The deceptively complex Sphere Grid, weapon and armor ability customization, and the excellent blitzball mini-game are all just icing on the cake, though we'd still be better off without the rough voice direction and a handful of characters who border on pure caricature. The world of Spira's solution to this - send capable young summoners to their deaths to temporarily redeem humanity on their behalf - forms the crux of an emotionally charged story with one of the best endings in the gaming medium. Whatever you call it, the tenth one's a winner, with a vibrant world suffering beneath the weight of a creature whose appearance serve as alleged punishment for past sins. ![]() ![]() It just hits different, right? But we digress. We tend to stick with digits over Roman numerals here when discussing Final Fantasy, but if there's one mainline game that admittedly makes things look a little silly, it's Final Fantasy 10 - we can't argue how much cooler it looks when written as Final Fantasy X. But if you take a shine to the overall package, we promise it's more than worth your time - it's the best non-MMO Final Fantasy in over 20 years. Really, we can't speak highly enough of the script, nor the collection of stunning setpieces that aren't just the most bedazzling in Final Fantasy they even give modern God of War games a run for their money.įinal Fantasy 16 is a purely action-driven combat affair, with stripped-down 'RPG elements' and a world that might have benefited from an increased focus on exploration, especially coming off of FF15, which is at its best when players are free to roam. It's a refreshing change of pace, populated by believably written people who belong to a variety of warring nations in a time of peril. FF16's also the most medieval the single-player games have gone since the just-listed Final Fantasy 5. Thankfully, he's terrific, his arc is terrific, and his voice actor Ben Starr? Yep, terrific. If Clive wasn't an enjoyable guy, this would spell disaster. ![]() The latest Final Fantasy puts the spotlight on its hero more than any previous entry, with the story of Clive Rosfield front-and-center in every sense. If you've never played FF12, go with the 2017 remaster The Zodiac Age fixes many of the game's shortcomings, even if it can't resolve its poorly-paced main scenario. That said, the Gambit system is one of gaming's best efforts to handle computer-controlled party members without sacrificing player input, and it's a crying shame it hasn't shown up since. Perspective lead Vaan probably gets more hate than he deserves, but he's still a weak link to be sure.īut for all the noteworthy characters, no one really gets a satisfying arc in FF12, a game so much more interested in showing off its (spectacular) setting than maintaining proper pacing for a story with definite highs but far too many lows. There's no shortage of intriguing souls - Balthier, Basch, and Ashelia are all charismatic in their own ways, and the villainous spin on Cid is a fan-favorite antagonist even if the primary foe of Vayne Solidor pales in comparison. The world of Ivalice is as much the main character of Final Fantasy 12 as any individual person. Robust post-launch content helps, and the game's ending is shockingly good by contrast, but this Final Fantasy will forever feel at odds with itself, a fun if flawed open world extravaganza that then searches for the ghost of Versus 13 and comes up painfully short. The trouble truly starts when those remaining chapters are relied-upon for the remaining four-fifths, and their breakneck, hyper-linear pace is a veritable trainwreck as a result. Hey, no shade these are probably the best parts, even if the actual storyline barely moves past its one-fifth mark in those first eight of fourteen (!) chapters. Whereas its earlier form would have been an operatic tragedy, the developers behind FF15 went for more of a charming road trip vibe for much of the game's runtime. On the other hand, what ought to have been Final Fantasy 15's actual beginning was sliced off and turned into a Hollywood movie with a 12 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and that's only the start of a lengthy list on how Frankensteinian this game becomes.įinal Fantasy 15 is the resurrected corpse of what was, at one time, Final Fantasy Versus 13. On the one hand, you've got to admire any piece of media that begins with four chums pushing their out-of-gas luxury automobile down a road to the tune of Florence and the Machine's cover of 'Stand by Me'.
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