When I started this Final Fantasy Project, my challenge to play through every single player mainline entry in the series, it was mostly just an excuse to replay Final Fantasy IV again, if I’m being honest. That game was my first true JRPG, played on my SNES in the mid-90s, and it became my gold standard for the entire series. The bar to which I’ve held every Final Fantasy entry against. I’ve long claimed it’s my favourite Final Fantasy, but, truth be told, I hadn’t actually finished many of them. So this project is equal parts nostalgia trip and a chance to give the whole series a fair shot.
Nostalgia can be a fickle mistress sometimes, but in this section of my play through, it worked to each game’s advantage. I am a shameless fanboy of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Some of my earliest memories are of me holding that grey and purple controller while sitting cross-legged on my living room floor, the CRT screen glowing in the dim morning light. I’m sure it’s this experience during my formative years that has given me such a love for pixel art graphics over high-res or 3D games, even to this day.
The SNES Final Fantasy games are amazing. Each one is special in its own way, and each one is such an impressive step up from the games that came before it. It’s at this point in the series where you can see those who were working at Square in 1987 have been improving their skills at crafting amazing games. It’s during this 3 game era on the SNES that I think Final Fantasy really distills and cements what makes a Final Fantasy game, a Final Fantasy game.
Going from the relative mechanical freedom of the NES Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy IV is a stark shift for the series. Starting with an opening cutscene showing the main character, the Dark Knight Cecil, slaying innocent people to acquire the water crystal as ordered by his king, is quite the tonal change from the simple 4 warriors of light narrative that was featured in games I and III. It also took away a lot of mechanical freedom that was present in the past games, railroading your party to specific members for specific parts of the game, and each character being a firm archetype with no customization options for the player to mess around with. That said, the ATB system introduced dynamism and fluidity to the combat, that would become a mainstay for the next 6 entries of the franchise. Its story was also laser focused on Cecil, and his redemption.
Final Fantasy V on the other hand, returned to the static cast, and blew open the character customization options wide open with the overhauled job system. The story had its heavy moments, but was generally light-hearted and genuinely funny. The goofy character sprites bounced around manically, conveying as much emotion as you can squeeze into a 16-bit pixel art game.
Final Fantasy VI strikes balance between IV and V, telling a grand tale with a wide cast, and offering a decent amount of freedom to the player. It comes with its own mechanical shortfalls and frustrations, as I covered in depth before, but it does an incredibly good job in telling a story with some heavy narrative beats.
I think ultimately, which game is your favourite will come down to which characters or stories resonate with you, specifically. Final Fantasy VI is often lauded as the very best game in the series, but mechanically, V was much more fun to play. Personally, I love the character driven twists in IV more, from Cecil shedding his dark knight moniker to become a paladin, to the narrative influencing the gameplay, like how Rydia doesn’t learn the Fire spell until she overcomes her fear of fire, due to her hometown burning down around her. I also appreciate how the gameplay challenges and rewards are tailored to what characters are in your party. I can’t tell you how frustrated I would get chasing down a chest at the end of a long dungeon, only to pull a weapon for a character or class that I wasn’t using, a feeling which was particularly exacerbated at the end of Final Fantasy V when 8 of the 12 ultimate weapons didn’t mesh with my party.
I loved all 3 of these games. It was an absolute treat to replay IV, and experience V and VI fully for the first time. While I played the GBA remakes for each of these entries, each game absolutely holds up today. That’s kind of the joy of pixel art now that I think about it, it really holds up. At the time of writing this, I’m about a dozen hours into Final Fantasy VII, and I have to say, the rudimentary 3D polygons have not aged well. I recognize that in 1997, the graphics were absolutely cutting edge and mind-blowing, but in 2025, it’s a bit of an eye-sore. But this isn’t the time to start talking about Final Fantasy VII.
The steps this set of games takes into the modern age of Final Fantasy aren’t perfect, but they show that the team take great care in telling a great, character driven story. This is the era where I learned that I loved JRPGs, that I could emotionally connect with digital characters, and it’s something that’s been a part of my identity for my entire life. The SNES Final Fantasy games may be 30 years old, but all 3 are still great games, even to this very day.
Writing a review of Final Fantasy VI feels a little intimidating. This is a game that’s regularly listed among the greatest JRPGs of all time, if not one of the greatest video games of all time. NPR, Den of Geek, and Push Square have all ranked Final Fantasy VI as the very best entry in the series. It comes up anytime anyone asks what the best Final Fantasy game is, usually right alongside Final Fantasy VII and X.
My own experience with Final Fantasy VI is limited. I never played it on the SNES when I was a kid, I took a short run at it on an emulator on my phone nearly a decade ago, but I didn’t get very far on that attempt. This time, though, I’ve seen the credits roll, and I get it now. It’s good. Great, even. I have my complaints, sure, but overall it was a rich, memorable experience.
I’ll have more to say on how it compares to its SNES siblings in a separate post about the trilogy as a whole. For now, let’s talk about Final Fantasy VI, what it does well, where it stumbles, and why it still holds up all these years later.
The Story Begins…
Final Fantasy VI opens with 3 characters in Magitech suits of armour stomping across a barren, snow covered plain, a town nestled in the mountains slowly rising on the horizon. Those mechs stomp through the town of Narshe, and walk right up to an Esper, frozen in ice. Terra, feels pulled to it, and she and the Esper react to each other, giving off a blinding light.
Terra wakes up in a bed in a nearby home. An old man reveals that he pulled a mind control unit off of her head, returning her control to her body. Unfortunately, she can’t remember anything. Almost immediately, soldiers of the Empire bang on the door, and demand they turn Terra over to them. Terra flees out the back of the home into a nearby mine, where she is trapped and falls into a pit.
The old man sends Locke, a thief treasure hunter, after her, as Locke is a member of the Returners, a resistance group fighting against the growing Empire. Locke finds her, swears to protect her, and decides to head to Figaro to speak with the king. King Edgar, technically has an alliance with the Empire, but Locke reports that this is a ruse. Edgar is a high ranking member of the Returners, and is waiting for the right opportunity to turn on the Empire.
Enter Kefka, a general from the Empire, who shows up at Castile Figaro, and demands that Edgar turn over the girl. Edgar plays dumb, so Kefka does the most logical thing. Set the whole castle on fire. Edgar reveals that the castle can actually submerge under the sands, and it does to evade Kefka’s wrath.
Edgar, Locke, and Terra meet up with Edgars brother, Sabin, and then eventually with Bannon, leader of the Returners as well. As the group are deciding their next course of action, the Empire appears on their doorstep once again. The party escapes out the back, leaps onto a raft, and after a fast ride down the river, the party is split into three different groups.
The World of Balance
Unlike past Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy VI is not set in a purely high fantasy setting. During the opening cutscene, it’s revealed that magic has actually waned over the last century, and the humans have developed technology to make their lives easier (technology like a whole-ass castle that can submerge under the sands). The characters still wield swords, and Terra uses the familiar Fire magic, but much of the world is clad in metal. There’s a bit of a grungy steampunk aesthetic to the world, that is a welcome change from the classical fantasy themes the past 5 games have treated us to.
Returning to the gameplay style of Final Fantasy IV, each character has a specific archetype they generally fit into, which also limits what characters can equip specific gear. Edgar can wield swords and spears, while Locke can handle swords and knives. There’s lots of overlap, but also some characters have weapons only they can use. Each character has their own skill as well, like Locke’s Steal ability, where he can swipe items from monsters, or Sabin’s Blitz commands, which require the player to enter a button combo a la street fighter to execute a command. These skills are specific to each character, no swapping skills here. It’s a bit of a jarring return to form, considering Final Fantasy V was all about letting you mix and match your abilities to create some really fun combinations. But in the end, I think this system allows the developers and designers to create a much more narratively cohesive character.
When in doubt, suplex a train.
Some of the character skills feel outright broken. Sabin, for example, got an attack called Rising Phoenix, that hit all the enemies on the field, often KOing most of them. Edgar similarly, has an auto-crossbow, that hits all enemies without any damage penalty. Neither of these skills have a cool-down or MP cost, which means I pretty much spammed them for most battles. It was rare that I chose the default attack option over their skills in any situation.
Rise of the Mad Clown Kefka
The story of Final Fantasy VI doesn’t necessarily have a main character. Terra, is an obvious player surrogate, considering she has amnesia, and gives other characters the perfect excuse to dump expository dialogue. The story does seem to revolve around her for a while, at the very least. While there could be arguments made for either Terra, Locke, or Edgar to be the main character, but really, Final FantasyVI has an ensemble cast. 14 characters in total join your party. Shadow, the mysterious sell-sword comes and goes, while Cyan joins up with Sabin after Kefka poisons the water of Castle Domo, killing everyone inside, including empire prisoners, Domo soldiers, and Cyan’s king, along with his wife and child. Celes, and ex-general of the Empire, joins Locke when he finds her chained in a dungeon with her execution scheduled for the next day. he vows to protect her, and scuttles her to safety.
Most of the 14 characters have their own place in the story, and you will be rewarded with extra cutscenes if you have those characters in your party when you visit certain locations. Like witnessing Edgar and Sabin’s flashback to when Sabin renounced the crown, leaving his brother to take on the role of governing the kingdom after their father died, or Shadows dreams if he’s in the party when you rest at an inn. Most of the characters feel fully realized and complex. Others, however, are one note. Mog is a Moogle who just wants to help. Gau is a child, raised by monsters, who follows you around after you throw some meat his way.
The party eventually make their way back to Narshe, and Terra confronts the Esper again. She transforms into a pink creature and flies away. After finding her, they learn from Ramuh that Terra is half human and half Esper. The empire has been experimenting on Espers to draw their magical abilities out, and infuse their soldiers with these powers, hence why Celes is able to use Blizzard. Ramuh reveals that Espers can turn themselves into Magicite, and lend their powers to the party. By holding a magicite, the characters both learn how to use magic, and can call upon the summon once per battle.
The party embarks on a mission to storm the Empire, and free the trapped Espers within. Celes stands in at an opera to trick Setzer so the party can make use of his airship. The party manages to break into the Magitech research facility and finds more Espers, which sense Ramuh’s power within yours, so they turn to Magicite too. Cid, the researcher who has been heading the Esper project, sees the magicite and is awed by its power. Turns out, the empire didn’t know about Magicite until now. And now Kefka and the Emperor Gestahl are in on the secret too.
After a flashback revealing the history of Gestahl breaking into the Esper realm and dragging some denizens back to this world, The group decide to open the sealed gate to ask the remaining Espers to help them stop the Empire once and for all. When they do so, Kefka and Gestahl appear right behind them. The Espers rush out and lay waste to the surrounding areas. Their raw power apparently sapping Gestahl’s thirst for conquest.
Gestahl imprisons Kefka and asks the party to team up. He needs an envoy to meet with the Espers and convince them to live peacefully together. Obviously, the empire can’t do it, so you’ll need to be the ones to broker peace. Terra and the team meet up with the Espers, and agree to live in harmony. The moment hands are shaken, Kefka bursts in again, and kills the Espers, forcing them to turn into Magicite, claiming their power for himself. With dozens of Magicite in hand, Kefka revels in his God-like power, and literally raises a continent from the ground into the sky. The party chase after them, and confront Gestahl and Kefka on the Floating Continent. Kefka tries to akwaken the warring Triad, the trio of Gods who turned themselves to stone to end the War of the Magi centuries ago. Gestahl, knowing awakening the Triad would bring about the end of the world, tries to stop Kefka, who kills Gestahl and flings his body from the Floating Continent. The party barely manage to escape the Floating Continent via the airship with their lives, but Kefka’s meddling with the Warring Traid destabilizes the planet, causing huge rifts in the geography to form, and for the airship to be torn asunder. The party is scattered to the winds, and the screen fades to black. Kefka has won.
World of Ruin
A year passes. Celes wakes up in a cabin on a small island. Cid, has been taking care of her for a year. He says he doesn’t know if anyone else is alive. The others who were on the planet with them have flung themselves from the cliffs in dispair. Cid himself, is sick, and doesn’t have much time left. Celete tries to save him, but when she fails, she climbs the mountain herself, and gives into her dispair.
I assume it’s her magic-enhanced body that saves her, but she awakens on the beach, washed ashore. There, she sees a seagull with a bandana wrapped around one wing. The same kind of Bandana that Locke wore. Perhaps the others survived after all. Celes returns to the cabin, reads the letter Cid left her before he succumbed to his illness, and finds a raft in the basement. She pushes herself off to sea to find her companions.
The second half of the game is Celes bringing the gang back together. Terra is found in a village taking care of half a dozen children who call her “Mama”. Edgar is found as the leader of a gang of thieves, as he leads a pillaging expedition to Castle Figaro. Shadow is found face down in a cave with a Behometh bearing down on him. Cyan is a hermit on a mountain, exchaning flowery letters with a girl in the village below.
You don’t have to collect everyone before taking on Kefka again. Once you have an airship and at least 3 party members, you can land on Kefka’s tower at anytime to begin the final assault. Each of the characters side quests will reward you with excellent gear, more magicite, and even some new party members who weren’t available in the World of Balance half of the game. Doing these sidequests give more flavour to each character, and are worth seeking out.
Once you embark on the assault, you split into 3 groups. Each group winds their way through the tower, pushing buttons to make paths for the other groups. All 12 characters you brought along convene for the final confrentation. God-Kefka laughs at your futilitiy. “Life? Hopes? Dreams? Where do they come from? And where are they headed? these things… I am going to destroy!” His nihistic nature is directly opposed by Terra and Locke, who have found hope and love, even in a ruined world. It’s an intense and emotional confrontation.
Once slain, the characters escape the tower, and the credits roll. Everyone lives happily ever after.
My Thoughts and Experiences
My thoughts on Final Fantasy VI are a bit conflicted, but overall, I quite enjoyed the game. The ensamble cast idea is good in theory, I like the freedom of being able to choose my team and uncover the characters stories as I adventure with them in the world. But not all characters are created equal. Some, like Gau, Relm, Mog, and Gogo are just flat and one note. As far as I can tell, there’s no motovations to these characters, nor do they react emotionally to the context of the story. Thankfully, the others pick up the slack. From discovering Locke’s fallen love, and his obsessive pursuit of finding a relic that can bring her back from the dead, to Cyan’s journey of losing his family and kingdom, I grew attached to many of these characters.
The first half of the game is a triumph of storytelling. You travel the world, picking up companions, create alliances and get betrayed, and eventually bring the fight to Kefka. Once the World of Ruin half of the game starts, the party is scattered, and the whole second half of the game is just, finding the same characters again. On one hand, this fusturates me. I already assembled the team, why do I have to do it again? On the other hand, this section of the game is non-linear. You can pick up almost any of the characters in any order. In addition to being non-linear, it’s also mostly optional. Once you have Edgar and Setzer, you can start the assult on Kefka’s tower to end the game. As far as pacing goes, the story comes to a screeching halt. The overarching narrative points you to Kefka’s tower, but you’ll spend 10 hours chasing down each characters side stories and vignettes. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, I really enjoy character development, but it’s a drastic shift from the first half.
By the time you’ve collected all your companions, and chased down any side missions you feel like doing, such as gathering more powerful Espers, or finding some of the best equipment, you’ll have likely settled on a party that you particularly like. Another fusturating moment for me showed up when I started the assult of Kefka’s tower. You split all the characters you’ve acquired into 3 parties, but most will likely be in the low to mid 30’s, with your core team in the mid to high 40’s. All the benched characters also completly lack magic, unless you’ve been going out of your way to swap characters in and out so they have a chance acquire the powerful skills. To me, this means you either need to grind a bit with all the characters to boost their level and magic ability, or, break up your main party amongst the teams and hope they can carry the load.
On that note, I did not find Final Fantasy VI very difficult. Between Sabin and Edgar spamming their skills, they easily carried me through the first half of the game. In the World of Ruin, Cyan got dual weild and a Masters Scroll, enabling him to attack 4 times with 2 weapons, unleashing more than 9999 damage for every one of his turns. I didn’t seek out Gau’s rages, or Strago’s Lores, or Mog’s dances. They weren’t in my main party, so I didn’t bother chasing down those rabbits. Some of the bosses had really intresting quirks or tricks that made me need to adjust my strategy, but aside from Leviathan obliterating my party until I leveled up a bunch, nothing felt like it was unbeatable after a bit of creativity.
All of this said, I really enjoyed Final Fantasy VI. The world was intresting, the characters were emotional and memorable, the music was amazing. The character sprites were expressive and fun, the landscape art was beautiful. The Magicite system lets everyone use magic, so one character isn’t just shoved into the role of White Mage, and mixing the relics let me customize the archtypes of each character just enough to keep me engaged. That being said, because magic is tied to magicite, it was a pain to have to swap magicite between characters so often. Ensuring everyone had some basic healing skills was one thing, but when it got to making sure all the elemental bases were covered on all four characters, it got really tedious having to go into the menus between every couple battles.
This tedium was exacerbated by the final dungeon, which has you create 3 teams of 4 characters. With 12 characters, all needing to share the best relics and magicite, it was a downright slog swapping items between characters. While I really like the concept of having to build out different teams, because it happened so infrequently, at least 2 characters on each team were almost completly devoid of any magic, and their equipment and relics were the bare dregs that I happened to have in my inventory.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about Kefka specifically. Much in the vein of the Joker from the Batman series, Kefka is just pure evil. He starts the game demanding his subordinates clean the sand from his boots as they trudge through the desert, complaining about the mission the emperor has given him. As the story progresses, every time he shows up, chaos and death follow. He has an iconic laugh, indicating that he revels in the war. He poisons the water supply of a castle under seige, killing everyone inside. Opposing solders, solders from his side that were taken captive, civilians, everyone. Later on in the game, it’s revealed that Kefka underwent experimentation much like Celes to imbue him with magic, but it broke his mind. Beyond that, Kefka never offers a reason for his evil. I was shocked when Kefka just straight up kills other players, his complete disregard for life laid bare. It was particularly prevelent when the party faces Kefka and the Emperor on the floating continent, and Kefka murders his Emperor. Kicks his lifeless body, then flings it off the platform to plummet to the Earth below. Kefka is a wild Villain. Unredeemable, and easy to hate. He is the chaotic evil Villain that is so easy to hate, because they are the anthisis of the values we all hold in our normal day to day life. The chaos he represents makes him an antoginist that I’ll remember for a long time to come.
Honestly, I could go on and on about Final Fantasy VI. There’s a ton to unpack in this game, and plenty of words have already been written covering this entry. I can see why Final Fantasy VI is considered a masterpiece, from it’s rich and emotional story, to it’s wide cast of unique characters, flexible magic system, and striking visuals, it was a profoundly enjoyable experience. Honestly, after completing the game, I felt a little let down. I was sad it was over, despite all my complaints I outlined above. And as the days have passed since finishing it, my thoughts and memories of Final Fantasy VI have only grown fonder.
Final Fantasy VI remains an excellent experience, even 25 years after it’s release. If you’ve never played Final Fantasy VI before, I implore you to give it a try. I don’t think it’s the best entry point for someone new to Final Fantasy games, or JRPGs in general. I may have come to Final Fantasy VI late, but the experience has left a mark on my heart all the same.
Much like Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy V has been an entry that I have somehow evaded entirely. Going into this title, I knew less than nothing about it. Nothing about the battle system, the characters, anything that makes this entry uniqiue, nothing. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. In fact, the first time I really noticed Final Fantasy V being mentioned was when I was looking up tips for Final Fantasy III, to which most comments said “skip FF3, play FF5. The Job system is much better in that game”
Narrative Recap
Final Fantasy V starts with the nomadic Bartz, riding his steed Chocobo named Boko. A meteor crashes into the Earth, and upon inspecting the damage, he encounters a young noble girl, Lenna, and an amnesic old man named Galuf. The wind has stopped, and Lenna is on her way to the Wind Crystal shrine to investigate. Galuf knows he should accompany her, as he doesn’t remember anything, but he feels in his heart of heart that he should go to the Wind Crystal as well. Bartz, being the hero that he is, says “Good Luck!” and peaces out. Or at least he tries to, when Boko pecks him for abandoning people in obvious need and sends him back to help.
The party tries to commandeer a nearby pirate ship, but quickly get thrown in the brig. Faris, the captain, notices Lenna is wearing a pendant that is the twin to the one they are wearing, and chooses to join them. When the party arrives at the shrine where the crystal of wind sit, it shatters, fragments spraying everywhere. Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris are deemed the 4 warriors of light, and the shards of the crystal imbue them with a series of jobs to augment their abilities.
From there on, the party goes on an adventure, seeking out the other 3 crystals, all of which shatter and bestow more jobs upon the party. Faris is revealed to be Lenna’s long-lost sister, but spurns the role of princess, more meteors crash into the Earth, and Galuf is revealed to be from another world, transported by the meteors. He came back to Bartz’s world check the seal on the Villain, Exdeath, which has been weakening, perhaps because Cid has invented a machine to utilize the power of the crystal to make the lives of everyone more comfortable and convenient. When the last crystal shatters, Exdeath is released from his seal, defeats the party, and returns to his homeworld.
Galuf’s granddaughter, Krile, arrives via meteor, and Galuf’s memory is completely restored. He and Krile return to their own world to continue chasing down Exdeath, and with little hesitation, the rest of the party follow to Galuf’s world. They are tricked in defeating the guardians of the crystal in Galuf’s world, and Galuf sacrifices himself to defeat Exdeath and save his friends and granddaughter. Krile inherited Galuf’s abilities, and the party chases down Exdeath, defeating him and merging the two worlds. Exdeath, however, returns, and takes control of the Void, destroying whole towns with his new power.
The party finds four tablets, which unlock the 12 legendary weapons. Armed with the weapons of lore, they travel into the Void, defeat all of Exdeath’s minions, then slay Exdeath at the end, once and for all.
Story and Gameplay
Final Fantasy V’s story is full of twists and turns. The game moves from set-piece to set-piece, using cutscenes to deliver the narrative. There is a current of light-hearted humor running through this game, and the sprites are dynamic and excitied, creating a fairly funny game. That said, some of the scenes are heavy, like when Faris’s hydra, Syldra, dies. Faris tries to follow her into the ocean, but Lenna pulls her back, or a flashback revealing that Lenna almost cut out the tongue out of a wind drake to save her mother from illness, but doing so would have doomed the entire species. Final Fantasy V excels at delivering both heavy, emotional moments, and light-hearted laughs.
While the playable party is set almost right from the beginning, Square Enix obviously took a lot of lessons from the past few games in developing this tale. Each of the main characters have their own motivations, their own flaws, their own priorities. Unlike in Final Fantasy IV where a large cast of characters filtered in and out of your party at almost a break neck pace, Final Fantasy V sits you with the same characters almost from start to finish (with the exception of Galuf getting swapped out for Krile). Where FF4′s characters were pre-established in their skills and equipment, FF5 returns the freedom to the player to kit out their party with whatever jobs, skills, and gear they want to use. With over 20 jobs to choose from, You’re given wide options almost right away.
One of my frustrations with Final Fantasy III was the fact that you didn’t unlock a second set of jobs until almost 12 hours into your adventure. Final Fantasy V wastes no time in giving you the first 6 jobs. Then, just when you’ve had a chance to test each one out, more jobs get heaped upon you. The Job system is very remincient of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (which I’m sure I’ll touch on at some point on my Final Fantasy journey), whereas you gain ability points in specific jobs, you ‘learn’ skills. Once skills are learned, you can mix and match them with other jobs. It’s quite nice to see the system that inspired one of my favourite video games of all time.
The skills are separated into innate abilites, and actions. While a character is equipped with a job, all the innate abilities for that job will be active. They have one job action that is preset, and one open slot where they can enter in any skill they’ve learned so far, should it be an innate ability from a different job, or another action ability. I had one character designated as the mage for the party, swapping back and forth from white to black mages, making basically a red mage, but with access to the top tier magic of both types. Another character was a time mage/summoner. Perhaps more interestingly, one character was a knight, who can use the ability two-handed to hold a single sword in both hands for more power. He brought that Knight ability to the Mystic Knight class, who can imbue swords with magics for even more power. This character didn’t hit often, but when he did, and there was a elemental weakness to exploit, he did some massive damage.
This freedom was exciting, as was discovering which jobs worked really well together. In kind of the opposite example from the mystic knight, one character specialized as a ranger, earning the ability Multi-hit, which delivers a blow at 50% the characters normal power, but does so 4 times. Then they swapped into a Ninja, who had double hand. While welding a sword in both hands, that multi-hit was doing 50% damage, 8 times. There were a few bosses that fell after only two rounds of my heavy damage dealers really unleashing upon then.
The job system culminates with the Freelancer position, which is the basic class you have at the start of the game. This job can equip any weapon or gear, and has 2 open ability slots, but what really makes the freelancer the end-game job, is that they inherit all the passive abilities from every job you’ve mastered, plus some associated stat buffs, leaving those two slots available for any two action abilities. There’s also the Mime job, which is similar, but has 3 actions slots, and a lot more restrictions on what they can equip. In general, I found that magic-forward characters benefit from the Mime, while physical characters go freelancer.
It took a long time for anyone to master a job, as for the first 75% of the game, battles only give you one or two AP each. In the final dungeons, however, the AP is boosted to 5 per battle, and in the Phoenix Tower, you encounter a magic jar enemy that you can throw elixirs at, and receive 100 AP from, massively assisting you in mastering any job. Before getting to the Phoenix tower at the very end of the game, however, each character had mastered naught but a single job. The progress felt slow during the game, I wondered how the heck I would ever make a freelancer work, but by the time I had my final encounter with Exdeath, I was quite satisfied with how my party had come together.
Conclusion
While Final Fantasy IV has long been firm in my heart as my favourite Final Fantasy game, with its focus on Cecil’s redemption story and half a dozen well crafted characters that drove a serious narrative, Final Fantasy V captivated me in a completely different way. Through experimentation, customization, and the joy of mechanical discovery. The story, while more playful and looser than its predecessor, still managed to land its emotional beats when it really counted. The real star of Final Fantasy V is the Job system. It’s the kind of game that invites you to poke at its edges, get intreagues, then dive in deep and watch in delight as some ridiculous combo absolutely demolishes a boss just two rounds. I went into this experience knowing absolutely nothing, and came out with a feeling that Final Fantasy V deserves a spot at the table, when discussing the best that Final Fantasy has to offer.
In many ways, Final Fantasy V feels like a celebration of freedom. It takes the ideas crafted in III and hands you the tools right at the start. That spirit of freedom and personalization so prevelent in the first 3 games, mixed with some now experienced story-tellers, makes FInal Fantasy V the most purely fun entrie I’ve played so far.
As I close the book on Final Fantasy V, I’m struck by how well all of these early games are holding up. Not just as historical artifacts, but as compelling, thoughtful experiences in their own right. With Final Fantasy VI next on the horizon, a game that is constantly at the very tip top of “Best Final Fantasy Games” and “Best JRPGs Ever” lists, I’m feeling trepadacious. I’m excited to re-experience FInal Fantasy 6 with the context of all the games that came before it. And it’s been at least a decade since I played it for the first time, anyways. I’m very curious to see what twists they introduce to really differentiate it from FF4 and FF5.
Whenever the topic “What’s your favourite Final Fantasy?” comes up, I’ve always had a single answer. Final Fantasy IV. On the SNES as a kid, it was my first JRPG, and I just remember the music, the story, and the characters really speaking to me. It inspired me to seek out dozens of JRPGs over the years until that genre became a part of my identity.
I’ve replayed portions of Final Fantasy IV over the years. I’d usually get to the part where Cecil becomes a paladin, or even as far as Palom and Porom turning to stone, but generally I’d be playing on an emulator on my phone or something else non-ideal, and I’d end up dropping the game before too long, so I was quite eager to reach this entry on my Final Fantasy playthrough.
The Story
Final Fantasy IV begins with The Dark Knight Cecil Harvey on an airship. Having just completed a raid on the village of Mysida and claimed its crystal at the behest of his king. He fulfilled his duty, but his internal monologue has doubts. Some of his men express doubts, but being the loyal leader that he is, he silences them quickly. Suddenly, monsters attack, although The Dark Knight dispatches them with ease.
Upon returning home to Baron and handing the crystal to the king, Cecil asks if the force is necessary. The king admonishes Cecil for questioning his rule and strips him of his rank as commander of the Red Wings as punishment. Cecils childhood friend, the dragoon Kain, stands by his friend’s side, and receives a similar admonishment. Cecil is then tasked to deliver a package to the nearby village of Mist, with Kain to accompany him.
In the moments that follow, you’re also introduced to Cid, the excitable engineer, and Rosa, Cecil’s love interest. She tries to comfort Cecil, but he’s emotionally closed off from her. The next morning, Cecil and Kain go to Mist, slaying the Mist Dragon guarding the pathway to Mist. Upon arriving in the village, the package is revealed to be a bomb ring, sending bomb monsters to raze the village. Cecil and Kain, horrified at the attack, rush to save a child, crying over the body of their mother. They quickly learn that the mother didn’t succumb to the bomb attack, but fell when her summon, the Mist Dragon, was slain. Cecil and Kain try to get the girl, Rydia, to safety, but she panics, and summons Titan, who causes an earthquake and landslide, cutting Cecil off from his path back to Baron.
When the dust settles, Kain is nowhere to be found, and Cecil is alone with Rydia. He carries her to a nearby inn, and vows to keep her safe. Even when Baron guards appear at the inn, dispatched to finish the job of slaying the summoners, Cecil fights back.
What follows is a tale of redemption. Party members come and go, from royalty of destitute castles, to magical prodigies, to old friends, characters come and go from Cecil’s quest, each one lending unique abilities to help him overcome his trials. Cecil himself travels to Mt. Ordeal to cast off The Dark Knight moniker and become a paladin instead. Cecil’s task of gathering the crystals is taken over by a fearsome foe named Golbez, who has some ability to control the minds of others, as he manipulates Kain to torment Cecil. Cecil, however, forges alliances with people all over the world to fight back against the forces of darkness.
The Generational Jump
The jump to the SNES was obviously significant for the Final Fantasy series. The expanded hardware gave the team more of everything to utilize. From sound, to colours, to just the number of pixels you could use to create a character, everything was expanded. While still restrained and limited in certain areas, like how most sprites are unable to physically interact, instead opting to just have characters stand next to each other, and perhaps raise an arm or two, or to just have a sprite spin in place to show excitement, Final FantasyIV manages to convey a surprising amount of emotions within these constraints, except for the one moment where Rose and Cecil embrace, which switches to a specific sprite for that moment. It was surprisingly powerful, especially when you’re used to emotional moments having fully animated cutscenes.
I find it quite fascinating that moving from Final Fantasy I, to II, then III, there has always been an emphasis of freedom in how you build out your party. You could always choose to have a very rounded team, or a brute force squad, or even make every party member a mage if you wanted to. Final Fantasy IV removes all of that freedom. For the entire game, your party is based on which characters are with you, and each character has a defined role, including specific abilities and equipment that cannot be swapped between characters. The most jarring part of this adventure for me was when the white and black mages Palom and Porom are in your party, and then you’re joined by the Sage, Tellah. Having such a magic forward party is generally not my preferred way to play, but in Final Fantasy IV, you have to work with what you get.
I can’t say that having teammates locked to certain equipment or skills is such a negative, however. If you’re new to JRPGs in general, it does give you an easy on-ramp to typical character archtypes and builds. The characters flowing in and out of the party works for the story too, as generally, a character leaves your party by sacrificing themselves, much in the vein of Final Fantasy II, although here, most of the characters miraculously survive, even when leaping from an airship holding a ticking bomb, which can undercut some of the dramatic moments. As always in media, if you don’t see the body, you can’t assume they actually died.
The difficulty in Final Fantasy IV is generally pretty easy, and I give partial credit to having the party built for you, and built for each specific dungeon. There were a few moments where my whole party got wiped out, particularly reaching the moon for the first time, or getting totally paralyzed by gold dragons. But I never felt like the difficulty spiked particularly badly. There’s also a much less emphasis on equipment here, with most characters only having 4 or 5 different weapons throughout the entire game. No longer are you buying a new sword in every town, you really just pick them up in the dungeons as you go along, and wouldn’t you know it, the chests in the dungeons contain loot specifically tailored for your party.
The magic system has been overhauled as well. You’ll never need to buy spells from the towns, instead each character learns spells as they level up. It’s a fine system, but it, again, feels like it’s stealing freedom from its players. These characters will learn their skills at their pace, and you just have to accept it.
The real big change in Final Fantasy IV is the Active Time Battle system. instead of queueing all of your attacks at the top of a round, and them having them execute one after the other, then take an enemy beating, now each character has a timer. Faster characters will act more frequently, sometimes twice as often as the slowest enemies. It made the battles feel much more dynamic and exciting. Especially during the battles where I was desperately waiting for my healers bar to fill up so I could revive or heal someone else that was close to death.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy IV is the first time I’ve really felt like I’ve been playing a Final Fantasy game since I started this little adventure down memory road. Perhaps because characters and story have become such a mainstay of the series, that the first 3 games felt like empty shells rather than the full Final Fantasy experience I was expecting. Final Fantasy IV has its problems, namely the lack of freedom in building your party, railroading the characters in your party, the lack of side quests or optional dungeons to really test your mettle, but it’s still a great game. I think that Final Fantasy IV is the best place for someone to start if they wanted to experience Final Fantasy for the first time, or even JRPGs for the first time. It delivers an emotional story while taking away some of the nitty gritty details of party building and inventory management. Players won’t be looking up class guides to min/max their stats, and rarely will they even need to look up directions. I loved my time with Final Fantasy IV, I almost never felt frustrated or lost. I was happy to be back with old friends, re-experiencing a tale of redemption that has been buried in my psyche since I was a child. As of now, Final Fantasy IV remains my favourite Final Fantasy experience, but only time will tell if it’ll hold onto that honour.
Final Fantasy III didn’t make it over to the US the same way the other Famicom Final Fantasy games did. It didn’t get a Wonderswan remake, which means there was no basis for a PSP or GBA port. It wasn’t until 2006 that a 3D remake was released stateside on the Nintendo DS. I’ve never had access to this game before, so I was actually kind of excited to play it. I’ve at least tried almost every other mainline Final Fantasy game, even if I’ve dropped them after only a handful of hours. Embarking on a wholly new story was an exciting prospect for me.
I made it half-way through Final Fantasy III, about 15 hours in total. Then I suffered a total party KO against the Fire Dragon boss, and apparently the last time I saved my game was when I was barely 2 hours into the game. I’m sorry, Final Fantasy III, I’m not replaying 12 hours of a game I didn’t like to catch back up to my progress.
But let’s back up. I’m still playing on my Retroid Pocket 4, which is not an ideal Nintendo DS emulator, on the account of only having 1 screen, but it was serviceable. Final Fantasy III doesn’t really use the second screen very much anyway, so having one of the two screens much larger, and a button to swap screens is totally serviceable. The 3D models are laughably ugly, but I was able to smooth that out by upscaling the game 4X, which was a wonderful improvement.
Final Fantasy III brings back the class system from the first game, allowing you to specialize your partys abilities to suit the challenge of the moment. Unlike Final Fantasy II, where everyone was a jack of all trades, now if you want to use a sword, you’ll need to be a warrior. If you need magic, someone is going to need to change classes into a black, white, or red mage. As the game progresses, you unlock more classes, apparently 22 in all, but when my adventure ended 15 hours in, apparently I was on the cusp of unlocking the next set.
Unlike the 2D games, the number of enemies you can encounter has been reduced from 9, to 3. To offset this, the power of each enemy you face has been scaled up, including bosses, who also get to attack you twice per round. Should you fail and experience a total party KO, you’re kicked back to your last save file, whenever that was.
The games story begins with the main character, Luneth, as they plummet into a cave from above. You walk him out, then pick up your friend Arc from the nearby town. The next town over, you encounter Refia, who was hiding from her father because she didn’t want to be a blacksmith, but in doing so, narrowly avoided a curse that rendered the whole town as a ghost. A little further on, you pick up the knight Ingus, and thus, the party is formed. Each of these characters are orphans, who have been choses to be the 4 heroes of light. Throughout your adventure, you’ll pick up some guests who will follow behind you and aid you in battle every few rounds, which is delightful. Each guest also has 2 or 3 lines of dialogue that you can view to give their characters a little more flesh.
While bringing back the class system, Final Fantasy III, the magic system has also been changed from a pool of MP, to a spell charge system. Spells are broken into tiers, and each character can cast a certain number of spells per tier. I actually like this system a lot. Usually with MP systems, I reserve all of my MP until I get to a boss so I can unleash my wrath upon it, meaning for the majority of the encounters in a game, my black mages are just spinning their thumbs and bonking baddies with their staff for minimal damage. This spell charge system encouraged me to use the tier one spells throughout the dungeon, taking advantage of the mobs elemental weaknesses, while saving the tier 3 and 4 spells for the dungeon’s final encounter.
Final Fantasy III wants you to swap the classes on your party. Some dungeons have gimmicks, like requiring you to cast Mini on your party, rendering physical attacks nearly useless. The game is pushing you to have a party of mages at this point. From what I’ve read, a few other bosses later in the game also encourage you to build out your party in a specific way. One downside of this class system, however, is that all of your classes start at level 1. So swapping into a class that your character hasn’t touched yet, means grinding up the job level so they can be used effectively. It’s an ambitious system with fun ideas, and having different party combinations make each dungeon feel quite a bit different, but the penalties for switching made it more frustrating than freeing.
While I’m glad the characters have names, and little snippets of dialogue, the interactions between them are still fairly flat. Arc’s only character trait is that they’re a little cowardly. In the first 15 hours, none of the characters really grew beyond what you learn when you first encounter them. Even with names and small bits of dialogue, Luneth and friends never really grow or interact in meaningful ways, Which kind of leads me into the retrospective part of this journey.
Final Fantasy I, II, and III were all released on the NES between 1987 and 1990. The first game had a staff size of 5, the second had 8 people working on it, and III had 18 professional credits listed. For a small team to pump out 3 games in 4 years is a feat in itself, but each one of these games feels unique and distinct. Each one an adventure with turn based battles, but each game features wholly district systems and features that wildly shake up the experience. It’s fascinating seeing the lessons they took from each game and how they applied it onto the next one, making each one feel unique, and not just the same game with a new coat of paint.
While Final Fantasy is an epic tale, telling a grand story of a world about to fall into ruin and the heroes who save it, I’m left disappointed by the story in each of these games. The main characters are all nameless, faceless protagonists, save for a few lines of dialogue each. None of these characters experience growth or are fleshed out in any meaningful way. The villains, are much more interesting, from Garland being thrown back in time to become Chaos, who sends the four fiends forward in time, creating a time loop paradox, to The Emperor, who when defeated by the heroes, conquers hell itself and comes back with a vengeance.
I recognize and realize that I’ve been playing remasters and ports, and not the original games. I know there were significant limitations on these games that aren’t apparent when playing a remake, and that I have the benefit of 35 years of hindsight here. But if I were talking to a new JRPG or Final Fantasy fan in 2025, I wouldn’t suggest anyone start their Final Fantasy journey at the beginning. These are games I’m glad to have played, not ones I’d readily recommend, and that difference has defined this early part of the Final Fantasy journey.
Young’uns might not inherently know this, but back in the day, video games came with instruction manuals. These manuals included a ton of information that are not found on the cartridge themselves, as well as including concept art. It’s fascinating to see the inspirational artwork for a video game, compared to the pixels it gets translated into. This goes doubly so for Final Fantasy, as the concept art is beautiful, high fantasy art, evoking feelings of melancholy and terrifying battles against monsters of epic scale. But when you encounter the situation in the video game itself, it’s just another little beast for you to smack your sword against.
I wonder if I’m playing these games wrong. I wonder if the real charm of Final Fantasy I and II come from the imagination, and sitting with a game for longer than a week at a time. Again, back in the day, there were much fewer video games, so when you managed to get your hands on a game, it ended up being the only game you played for months. Then you’d swap cartridges with your friends, and talk about the adventures you both experienced. When you sit with a game for a long period of time, you start to impart weight and importance on specific moments of the game. Like walking across the bridge to challenge Timat. As a kid, that moment would have had my heart in my throat, after the weeks of working towards the battle, the set-backs of more than one total party KOs forcing me to reset to my last save to try again and again. On my modern device, I have save states and 2x speed to smooth out and rough edge, as my time is more valuable than replaying a dungeon just because I forgot to save before getting jumped by a mob of cockatrices and my whole party succumbed to stone.
Another aspect I’m left wondering if I’m missing out on, is the imagination. Like going to a dungeon and seeing the grey tiles, and imagining metal walls. Seeing the black background with blue specks and the NPCs talk about seeing stars or the earth below, and really imagining the situation. I’m reminded of playing Pokemon on by Game Boy when I was 10, and drawing some of the most exciting battles as they happened in my head during class, talking with my friends on the playground about the secrets we found, and piecing together where to go next from all of our collective knowledge. Having that time and space between play sessions for my imagination to fill in the gaps of the story are important, and something that is really missing from my life right now, which makes me think that my Final Fantasy experience isn’t as magical as it should have been. Just something to keep in mind while playing old games with a modern mindset.
I will continue on my quest to play all the mainline Final Fantasy games, they are entertaining at the very least. The next entry, Final Fantasy IV, I’ve long held in my heart as my favourite Final Fantasy game. It’s the first game that was developed for the more powerful SNES, and by this point in Square’s life, Final Fantasy had become a crown jewel franchise, meaning more and more resources were poured into each game. I’m quite excited to see how well this entry holds up.
Following up on Final Fantasy I, I chose to move right into Final Fantasy II to see how much changed from game to game. Released just a year after it’s predecesor in 1988 (still before I was born), Final Fantasy II at its core retains very little from the first game. The leveling mechanics, the party construction, the magic system, everything was tweaked and changed.
First, that fun bit of trivia, Canonically Final Fantasy II was the second Final Fantasy game. However, neither Final Fantasy II nor Final Fantasy III were originally released outside Japan, so when Final Fantasy IV came to North America, it was packaged and released as Final Fantasy II. I do think it’s worth mentioning that I played the GBA remake, not the original Famicom edition of the game. There are some gameplay differences, but the big improvement for me is the pixel art, which takes its art direction more from the SNES titles, which is much more to my preference.
Final Fantasy II is quite different from its predecessor. First things first, there’s actually a somewhat coherent story to follow. Your party consists of 3 main characters, Firion, Maria, and Guy. Maria’s brother, Lyon starts the game in your party, but in the very first battle you’re subject to a total party KO, and Lyon is immediately separated. What follows is a tale of rebellion, as the party assists the Princess Hilda in her efforts to reclaim her throne from the clutches of the evil Emperor. Filling out that 4th chracter slot, however, is a rotating series of characters who will join and leave the party as they progress through the story.
These characters often adhere to specific archtypes, like Minwu, the white mage, or Josef, the Monk, or Ricard, the lance wielding Dragoon. These characters will join your party for a dungeon or two, then more often than not, sacrifice themselves, so the main party can escape and continue on their quest to take down the empire. There are some surprisingly emotional moments, especailly as you encounter their loved ones after their sacrifice. It gives the story weight and consequence, a much needed improvement over the first game.
Speaking of archtypes, Final Fantasy II completely abandons the job/class system from the first game. Now, every character can equip any piece of equipment, and learn any spell. There are no official or specific levels to each character, but now the more you use a specific equipment or spell, the more proficient that character becomes. You will find your characters naturally falling into roles, like the character who casts Cure the most raises their spirit, which improves their healing potency, but there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from teaching your brawler some spells, and then grinding up their skill to a point where they’re viable.
This level system isn’t bad, by any stretch, but I did find it quite jarring, especially with my background knowledge of how the Final Fantasy series embraces classes and jobs in some of the later entries. On one hand, I really appreciate the flexibility. I liked teaching Life to all my characters so they could help out in a pinch, while having one character as the designated ‘healer’. On the other hand, it made each of the characters feel less distinct. Guy, whose art is depicted with huge muscles can take the daggers and be a speedy little guy, and you can give Maria dual axes, and she’ll stop everyone who crosses her path. This system created a little bit of dissonance for me.
I found Final Fantasy II to be much more difficult than its predecessor. From what I understand, there is a cap on your equipment levels, as they grow depending on the level of monster you’re attacking, somewhat limiting your ability to grind. I did run into one difficulty spike where my normal attacks were doing nearly 0 damage due to the monster’s high defense, so I relied on my magic to get me through the normal fights, but I couldn’t make my way through the whole dungeon. I ended up sailing around looking for late game towns, bought much better equipment, then flew through the rest of the game with my MP stat now over-leveled.
The dungeon layout this time around was a bit more frustrating. The sprawling labyrinths are still here, but now they’ve added a dozen empty rooms to each one. When you go through a door and end up in these empty rooms, it only takes 3 steps to get out, but these rooms have their monster spawn rate cranked way the hell up, resulting in at least one, sometimes two battle encounters per empty room.
The world map is also more of a problem, especially compared to the first game. While Final Fanasy gated your progress so you could only explore certian areas until you got the next mode of transportation, Final Fantasy II lets you wander into zones that are way beyond your level. This is especially egregious as you’re told to walk around a lake outside of the starting area, and going just a bit too far west can result in a near instant total party KO. Go ahead, ask me how I know.
There’s also more back tracking. It felt like after every dungeon, you need to trek your party all the way back to the starting area to report back to the princess to get the next clue on where to go next. on that note, it was generally easier to know where to go in this game. Another quirk of Final Fantasy II is that occasionally, someone will speak a keyword, that you can ‘learn’, then ask your keywords to many of the game’s main NPCs. Between each dungeon, most of the local NPCs would almost explicitly where to go next, and only a few times did I need to look up which keyword I had to use on which NPC. I kind of like this system, I imagine it would have been much more impactful in 1988, making the NPCs feel more alive and living through the story instead of just delivering the same line throughout the entirety of the game.
Strangely, Final Fantasy II doesn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game. Sure, all the common hallmarks are there; Bombs and Malboros, Cure and Fire, Potions and Phoenix Downs. But so many of the systems feel removed from what Final Fantasy later established as their hallmark features. Now, I know every Final Fantasy is different in its own way, from Active Time Battle Systems to Gambits, to Materia, and so on. Each entry in the Final Fantasy series has aspects that make them unique, but I’d argue that from all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played, Final Fantasy II feels the least like a Final Fantasy game.
Trying to put myself in the mindset of 1988 without the literal decades of hindsight, I’d say that Final Fanasy II is a bold new direction for a sequel, but for all its ambition, it kind of loses some of the magic that made Final Fantasy an instant classic. Not to say that it’s a bad game, it’s a great JRPG, but as Final Fantasy game, this was just okay for me. I didn’t love it, but I’m glad I can finally say that I’ve played it.
