releases on their system and Square had begun to take JRPGs from the niche to the mainstream with two major hits in Final Fantasy III and Chrono Trigger.  For fans of both, a crossover seemed like the most far-fetched of schoolyard dreams, but in 1996, it actually happened.  A collaboration between the companies that meshed gameplay elements of both worlds starring Nintendo's iconic character and with CGI-rendered graphics much in the same style as Rare's hugely successful Donkey Kong Country franchise; it was, simply put, a dream come true.

Something immediately noticeable was just how much Super Mario RPG felt like, well, a Mario game.  Not content to have the simple top-down view and action of most RPGs of the time, Mario RPG works in the platforming, powerups and general design of Mario in almost every element.  The game utilizes an isometric perspective, which was still relatively new and novel at the time, and this allows not just for Mario's trademark platforming, but for some creative puzzles and minigames that required you to think in three dimensions.  It did take a bit of practice to get used to operating Mario in 3D, but it was a nice primer for another legendary Mario game that would come out in the same year (that being Super Mario 64).  Adding further to the theme, Mario's special moves were his iconic fireball and chainable "super jumps", and his weapons would include a wooden mallet (a la Donkey Kong) and kicking turtle shells at his enemies.  Mushrooms would restore HP, flowers would restore FP for using special moves (and Flower Tabs/Jars/Boxes would boost the maximum), and on rare occasions one could find a hidden power star, which was used in very familiar fashion - running around and clobbering enemies while completely immune to harm.  The nice thing was that you earned any experience the enemies would normally grant you through battle, too, so it became a thrill to use those precious few seconds to earn as many easy points as you could.

Super Mario RPG is also one of the first RPGs I can recall to put such a heavy emphasis on minigames.  Not content to just have them as optional diversions alongside the main action, they're also integrated into the combat itself.  Every attack the player has can be manipulated for extra damage with a timed button press, by holding and releasing the button at a specific time, mashing the button or rotating the D-pad.  Fun stuff, though I do wish there was a bit more visual feedback for them; it's a little hard to tell from some prompts exactly when you're supposed to do the actions.  Inversely, most enemy normal attacks (though not specials) can be blocked with a well-timed button press, reducing or even completely eliminating damage taken.  With a bit of luck, one can also use an item without actually spending it (accompanied by the message "Get a freebie!"), or get a "Lucky" bonus that lets them earn extra experience or money if they win a guessing game after the match; if you guess it wrong, though, you either get no bonus or forfeit any you would normally earn.

There are plenty of optional side-games to see as well; in fact, almost every major area you encounter in the game has one.  To name a few: Midas River has you travel down a branching river, followed by a timing-based platforming challenge, to try and collect as many coins as possible, with every 100 you earn getting you a bonus Frog Coin (spendable on a number of rare and powerful items).  Yoshi racing doesn't operate quite as you'd expect, instead being more of a rhythm game - tapping buttons in time with the music will cause him to move faster, though you can spend a Yoshi cookie to gain a burst of speed in a pinch.  Many of these do have tangible benefits for the player, but others are just for fun; one prominent example of the latter is Beetle Mania, a simple arcade-style game where you shoot at bouncing Koopa shells and try to set off large chains for maximum points.  You gain nothing from playing it, but it is surprisingly fun and addictive.

The game features a lot of Mario's familiar faces - Goombas, koopa Troopas, Hammer Brothers, Thwomps and the like, but these are a surprising minority in the cast; nearly all of the characters and enemies one sees were created just for this game.  However, very few of them feel particularly out of place, all fitting into the bright, cartoony feel of the Mario universe while still fitting in a lot of RPG archetypes.  Enemies like bandits, shamen, plant and fish monsters and the occasional mimic all fit that mold nicely, while boss monsters like Mack the Knife (a creature riding a giant knife), Bowyer (a giant bow) and the Axem Rangers (a spoof of the Power Rangers, natch) are a bit more outlandish, but still work well with the general feel of a "Mario RPG".  One notable exception is the game's "uberboss", which is definitely much more inspired by Square's RPGs than anything else (and even features the Final Fantasy IV boss theme during the battle), but considering they were one of the game's major contributors, it's allowable.

It is slightly ironic that a Mario-themed RPG doesn't feature Luigi as a playable character (or at all outside of a small, easily-missed cameo), instead opting to make Princess Peach and even Bowser playable; the former as the party healer, the latter as a heavy-hitting physical fighter (though ironically, he never uses a flame-breath attack).  The other two rounding out the cast are Mallow the "frog", who is rather weak physically but utilizes a variety of weather-themed attacks to both heal and damage enemies; and Geno the animated doll, who has a good balance of stats, special attacks and buffs to aid the party.

As with any good Mario game and Square-developed RPG, it is a relatively simple game to pick up and play through casually, but mastering it is definitely a challenge.  Probably the most notorious example of this is the Super Jump challenge; if the player becomes good enough to get 30 consecutive Super jumps they will unlock the Attack Scarf, an extremely powerful accessory for Mario.  Going even further and getting 100 without missing a press will unlock the Super Jacket - a very game-breaking item that makes every fight, even the uberboss, trivial to complete.  Doing it once is hard enough, but seeing seasoned speedrunners pull it off consistently and make their way through the entire game in only a few hours, using only the barest minimum of items to get there, is quite a thrill to watch.  Even playing it as many times as I have, I've never managed to even get to 30; maybe one day, though.

Super Mario RPG, as its name implies, is the best of both worlds - a well-crafted RPG from Square as their popularity began to climb, as well as a high-quality platforming experience from the franchise that remains most closely-associated with the name, Mario.  It works as a fun pick-up-and-play game for more casual RPG fans, but has enough depth and challenge for the die-hard gamers as well.  It isn't hard to see why this one's still so highly-regarded, and why its fans are still clamoring for a true sequel more than twenty years after the fact.  I know I am too; Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi both innovated on the original in a lot of ways, but they just don't have the same brand of charm and magic that good old Super Mario RPG did.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: SNES, Wii Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, SNES Classic
Released: 1996, 2008, 2016, 2017
Recommended Version: All the later ports are direct emulations of the SNES game.

Vagrant Story

Vagrant Story was Yasumi Matsuno's second outing under the Square label and part of what would later be known as the Ivalice Alliance, though telling a story largely unconnected to the one in Final Fantasy Tactics.  Per Matsuno's standards, it is also a very unconventional game in many regards, feeling like a combination of a dungeon crawler and an action-platformer.  But does it prove to be a worthwhile experience, or is Vagrant Story a game with too many ideas for its own good?

Vagrant Story was definitely a divisive title among Square's PS1 entries, proving to be much different from their usual fare.  While touted as another entry in their acclaimed line of "movie-like" JRPGs (and having the aesthetics and some gameplay elements to match), it was really more of an action-oriented dungeon crawler; there were no shops, a limited supply of items, HP and MP would slowly recharge over time instead of doing so at inns or save points, and it had an emphasis on platforming and puzzles in between story beats and battles.  The game was even broken up into "stages" - generally each time you defeat a boss, you'll get a ranking, some items and a semi-random bonus to your stats (governed by a rolling slot machine).  Limited inventory space was also a turn-off to some, though the game did at least provide linked chests you can put items into and retrieve from any other like chest, similar to the safe rooms in the Resident Evil games.

Vagrant Story also featured a combat system somewhat similar to Parasite Eve, albeit not tied to a turn gauge - pressing the circle button at any time pauses the action, bringing up a 3D globe that you can target enemies within with your weapon.  Unlike Parasite Eve, however, Vagrant story features intra-model targeting - the ability to hit an enemy in their torso, a limb or the head.   Enemies are often vulnerable in only a specific point or two (for example, an early boss is an animated set of armor with a very thin connection between its torso and abdomen - hitting anywhere else will do much less damage).  Similarly, hitting the same spot repeatedly can cause a critical injury, inflicting negative effects like weakened attacks or parrying, silence or reduced movement speed.  Enemies can do the same to you, however, so keeping yourself healed during battle (and out of reach of your foes whenever possible) is a key part of the overall strategy.

Adding to this are battle abilities, which come in both offensive and defensive forms.  Offensive ones allow the player to time button presses during attacks to perform followup attacks, often with added properties - Draining some health from the enemy, restoring a small amount of weapon durability, inflicting status effects, or just doing extra damage.  Several can be chained in a row as long as you continually time button presses to a hit, racking up damage very quickly.  Timing hits is quite precise, though, and will require some practice on the player's part.  Defensive abilities work on a similar principle to the above - time a button press to an enemy's attack hitting you, and you'll get a bonus effect in return.  Countering their attack for partial damage, blocking about half the damage you take from a particular type of attack, or preventing status effects from being inflicted,  to name a few.

Mastering timed button presses and blocks is not as easy a road to victory as you may think, though, as there is a significant Risk VS reward element to the game - literally.  There is a mechanic in the game called Risk; as you attack (and chain attacks), your Risk counter will rise, and as it grows higher, you'll have less chance to land hits and will take more damage from enemies, but also a higher chance of scoring critical hits.  Risk will decay over time until it's finally back down to 0, doing so much faster out of combat, or you can spend items to lower it in a pinch.  However, it does build surprisingly fast, particularly when you chain battle abilities (which add several points per hit or counter move), so weighing it effectively also becomes essential to victory.

Special moves come in other forms, too.  Using a particular weapon type long enough will cause you to learn a Break Art for it - these are often powerful and useful attacks, but drain some of your HP when you use them, so they come at a cost.  Magic naturally plays into the game too; you have an MP bar that slowly refills over time, and will find Grimoires throughout the adventure that cast spells.  Using one causes you to learn that spell, and from that point on it will be cast from your MP reserves instead.  Neither of these abilities can be chained, but neither build or factor in Risk either, so they're another option to factor into your strategies.

I think the major element that drove most people away, though, was Vagrant Story's crafting system.  This too quickly becomes vital to success, requiring the player to tune their weapons and equipment to maximum effect against enemies, and further, to pair them with the proper grips and gems.  Weapons have interchangeable grips that are more or less effective with certain types of weapons, while shields can equip gems that change their affinities toward certain attacks.  Weapon types can also be combined to create new ones, with the product of that union having a combination of the affinities of both (though not necessarily an average).  There is a large random element to this too, so while you can occasionally get something amazing like a Damascus weapon, you might also get something less effective for the situation than you'd necessarily like.  Generally, you'll just have to hope for the best, and be prepared to make do with what you get if you don't luck out and get optimal results (or just be prepared to do a fair bit of save-scumming until you do).

Vagrant Story is definitely an odd beast, particularly for the era in which it came out.  While it retains some similar design elements to earlier PS1 entries on the system and its movie-like presentation definitely lives up to Square's high standards, its gameplay is considerably more akin to older titles from the early CRPG era.  With an emphasis on puzzles, random dice rolls, very tough battles, scoring points and a very in-depth crafting system that could fill a book in itself, it's a game with a steep learning curve and a heavy luck element rarely seen in JRPGs.  It does its best to be accessible and intuitive (even providing an online manual to explain many of its finer points), but even with that, it's something that will require a lot of patience and practice to adapt to.  However, those who enjoy this style of gameplay will quickly find it rewarding once they've attuned to its mechanics, and seeing how high you can raise your rank by completing stages and earning titles as quickly as possible will certainly spur them to master the game even further.  Those seeking a real challenge can also try again on New Game Plus mode, which allows you to carry over your gear but unlocks a new area with much tougher enemies that truly put your skills and luck to the test.

Developer: Square Product Development Division 4
Publisher: Square
Platform: Playstation 1, Playstation 3, PSVita
Released: 2000, 2011
Recommended Version: The PSN re-release is a direct emulation of the original PS1 game.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

Built as an "RPG for beginners" owing to disappointing sales of the first two Final Fantasy games to be localized for the west, Mystic Quest was also notoriously released in lieu of one of the franchise's well-regarded games, Final Fantasy V.  But does it manage to appeal to more experienced RPG players as well, or is this one you can safely skip if you have any familiarity with the genre?

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was the first proper spinoff of the Final Fantasy franchise (and the first FF to be released in Europe), and it remains a controversial one among fans to this day.  While somewhat favorably received in its time, it was not a big seller for Square, as it didn't accurately represent the design of the series for newcomers, nor hold appeal for those who played the first two Final Fantasies and expected another epic adventure in that style.  But perhaps most crushingly of all, Square passed on localizing Final Fantasy V (a favorite among many) in favor of this one, thinking the reason for low sales were because they were made too hard for American audiences.

The titling of the game is somewhat confusing too.  In Europe it was called "Mystic Quest Legend"; not to be confused with "Mystic Quest", which was the name used for the first Seiken Densetsu game when it was localized for Europe (released in North America as "Final Fantasy Adventure").  Probably not helping either was the fact that the in-game enemy designs and overall style were much closer to the SaGa series than a Final Fantasy title; no surprise, as it shared much of its development team with the third SaGa game.  Because of all this, it isn't hard to see why Square decided against any future title alterations once the PS1 era rolled around.

That's certainly evident from the get-go with Mystic Quest.  Featuring a brighter, cartoonier style than the two earlier-localized FF games, as well as a simpler plot and a more prevalent jokey tone, it's definitely not in keeping with the darker mood or twist-laden storylines of 1-4.  In fact, it actually resembles Zelda more in some respects, as the player often has to solve puzzles in dungeons by pushing objects, blowing things up with bombs, crossing pits with an extending claw, or just leaping over gaps (with a dedicated jump button, no less) to proceed.  Heck, one of the first areas you go to is a forest, and to get through, you have to mow down trees in your path with an axe as you would bushes or grass in a 2D Zelda game.

Combat in the game is overly simple too, with most enemies the player encounters dying in only one or two hits, and those that don't are often because you didn't use an attack that particular foe is vulnerable to (which it will inform you of each time you attack them).  Health meters can be displayed as yellow bars that empty to red as you take damage or a numeric display, though I don't imagine too many people found the bars too useful for gauging one's health; I certainly didn't.  Equipment isn't handled as in a traditional RPG, either.  As soon as you get something stronger, your old stuff is immediately discarded, never to be seen again, and it always occurs during a scripted event - you never buy new equipment in shops, save for replenishing expendable items like bombs or potions.  But perhaps most insultingly, you only get two playable characters at a time - your main character and a computer-controlled second character who comes and goes at the whim of the plot, and who is always higher-leveled than you are.

Another element of this was that random encounters are a non-factor in Mystic Quest.  Instead, enemies are clearly visible in dungeons as sprites, and they will only engage you when you walk up and touch them, meaning you can easily just leave a dungeon, heal up and come back if you ever get too beat up to continue.  On the overworld, foes only appear at specified "battleground" tiles that can be freely skipped over (though clearing them out often gives you rewards like extra money or experience), and in both cases, you can almost always run away from battle on your first attempt, so combat feels more like an inconvenience rather than a true obstacle to overcome.  One detail I did like, though, is that there is actually some visual feedback from your enemies during fights - as their HP decreases, they will visibly show damage, which serves as a handy indicator (and something curiously absent from the series proper for many years after).

One big plus to the game is its soundtrack.  Nobuo Uematsu didn't work on this particular game, but it's nonetheless unique and well-composed, with some catchy tunes for towns and dungeons and two hard-rock themes for combat against both enemies and bosses.  The composer this time around was Ryuji Sasai, who would also compose music for Final Fantasy Legend III, Rudra no Hiho and Bushido Blade 2, as well as the first two games in the Xak franchise.  While it's certainly a departure from Final Fantasy's grandiose and orchestral pieces, I imagine it lent Mystic Quest more appeal to the western audience it was aimed at, and is definitely worth a listen.

When it's all said and done, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is what it is - a simple RPG made for beginners to teach them the basics of the genre and get them better prepared for later challenges.  It certainly does its job for that audience, though its appeal for more serious gamers is severely limited - other than some amusing features and a solid soundtrack, it's a short, very easy game with a just-barely-passable storyline.  On the other hand, it is worth playing through at least once for that same reason - seeing what it has to offer without an enormous time and mental commitment is a nice change of pace, especially in a modern world where every game has to be 60+ hours, even if over half of it is drab filler, because big publishers won't touch it if it's any shorter.  Later Square games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and especially Final Fantasy VII would do a much better job appealing to a wider audience with accessible design, faster pacing and inventive, yet intuitive mechanics, and while I doubt Mystic Quest helped bring many new fans to the genre, it's nonetheless a decent, enjoyable game that's worth a try.

Developer: Squaresoft
Publisher: Squaresoft
Released: 1992, 2010
Platform: SNES, Wii Virtual Console
Recommended Version:  The Virtual Console port is a direct emulation of the SNES version.  But as the Wii Virtual Console is no longer available, the only way to play it at present is on original hardware.  Curiously, there is also a fan-made remake in RPG Maker titled "Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Remastered", though I haven't tried that one out.

Final Fantasy IV

The fourth entry in the Final Fantasy franchise and the first to appear on a 16-bit platform, Final Fantasy IV (originally released as II in the west) is definitely the most prolific game in the franchise, being updated and re-released far more than any other game in the series.  But is it one that ultimately stands the test of time well, or is this just laying the groundwork for greater games to come?

Final Fantasy continued to be a popular series in the Famicom era despite its misstep with the second entry, and it managed to even gain a foothold in the west, too, with Final Fantasy 1 quickly becoming a cult hit.  So, in the early days of the SNES's lifespan, Square decided to release the fourth game in the series, albeit renumbering the game to spare confusion and simplifying its gameplay to appeal more to a western audience, as RPGs were still relatively niche at the time.  In the years that followed it would end up being rereleased on several platforms, each making their own changes and additions but generally providing a more faithful experience to the original game's level of challenge.

Final Fantasy moving to a new platform definitely allowed its developers to branch out and more fully realize a creative vision and storyline in their game, and this is evident right from the start.  The game opens with a lengthy cutscene setting up the plot and establishing the characters and scenario perfectly, and after a brief bit of tutorial at the start, even opens up with a newly-remastered 16-bit version of the classic Final Fantasy theme and an opening text roll slightly reminiscent of the famous Star Wars intros.  That certainly continues throughout, too, playing out with well-realized (if archetypal) characters, movie-like plot scenes and consistently good music to get you swept up in the narrative.  It's not the most amazing example of it on the platform, but for one of the first RPGs on the system, it's certainly nothing to be dismissed either.

Gameplay remains largely familiar, though a few new elements are introduced to keep things fresh.  Uniquely for the series, Final Fantasy IV is the first (and to date, only) game to feature a persistent five-character party.  Unlike Final Fantasy III, the player also cannot freely set characters in the front or back rows - there are always three up-front and two in back or vice-versa.  This generally makes sense as you almost always have a combination of casters and front-row fighters around, but it also means that you'll probably have to reshuffle your party each time a new character leaves or joins up, which can be slightly annoying.

The game itself is definitely more streamlined than its predecessors, with fixed classes for each of your characters, each with their own equipment restrictions and special abilities.  These are largely reminiscent of the earlier Final Fantasies, with Cecil taking on a new class in the form of the Dark Knight at first - wielding powerful darkness-element equipment and able to use an ability that damages all foes in a battle at the cost of some of his own HP.  The rest are largely reminiscent of the classes from 1 and 3, though with a few newer elements mixed in.  Rosa mostly serves as a White Mage, casting healing and supportive spells, but primarily wields bows like an Archer, while Rydia uses both black magic and summons to perform offensive attacks.  Some also get new commands, such as Edge's Mug command (which damages the enemy and steals items simultaneously) or Palom's Bluff (which temporarily bolsters his magic stat).  They tend to vary heavily in usefulness (Fusoya's Regen is basically worthless), but it does add some of variety to the overall gameplay even among characters that would otherwise be very similar.  There are a total of twelve playable characters overall too, so while it may not have the diversity of say, 3, there is still a lot of distinct gameplay to be found.  There is a heavy emphasis on grinding, though, particularly late in the game - underleveled parties will find themselves facing meatshield enemies who can kill them in 2-4 hits while taking numerous attacks per player turn, which can quickly get extremely frustrating.  Moreso as the damage enemies inflicts has a huge random element - one turn they can do around 300, and well over 1000 the very next, with the exact same move.  The encounter rate is frankly absurd too, forcing the player into battles every 1-3 steps at times, exponentially increasing the tedium and frustration.

Final Fantasy IV also marked the franchise's first use of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which made the game into a faster-paced experience than the simple turn-based menus of its predecessors.  Essentially, each character on the field has their own time bar that incrementally fills, and once it tops off, they can perform an action, temporarily pausing the passage of 'time' to let the animation play out.  However, other characters' bars will still fill while you're selecting an action, so becoming efficient at maneuvering menus quickly becomes important, especially if you're playing on Active mode.  IV does contain an element largely dropped in later versions, though - several of the more powerful abilities actually require some time to charge before use, which essentially can leave a character helpless for a long period of time (and if they get killed before their attack goes off, which they often will, it goes to waste).  One also cannot "pass" turns in this game - once a bar fills, they have to take an action with that character before they can do anything else.

This does lend itself well to the overall dynamic of the game too, introducing a lot of bosses that utilize unique tactics that the player must counter.  One example of this is the first boss the player faces, the Mist Dragon.  During the fight, the dragon will periodically transform into a mist form; they are invulnerable while in this state and, if attacked, will counter with a damaging attack that hits the entire party, so the player must wait for them to change back in order to resume their attacks.  Other bosses have multiple segments, each performing their own sets of actions, and figuring out which ones to defeat first (or not attack at all) quickly becomes key to success.  This is easily the game's best element, moving things away from bosses just being one-note tank monsters and serving as an example for, well, nearly every JRPG to follow.

In short, Final Fantasy IV is definitely another milestone in the franchise, introducing a lot of iconic elements to its gameplay that would be vastly influential to the genre as a whole.  But the cheesy story, monotonous combat and overall weird pacing make it one that hasn't aged quite as well as Square thinks it has; certainly not enough to get over a dozen ports/remakes and counting.  Still a game you'll want to play if you're looking to get into the franchise, but I don't think it ranks among Final Fantasy's best.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square/Square Enix
Platform: Super Famicom, SNES, Playstation, Wonderswan Color, Game Boy Advance, i-mode, EZweb, Yahoo!, Playstation Portable, iOS, Android, Windows
Released: 1991, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Recommended Version: Final Fantasy IV famously has many different rereleases and updates.  This started with three different versions on the SNES alone; two Japanese releases (the initial release and a toned-down "Easy Type" that makes the game simpler) and the American version which mage things simpler still, doing away with many attack items and most of the extra character skills and reducing the difficulty of most fights.  Later came the GBA port which restored some content and ideas cut from the original release as well as adding some original elements, the DS version that remade the game in 3D graphics, added voiceover and added some new content of its own, and the PSP version, which came packed with its sequel (After Years) and an original interlude story.  The 2021 Pixel Remaster is the one I'd recommend nowadays, though, as it features much crisper pacing and quite nice updated graphics that remain faithful to the original release in style.

Final Fantasy VI

A beloved classic among Nintendo fans in particular, Final Fantasy 6 was also notable for being the last game in the franchise to appear on a Nintendo console for an entire generation. But does this cult classic stand the test of time, or is this simply a case of the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia making a mediocre experience seem golden?

Final Fantasy III (really the 6th in the series - 7th counting Mystic Quest) is certainly a fan favorite in the series, particularly for Nintendo fans as it was the last game Square released on a Nintendo platform for a good while; after this, they hopped ship to the Playstation and achieved new levels of fame with games like Final Fantasy VII, Parasite Eve and Xenogears while the N64 got virtually nothing in the genre to compete with it.  Feelings were hard (and understandably so), but I think that whole fiasco resulted, at least in part, of this being a game that many genre fans clung to.

Personally, though, I think the hype it gets, both twenty-some years back and now, is just a bit overblown, though that isn't for a lack of trying.  The overarching plot is an archetypal RPG story, with an ambitious empire using mighty (and illicit) technology to conquer the world and an unlikely band of protagonists teaming up to combat them.  Quite a few of them, in fact - rather than the simple band of four heroes, or the come-and-go party format of Final Fantasy IV, VI has a cast of fourteen playable characters in total (with a ton of temporary supporting characters), and the player is able to use any of them freely beyond a certain point in the story.  Each fills in one of the archetypal Final Fantasy classes, though with a few new twists added in for good measure, such as Celes - a mage-type character who can use the "Runic" command to absorb enemy spells, blocking them from harming the party and restoring her own MP.  Relm is an odd case, working somewhat like the Beastmaster class from Final Fantasy V, though she doesn't "capture" monsters in the traditional sense; instead, she uses the Sketch command to create a double of them that uses one of their moves before vanishing (which can be fun at times, though it is also notoriously buggy and known to crash the game, glitch one's inventory or even corrupt save files under certain conditions).  Arguably the strangest of all is Gau, who goes into a "Rage", mimicing the attack pattern of a selected enemy until the fight is over or he's killed.  Defeated monsters are added to the pool of enemies that spawn on a specific area of the world map called the Veldt, and Gau must visit there (and spend a few battles away from the party) to learn new Rages.  So there is a lot going on in terms of gameplay.  There are plenty of hidden secrets and obscure tricks and quirks to discover too, so die-hard completionists have a lot to enjoy here too.

Early predecessors of some iconic Final Fantasy mechanics began to show up here too.  Some characters' special moves function as minigames of sorts - Sabin's Blitz command lets the player punch in Street Fighter style sequences of inputs to perform special moves, while Setzer's Slot command lets him spin three reels and get an effect depending on where they land - sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good.  This was also the first instance of powerful, character-specific special moves - not 7 as commonly believed.  Here, though, they're called "Desperation moves" and only have a 1 in 16 chance to activate when a player chooses the Attack command when their HP is critically low, so they're not as useful or reliable as you'd hope.  Still, when you do manage to get one it is a nice little bonus.  Another oddity is the Magicite mechanic, which kind of formed the basis for 7's Materia.  Essentially, these teach magic, provide stat boosts and serve as summons all at the same time; magic is learned from them by gaining AP after battles, and once one hits 100 points for a specific spell, it is permanently learned by that character.  Each esper also grants a bonus to a particular stat when a character levels up with it equipped, allowing the player to tweak them to their liking (like giving more Strength to fighter types or more MP to mages).  Finally, when equipped, one can press Up on the menu to summon that esper for a special attack; not always just elemental damage, but occasionally mimicking other Final Fantasy mechanics too (like having the entire party do a Dragoon-style jump attack).  It's another creative way to tweak your party to your liking, though it seems a bit odd that any character can learn any spell - even characters who clearly aren't built as casters (like Gau).  It also feels a bit excessive, particularly toward the end when you have so many characters and tools to utilize that most fights just feel trivial.  Even bosses have to be beatable regardless of your party composition so there's not much in the way of deep tactics going on here.

There is a lot here in terms of storytelling, too.  Almost every character has their own subplot, and each is a self-contained story with a completely distinct tone. The downside is that the overall game feels disjointed and the main story barely has characters interaction or forming anything beyond a superficial relationship with one another (and even when one is hinted at, it's almost never followed up on in any interesting way).  Other games have utilized this format too - 2004's Shadow Hearts Covenant and 2019's Indivisible to name two - though these don't suffer the same degree of mood whiplash as FF6 does as they have a consistently comedic tone and rarely try to go for pathos.  Final Fantasy 6's mood, on the other hand, shifts very abruptly from one scene to the next, and at times, within the same one, often to the detriment of the narrative.  One particularly stark example in my mind is a character tormented by the deaths of his family and said torment manifests as... the famous vaudeville comedy act, the Three Stooges.  No joke; they really did that.  Others come to no satisfying end (Gau) or are just given brief lip service and scarcely mentioned again (Celes), so for many, you're kind of wondering why they're there at all beyond providing an archetypal Final Fantasy class to play as.  The game is at least genuinely funny at times with its absurd scenarios, bizarre dialog and self-aware jokes, but it's a pretty stark contrast when the pendulum swings the other way and suddenly they're trying to play a scene for pathos.

That's not to say that the serious side of the writing doesn't shine at times, because it certainly does.  One scene that particularly stood out to me was the origin story for Edgar and Sabin, two brothers divided by destiny.  This scene was written by Soraya Saga (who would later become one of the main writers on Xenogears and Xenosaga) and it definitely shows her talents with some strong dialog and striking imagery, quickly becoming one of the game's best moments.  That, plus some effectively dark writing and unsettling imagery in other characters' stories, and the consistently high-quality music and graphics every step of the way, just made me wish they kept a more consistent tone throughout the game and made it all fit together instead of ultimately creating a bunch of mostly separate storylines with only a tenuous binding thread.  And that they'd do less shoehorning humor in at completely inappropriate moments.

Part of said inconsistency may fall on the shoulders of one Ted Woolsey.  He worked as a translator at Square in the mid-90s, localizing this game as well as a handful of other popular releases (Secret of Mana, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger) and eventually working on the ever-controversial Secret of Evermore.  All of these games to varying degrees had a comedic tone to them, with a lot of pop culture references (enemies named "Ipooh" and "Evil Oscar" respectively) and lines of dialog that are just plain silly.  However, controversy arose when fan translations started to become more prominent and it was found that a significant portion of this humor was his own invention and not a literal, direct translation of the script.  As a result, the game definitely felt much more uneven and jokey than its creators probably intended, and numerous fan-translations were created to give it a more literal take, with Square even replacing the script with a freshly retranslated one in later releases starting with the GBA port.  Having played both, though, I can definitely say that he made Final Fantasy III a more memorable game, as a lot of the redone story is just plain forgettable; characters don't really have much personality of their own and many equivalents of the SNES game's most iconic lines (particularly Kefka's) are just bland in comparison.  For better or worse, Ted did made the game more memorable and distinct.  He's not solely to blame for the back-and-forth tone (his changes not accounting for moments like the ten-ton weight gag or the aforementioned Three Stooges bit), but he certainly added to it and at least contributed a lot of its funnier bits.

In the end, Final Fantasy 6 is one of the strangest in the series, at least for me.  Its gameplay is varied and consistently fun, if overly easy - I only ever had trouble with 3 or 4 bosses.  But its writing constantly jumps around between slapstick, melodrama and camp on a dime, which is just kind of bizarre.  Basically, it feels like the writers were just throwing every idea they had at the wall to see what stuck; some of it does land, but a good portion just feels undercooked.  Still, it never gets too cringe-worthy like some games in the series.  That I still remember much of what goes on in it despite not playing it in over fifteen years probably speaks to it being a memorable experience as well.  But the fact that I've never been one to buy into the 'console warrior' mindset and have endeavored to experience as many RPGs as I can, many of which I've found better-executed in various ways, probably contribute to it being a game I have fun playing but don't have as strong an attachment to as many.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Platform: SNES, Playstation, GBA, Android, iOS, Windows
Released: 1994, 1999, 2007, 2014, 2015
Recommended version:  The Pixel Remaster port is easily my favorite one, fixing up a lot of the strange bugs and design choices of the original while providing a more polished (but still funny) localization.  They also redid the opera house scene in "HD-2D" style (3D rendered environments with 2D sprites and stylized textures) and even recorded the singing lines in several languages, and it honestly looks and sounds excellent.  Kind of begs the question why they didn't just remake the whole game in that style, but regardless, it's a lovely upgrade to probably the game's most famous scene.

Final Fantasy III

After a not particularly well-received second entry to the franchise, Final Fantasy III went back to what made the original great, restoring the class system while retaining a lot of the polish that 2 brought to the table.  But was this game successful at restoring the franchise to glory, or is this just another one that most people will want to skip?

The last of the 8-bit Final Fantasy games and the only one that didn't see release in the west until a remake 15 (!) years after the fact, Final Fantasy III was one of the least-known games in the series for a good while, even among RPG enthusiasts.

Thankfully, when emulation and fan translations came on the scene, it got as much of a chance as any other game in the series did, and what we found was a quality experience that ranks among the platform's finest.  The unpopular, stat-by-stat leveling system from Final Fantasy II was thrown out in favor of one that used traditional levels, the game sported significantly more interactivity with switches to flip, doors to open and many hidden items in towns and dungeons to find, and the class system from the first game made a return as well.  However, the latter saw a major expansion, as there were a grand total of twenty-three to play with - nearly twice as many as the original game.

You don't get to pick from all of them at the start, though.  As in the later Final Fantasy V, you start with just a generic class - the generally lousy Onion Knight - and earn more as the game progresses.  At first these largely fall along the lines of the first game's - Fighter, Monk, White Mage, Red Mage, Black Mage - but as you go on, you'll begin to see not just twists on the familiar ones, but several that are totally new to the franchise.  To name a few - the Thief class, no longer just a glorified faster but lighter-armed Fighter, now has the ability to steal items mid-battle, flee from a fight with less chance of failure, and open locked doors without a key.  Knights are armored fighters who can cast low-tier magic and defend critically weak characters from attacks that would kill them.  Dragoons are fighter-types who wield spears and can use the Jump command to remove themselves from the fight for a turn, coming back in with a powerful diving strike that does heavy damage.  This was also the first appearance of the iconic Summoner class and many of the iconic summons thereof - Ifrit, Shiva, Titan, Odin and so forth.

All fun stuff, but the overall balance between the classes leaves a bit to be desired.  Several of the classes one acquires later are basically straight upgrades to the base classes, making the older ones totally obsolete.  Others are very situational, such as the Scholar (who can see enemy weaknesses and stats and cast low-tier magic - only really useful in one fight where the boss constantly shifts weaknesses) and the Dark Knight (whose weapons are the only ones that don't cause certain enemies to split into two).  Others still are nearly useless, like the Bard; his attacks are weak but debuff enemies, while the Cheer command acts as a low-level party buff and Scare will sometimes (rarely) cause enemies to flee.

That sums up the game as a whole too - the overall challenge of it is uneven at times, with the occasional ridiculously hard boss fight that you'll have to stop and grind to defeat, or just use underhanded tactics on.  One early example of this is a rat boss that must be fought while the entire party is in Mini state, making your fighters effectively useless as their attacks do only 1 HP of damage and forcing you to spam magic while enduring his ridiculously strong attacks.  Another notorious example comes near the mid-game; a particular boss that spams powerful lightning attacks every turn - more than enough to outpace party healing spells.  The only effective strategy I found, other than grinding for hours, was to make the entire party Dragoons and spam jump to both evade his attacks and hit him until he went down (and even then, only one character survived the fight).  This is also not aided by the game featuring no mid-dungeon save points at all - not even in the later remakes, so dying at a boss can mean redoing upwards of an hour of work.

Still, the game does manage to avoid being too frustrating by doing what Final Fantasy has always done best - providing a feast for the eyes and ears as you play.  While still relatively minimal in terms of animation, this is easily the impressive Final Fantasy game on the system visually, with huge, highly-detailed monster sprites and environments to explore.  The music in the game is great too, reworking the iconic theme to great effect and having some surprisingly moody music regardless of the situation - eerie dungeons, a bright and uplifting overworld theme, and an air of mystery when you step into the world at large and your quest truly begins.  The game also ups the ante as in-game vehicles go, providing the player with four different types of airships over the course of the game, each with differing abilities.  The two most interesting are the ones unlocked near the end - one doubling as a submarine and allowing underwater travel (necessary for some plot elements but also enabling secret-hunting elsewhere) and the Invincible, which has shops, item storage, beds for resting and even damages random enemies before fights truly begin by lobbing a bomb at them.  Fun stuff, and definitely keeps you invested in a pretty creative way.

So, despite its uneven design and some wonky balance in places, Final Fantasy III is a fine 8-bit RPG, telling an enjoyable story while throwing a lot of curveballs at the player, and leaving them free to figure out their own way past them.  There is plenty of side-content to experience along the way too, lending it quite a bit of longevity and replayability, and it's easily among the platform's best in terms of presentation.  It's a shame it's among the more shunned Final Fantasy games by Square, as it's easily worth a look for any serious fan (and, in my opinion at least, the 3D remake doesn't do the original justice).

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Platform: Famicom, Nintendo DS, iOS, Android, PSP, Ouya, Windows Phone, Windows
Released: 1990, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Recommended Version: Every release after the original Famicom version is a variation on the remake, which attempted to balance the classes more and add some more depth to the story by giving the main characters distinct names and backstories.  However, many of the battles are much smaller in scale (Typically only 3-4 enemies max instead of the original game's 8) and secret hunting is now done via a rather clunky "zoom in the camera to see the sparkles" mechanic, which doesn't feel as satisfying.  In addition, class level stat bonuses are made significantly higher, necessitating more grinding, and whenever one changes class their stats are lowered and they must fight several battles to get up to that classes' full strength, which is rather frustrating in places, especially late in the game.

Final Fantasy

The first game to bear the name "Final Fantasy" is regarded as both a genre-defining classic as well as a building block for a legendary franchise to follow.  But is this piece of history still worth visiting today, or should it just remain a milestone and little else?

Final Fantasy's story is well-known to most any long-time RPG player, but for those unaware, I'll summarize: Square was founded in the early '80s by Masafumi Miyamoto as a software subsidiary of the Den-Yu-Sha electronics company.  They had a few moderately successful games on Japanese computers before signing a deal to become a Famicom developer.  Their early releases on the Famicom Disk System were not particularly strong sellers, which put the company in a tight spot financially, and while later, more technically-advanced titles like Rad Racer and The 3D Battles of World Runner fared much better (the latter selling nearly 2 million copies worldwide), they were not games lead designer Hironobu Sakaguchi particularly enjoyed creating or playing.  Seeking to create something more in line with his interests, Sakaguchi proposed an RPG project inspired by the likes of Wizardry and Ultima; Miyamoto was hesitant at first, but ultimately approved after Dragon Quest became a smash hit on the Famicom.  The project was initially named "Fighting Fantasy", later renamed "Final Fantasy" after discovering the name was already taken, with the moniker also serving as a reference to Sakaguchi's plans to leave the industry if it wasn't a success.  Their gamble paid off, though - Final Fantasy scored more than 600,000 lifetime sales in Japan, gave Square a flagship franchise and kicked off a long-running media empire that persists to this day.  It was even one of the first Japanese-made RPGs to garner mainstream popularity outside its home country, selling around 700,000 copies in North America when it made its way there in 1990.

It's not hard to see why it became popular, either.  Computer RPGs were still outside many gamers' reach, but Final Fantasy managed to provide an experience on par with any good Wizardry or Ultima game while taking advantage of the NES's hardware.  The game's visuals are bright, colorful and polished, with intricately detailed town sprites and quite a few creative (and grotesque) enemy designs.  Having your characters on-screen, visibly swinging swords and firing spells at one's enemies, was actually a pretty novel idea for the time too (and some competing franchises like Dragon Quest would continue to avoid that as late as the Playstation 2 era).  Nobuo Uematsu (who would go on to become a legendary composer and contribute to nearly every major Square game to follow) also showed some of his finest work to date here, with distinct, memorable tunes for each era and the iconic Final Fantasy theme making its first appearance as the player stepped off the starting continent into a larger world.  His  tunes also add tremendously to the bleak atmosphere of the game, carrying the mood of a world falling into decay and slowly being overrun by freakish monsters.  Even the town themes have a sad feel to them, with their largely-empty streets and the music carrying a somber mood.

Another relatively new feature at the time for JRPGs was the ability to customize one's party to their liking.  Rather than simply having a party of pre-fabricated characters, one was afforded four character slots, each of which could be filled with one of six classes - the Fighter, Thief and Black Belt were the more physical choices, while the Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage would comprise the more magic-oriented characters.  The Fighter was your typical RPG brute, being able to take hits, equip and use almost any weapon and armor one finds and deal heavy damage with them, the Thief was faster but couldn't equip heavier weapons and armor, while the Black Belt started off weak, but gained HP at a rapid pace and would eventually develop to the point of being able to kill monsters more effectively with their bare hands than with a weapon.  White Mages cast healing and supportive spells for the most part, while Black Mages were centered more on destroying enemies with powerful elemental spells.  The Red Mage fell somewhere in the middle of all of these, being able to equip lighter weapons and armor and able to cast both White and Black spells, but having fewer options for spells and mediocre stats overall.  As in Wizardry, one also had the ability to upgrade their characters to a more powerful "prestige class" after completing a particular side-quest during the game, making their character more powerful and changing their sprites to look more, well, 'legendary'.  And of course, all six of these classes would  become staples of the series and be joined by many others in later entries, with the expansive class system becoming a defining element of the franchise.

Final Fantasy is also among the first JRPGs I know of to utilize a wide variety of vehicles throughout the adventure.  This begins at first with one getting a boat to travel the seas, making it a relatively open-ended adventure in the early stages (though, as with a lot of early games of this type, venturing too far abroad can leave you severely outmatched by enemies far above your level of power).  Later, one acquires a canoe to sail up rivers and reach areas they wouldn't be able to by foot or by ship, and eventually, one gets an airship, letting them essentially travel the world freely as long as they can find somewhere to land (usually a grassy plain).  This progression would become a staple of many JRPGs to follow, with later entries having to figure out new twists on the formula to distinguish themselves.

As with many other RPGs of the period, combat is one of the major focuses of Final Fantasy, with enemies often attacking in large groups of up to nine smaller monsters or four larger ones (or combinations thereof).  This, paired with the relatively limited number of spell slots one is afforded, makes getting through some dungeons a harrowing test of endurance.  It's not uncommon that one will have to stop and grind battles for a couple of hours to toughen up their party enough to survive a dungeon, and even then they can still be taken out by a stray Death or XXXX spell.  Basically, grinding and saving before entering any dungeon, as well as making two trips (one to gather all the treasures, the other to beeline straight for the boss at the end to conserve resources) become key elements of the overall strategy.

This is also not aided by Final Fantasy's somewhat dated UI.  There is no option in the original version to mass-buy items, so purchasing and using potions and antidotes must be done one at a time.  Potions themselves are limited in function too, only restoring about ~30-40 HP, making them best saved for between-battle patching up instead of using them mid-fight.  The original version of Final Fantasy also famously does not automatically shift one's attack targets after an enemy has fallen, meaning that if two characters target an enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will hit nothing and be wasted.  Carefully measuring enemy strength and not just mashing one's way through weaker foes quickly becomes important.

Final Fantasy is also a notoriously buggy game, with many item effects and spells not performing as described in the manual or, in worst cases, doing nothing at all.  One of the most infamous examples of this is the Intelligence stat; it actually has no effect on spells at all in the NES port, meaning Red Mages are just as effective at casting spells as a "pure" spellcaster.  Most weapons that purportedly do extra damage to a particular enemy, like the Were-sword, Rune Sword and Dragon Sword, actually don't factor in the extra damage to particular enemy types.  Buffer spells like Temper and Saber don't actually boost attack, the LOCK spell doesn't work at all, while the LOK2 spell, rather than weakening an enemy's Evasion stat, will actually increase it.  Most of these errors were addressed in later ports and remakes, but make for a very unbalanced experience on the NES.

But in spite of these flaws, Final Fantasy won over many gamers in its time and continues to be regarded as a classic today.  Maybe not as beloved as some later entries in the franchise, but for one of the earliest games that tried to combine the depth and strategies of a quality CRPG with the polished presentation of a console experience, it was definitely a success.  Certainly worth a look for any serious RPG historian, though if you're looking to experience it with some more modern sensibilities applied, I'd say check out one of the remakes instead; preferably the Dawn of Souls compilation for the Game Boy Advance, the PSP remake or even the 2021 pixel remaster.

Developer: Square
Publisher: Square
Platform: NES, MSX2, Wonderswan Color, Playstation, Game Boy Advance, Playstation Portable, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Nintendo 3DS
Released: 1987, 1990, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015
Recommended Version: The Game Boy Advance Dawn of Souls version is probably my favorite, retaining the overall simple style of the game but polishing it up to the standards for the platform, as well as fixing many bugs present in the original release, reworking the spell system to a more traditional MP-driven one and adding in some extra dungeons and new content like a Bestiary.  The PSP version is very similar, though with completely redrawn (and quite nice) visuals and upgraded music to take advantage of the platform's capabilities, though the encounter rate on this version seems to be unusually high.  The Pixel Remaster version on modern platforms is mostly based on the GBA and PSP versions, though with the tiered magic system restored, the postgame content removed and some nicely updated visuals and music, as well as extra options like experience/money multipliers, having the original (NES) or arranged soundtrack and the ability to disable random encounters.