Final Fantasy Anthology is a pretty good bundle. Because you have the never
before released FF5 this is a pretty good pick up. On the other hand you have to
deal with FF6 a game that has been released and sucks. I really didn't like FF6
only when I first started playing it did I like it, that game got boring fast.
But FF5 never ceased to amaze me with the small party, and the excellent magic
system it was easily one of the best games ever created. Although many people
consider FF5 the master of ordinary RPG's I have to say that it is not. It's
better than a lot of RPG's on the market today, even though the story is
probably one of the least involved and twisting in the last 6 FF's it was still
a good story. No matter how basic you may consider it. FF6 which was suppose to
be 100x better said most people had a lame story and a cheesy system that a
drooling baby could figure out.
Story 7/10
Final Fantasy
V A very intriguing one, it seems that mostly all the early FF's focused
in on the 4 elements Earth, Wind Water and Fire. This one isn't an exception it
does the same thing. There are only 5 main characters one you meet later on but
I don't want to give away the surprise. The story begins as Reina's father goes
to the Wind Meteor because their has been some trouble with the crystal their.
Then there's a young man by the name of Bartz who is traveling along with his
chocobo boko and runs into Reina. Then they see a man fall from somewhere in
front of the Wind Meteor he comes along. Then they meet a pirate name Faris who
comes along as well. I will explain each character.
Bartz: The
main character of Final Fantasy V. He is described as common person and he is
the adventurous type who looks for things to get into with his pet Chocobo Boko.
Reina: A very noble Princess, she isn't the usual type of ''save
me!!'' princesses found in other RPG's she is energetic and she puts up a good
fight. She joins the story when she found out her father left.
Galof: He has seemingly lost his memory do to the fall and all he
remembers is his name is Galof and he is looking for the Wind Meteor, even
though he is old he still fight.
Faris: A pirate who has been
pirating all his life. He doesn't seem too hostile and there is a connection
between Faris and Reina because they wear the same medallions, so for this
reason he decides to join the quest.
All these characters have a
connection with each other, and very soon this story starts to pick up and it
takes all the unsuspected twist and turns as per the usual Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy VI Well this story was pretty bad but I heard
worst the gist of it is. There was the war of the magi. After the war all magic
has left the world, and magic is now only myth and legend. The Empire and
organization that basically runs the world now wants the power of magic. They
kidnap a young girl who is said to be born using magic. They take the girl on an
escapade to find an Esper that was rumored to be in a cave. They find the Esper
and they realize that magic isn't myth and they want to harness the power for
themselves.
BORING! That story is really bad, and I'm shocked by the good
people at Square to even come up with such a stupid story. Although this story
keeps points for the fact that it does have plot twist later on. I really didn't
care much for the story or the idea behind it. In my opinion the story was weak.
The plot twists were easily seen coming and nothing shocked me. When I play an
RPG I like to be shocked by the foredooming events and not easily see them
coming. Then there is the fact that the game just doesn't live up to my
expectations. As an avid video game consumer I felt dissatisfied by the events
that occurred. I felt that there wasn't enough support on the additional
characters. Then the additional characters weren't good and they contributed
nothing positive to the events that would happen to the main characters. So in
my opinion I feel as though if they won't support the main characters why are
they even there?
Graphics 8.0/10
Final Fantasy
V The graphics weren't that great, and I was thinking Square were going
to improve them instead of just giving us the Super Famicon version in CD form.
All though they were pretty good for RPG's back them they fail to meet today's
standards. I do like some seemingly 3D effects that were tried like when you
were in the Airship and when you seen the meteor falling. The character size was
about the same from FF4 the only difference is now you seen their faces move
when they laughed or some times when they talked. Normally I couldn't compare
the older graphics from back then to now but I have to here because of when it
actually came out. Well seemingly it does look bad, and some people considered
the graphics on this a joke I like it because as I dug deeper in the story I
soon forgot how bad the graphics were. Well at least each character was
distinguishable from each other.
Final Fantasy VI I can
consider this on two levels. Number one when this game first came out in the RPG
World these graphics were top notch. But I can consider it on another level when
this game got re-released for Playstation these graphics was sub standards. The
3 FMV videos make up for the lack of good graphics. Not the graphics were
character design was done pretty good I look the look of the characters on the
game, but the enemies in my opinion could of got some work. Plus you got the RPG
notorious townspeople swap. They reuse the same townspeople too many times every
town you would see the same people over and over and in my opinion this wasn't a
good thing. With a game that is suppose to be more advance than other RPG's you
would think they wouldn't have to resort to such tactics.
The FMV's in
the game are truly outstanding. They look a lot like the ones seen on Final
Fantasy VIII. But in my opinion these seem a tad bit better, you at least get a
feel for what is going on in the game. Then you get a better appreciation of
what the characters looked like. This may be the one of the few good points of
the game on playstation. Is the fact that Square was smart enough to make FMV's
for this. The FMV's really enhance the game and without them this game is pretty
much graphical crap in my opinion. Even though this really isn't a playstation
game and it came out for SNES I don't care when it's re-released it's
re-released. So it went out again in this market. It wasn't all that good back
then in my opinion either everything in other genres were easily better than
this. Even though it was a great looking RPG I wasn't all that impressed by it.
Music 7.5/10
Final Fantasy V The music sounded
good. I liked the FF prelude adaptation here than any other version because
after this one came out it got messed up after wards with different beats and
such. The other town songs sounded great too and it was stuck on your mind all
the time you played this. This game really pioneered some of the music that was
heard in the later Final Fantasy's and was unmatched bar none. The sound FX was
down to a bare minimum though you really didn't hear much.
Well early
RPG's weren't too big on sound FX to start with and this Final Fantasy is known
different than them. Although I did like the music on this and this saved the
whole sound category. Some Sound effects were heard but not enough to really say
something about it. On the PSX the music sounded even better, because now it was
CD quality and it doesn't sound like a midi.
Final Fantasy
VI Well the cheesy Midi's faired better than the graphics. At least
although they are still Midi's they sounded more digital like they were
remastered from the original version. But I have to say that here they at least
tried to make it sound better to improve on the original game. It sounded pretty
decent if you ask me it came off great and sounded great. But then again it's
still just a midi and it isn't up to today's standards in terms of anything.
Even though some of these songs are classical in terms of the Final Fantasy
series they just weren't good enough. When they came out however these songs
were the best and they really were done well.
Some of the songs that
stick out in my head as good is the world map theme, the battle won theme and
the chocobo theme. A few of the themes your heard in some of the towns were as
well equally good or at least comparable in terms of everything compared to what
you heard else where. Even to this day I have to admit that these are some
classical RPG tunes. The actual music came off good and was good to listen to.
But even so I didn't hacve complaints of the actual music when it came out I had
complaints because it sounded old and tired that was my main beef with it.
Overall though some of the good midi's make up for the overall sound.
Game Play 7.5/10
Final Fantasy V This game
featured the job system. The most unique and innovative system for an RPG to
date in my opinion. The idea was you would assign each character a job, and when
they gained Ability Points to a certain amount they would gain a new ability.
The ability gaining part was the uniqueness about it. Unlike FF6 were you were
born with one you earned them here. Some were quite useful, however others
weren't needed too much. Some jobs offered less Hp and more MP. Usually Mages
and magic users didn't have a high MP but nights and monks and ninjas did. This
is where the Job system solves the problem, now if you have to fight some
particularly tough enemies or bosses you could have the strength and HP of a
Knight combined with the skills of a Black Mage. Then mages had their faults
they couldn't equip swords or shields. This problem also solved because you can
gain a Knight up high enough to have even mages with swords, which resulted in
deadly combinations.
Almost every job besides being bare, had a certain
aspect that could only be used wit hit, or until you mastered that job with that
character. For instance monks are able to kick, if you master a monk you are
also able to kick. Different mages learned different spells and could only use
certain types. White Mages learned white magic like Cure and Raise. Blue mages
learned enemy skills, which could only be used if a blue mage stood up to the
spell. Time Mages learned time magic like comet and slow, hyper. Then everyone's
favorite mage Black used elemental spells like fire and ice and thunder. Their
was also a summoner, summonmer's used summon magic. These were great too,
because they summoned the powerful summon monsters. Summon monsters are cool but
they didn't play an important part in the game like we would of like them have
too. Like FF6 had Espers and they were key, FF8 had GF's they were key for some
reason Summon monsters were ignored here. Anyway besides that they were still
powerful and all your old favorites were here like Ifrit and Shiva. You also had
your usual airship moogles and chocobos. I liked the role moogles played in this
game they were very useful. The difficulty in this game was mega hard, and their
was a save and memo feature.
Final Fantasy VI This game is for
2 players. Well its 2 players during the battle scenes other than that it is
really just one player. The magic system in this game is the Esper system. The
idea was that at a certain point of the game you would get Espers. When you
equipped an esper to one of your characters through ability points they would
lean new magic spells. Each esper had a rate of learning some were better than
others, some learned certain spells faster than other espers. Depends on which
esper you equipped to what character. Also Espers worked like Summons you can
summon the Esper into battle and you could use it, to take out enemies. But you
could only summon an esper once not any more so only use it as a last ditch
effort.
Also every character in Final Fantasy VI had ability. Some of
these abilities were born in some were learned later on in the character life.
It didn't matter what happen or what esper you used the character would never
lose these abilities. Some of the abilities were cool like Sabin's Blitz or
Shadow's throw. Some were not cool like Gau's enemy attacks, it sounds cooler
than it really is. The abilities came in handy at the beginning of the game, but
after a while when you got a lot of powerful espers and magic you didn't even
need to bother with the espers. That in my opinion was flaw that messed up the
game. Which I will get into later on in my usual fashion.
The cool part
of this feature was the fact that you could view the game bestiary it gave you
tips for beating the regular monsters and the bosses as well. Not real in-depth
tips just a basic small strategy on the enemy, and it's elements and the such.
This was quite help when or if you didn't have access to the Internet or a guide
to see actual FAQ's on the monster or the boss. But it didn't help that much it
was just some basic background tips on the monster and nothing more in-depth
than that. Although it wasn't too in-depth I have to saty it was still cool to
look at and it helped me and that is the main focus of it. There was also other
things you could view in bonuses but I will not discuss those because that would
be spoiling for you.
Overall 7.0/10
Bottom line is you are
better off just getting this for FF5 and trading away FF6 to some poor fool who
doesn't know any better. You will get bored quickly with FF6 and wish FF5 went
longer so you would have something more interesting to play. The replay value on
both of these are low I never fount myself going back to play either one of them
because what was done was done. There weren't too many secrets to be found in
FF6 or FF5 So i fount it use less to go back and play these games
again.
The fun Factor is medium. Both games are quite challenging so you
will find more frustration than fun here. All and all I would of rather had FF5
just brought over by itself withou being forced to buy FF6 along with it. FF6 is
a game that deserves no praise while FF5 is a game that deserves more praise
than it get. So pick this up for an under-rated gem and an over-rated pile of
dung.
Final Fantasy Insider
Coverage