The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!
Let’s discuss the Final Fantasy series of video games. What are your favorites? What aspects do you like about it? What doesn’t work for you? Feel free to share any thoughts that come up, or react to other peoples comments. Let’s get the conversation going!
If you have any recommendations for games or series for the next post(s), please feel free to DM me or add it in a comment here (no guarantees of course).
Previous entries: Visual Novels, Hollow Knight, Nintendo DS, Monster Hunter, Persona, Monkey Island, 8 Bit Era, Animal Crossing, Age of Empires, Super Mario, Deus Ex, Stardew Valley, The Sims, Half-Life, Earthbound / Mother, Mass Effect, Metroid, Journey, Resident Evil, Polybius, Tetris, Telltale Games, Kirby, LEGO Games, DOOM, Ori, Metal Gear, Slay the Spire
What I love about the series is that there are so many varied entries that everyone can find their own favourite, consensus be dammed.
I’ll always consider VI the absolute peak Final Fantasy - beautiful pixel art, Active Time Battles, SNES Mode 7, brilliant score, a fantastic story with a memorable villain and a large and varied ensemble cast of great characters… It has it all for me.
I also have to somewhat ashamedly admit that for whatever reason I actually have some fondness for XV. I’ve posted about it before but I have such a hard time succinctly putting my feelings about it into words, because it is by no means a good game. It’s probably the biggest discrepancy I’ve experienced between the objective quality of a game and how much I enjoyed playing it. Whether it’s the stellar fishing mini game or the random wholesome interactions between the gang and the overall bro trip vibe I don’t know but there is something there. And the score is no Uematsu perhaps but I really enjoyed it and thought they did some wonderful leitmotif work.
Yoko Shimomura is actually my favorite JRPG composer. She did Kingdom Hearts, Mario RPG/& Luigi, and Radiant Historia before this game.
Her combat music always stands out to me in particular for being emotionally unconventional. Everybody else makes a battle theme and all that’s on their minds to convey is “cool and/or scary that violence is happening, throw in some grandiosity if it’s a big one” but she’ll do stuff like “the enemy is the panicked one here; they’re trying to front like they’re badass but actually I weep for them” or “you are losing a nonverbal rap battle.”
XV actually let me down a bit in that specific regard but the soundtrack as a whole is very solid.
Yeah it’s funny now that you mention it but I don’t really remember the battle music if XV all that well. But I have stuff like Valse di Fantastica/Sunset Walz/Dewdrops at Dawn and Ardyn’s themes seared into my brain.