What a journey this game is... Holy shit.
First of all, how the fuck did they manage to do this in 1994? IN A FUCKING CARTRIDGE TO TOP IT OFF!
From the very start with that extremely long cinematic sequence, to the raft moment, the theater, the boss fights, the flying ship... COME ON, this feels like a game done last year with outdated graphics. It feels like it has travelled back in time somehow. But the truth is, it didn't travel anywhere, instead it created the foundation of most modern JRPG's.
The music, the characters, the way of telling the story, the open world... It is so good. Even these fucking ugly 2D assets who only have 2 animations made me feel way more than MANY modern characters with incredible detail and movements.
Choices are EVERYWHERE. You can get all the party members... Or not, you can save a couple of characters... Or let them die, you can follow the path that the game wants you to go through... Or completely ignore it and go directly to the last boss.
It is also very long, in fact as long as pretty much you want it to be. It can be both short or long depending on the player, their choices and how much they want to delve into the lore. But ultimately THIS-IS-YOUR-CHOICE. There is no forced sidequests, there is no forced filler. Play however you want, the choice is yours.
The story is, in my opinion and very ironically, one of the weakest links of the game. The first act was really good, very nice pace (very Chrono Trigger-like), things happening constantly, characters appearing left right and center... But the second act is pure freedom and we ain't talking about modern freedom, we are talking about VERY early in open world-style videogames. It isn't bad by any means but the story pretty much gets paused from the moment the second act starts to the ending (except a minute or so whenever you get back any companion). I think the story would have been perfect if it kept the linear style.
The villains are... Well... VILLAINS... Kefka is bad becuse "HIHIHI HAHAHAHA HEHEHE ME VERY BAD, ME THE JOKER" and that's pretty much it. There's barely any backstory on him and he's just bad for the sake of being bad. I must say he is a heartless piece of shit and you truly want him to die, but I was hoping I'd get more of his motivations besides "hihi haha you are all going to die". The rest of the villains are pretty much nonexistant so I won't even mention it.
The music is incredible. By today's standards it is INCREDIBLE, plain simple. It just doesn't get better than this. The combat is also fun, I dislike this mixure between action and turn based combat, even more so when there's plenty time limit quests but I still think it is done very well.
The ending is decent but I expected a bit more. FF's generally aren't known for having a fantastic closure but I expected more closure to some of the stories (a certain ALMOST couple comes to mind, for example). I do think they just literally couldn't put more into the cartridge because the content the game already has makes no sense at all. These guys pretty much managed to put a truck inside my toilet and the toilet worked even better than prior to having a truck inside of it, to put it in layman's terms.
It is hard judging a videogame as old as this one (30 fucking years old) and I like to value everything to the era it was born in. If this game was released today I would be giving it a solid 8 or so, but I still can't believe this game was released in 1994, it revolutionized EVERYTHING for the genre. This is as close as perfection as you get when you try to judge it from the perspective of 20-30 years back in time.
Thank you Square and I truly hope we ever get a remake of this game and we also get some modern old fashioned FF games.
First of all, how the fuck did they manage to do this in 1994? IN A FUCKING CARTRIDGE TO TOP IT OFF!
From the very start with that extremely long cinematic sequence, to the raft moment, the theater, the boss fights, the flying ship... COME ON, this feels like a game done last year with outdated graphics. It feels like it has travelled back in time somehow. But the truth is, it didn't travel anywhere, instead it created the foundation of most modern JRPG's.
The music, the characters, the way of telling the story, the open world... It is so good. Even these fucking ugly 2D assets who only have 2 animations made me feel way more than MANY modern characters with incredible detail and movements.
Choices are EVERYWHERE. You can get all the party members... Or not, you can save a couple of characters... Or let them die, you can follow the path that the game wants you to go through... Or completely ignore it and go directly to the last boss.
It is also very long, in fact as long as pretty much you want it to be. It can be both short or long depending on the player, their choices and how much they want to delve into the lore. But ultimately THIS-IS-YOUR-CHOICE. There is no forced sidequests, there is no forced filler. Play however you want, the choice is yours.
The story is, in my opinion and very ironically, one of the weakest links of the game. The first act was really good, very nice pace (very Chrono Trigger-like), things happening constantly, characters appearing left right and center... But the second act is pure freedom and we ain't talking about modern freedom, we are talking about VERY early in open world-style videogames. It isn't bad by any means but the story pretty much gets paused from the moment the second act starts to the ending (except a minute or so whenever you get back any companion). I think the story would have been perfect if it kept the linear style.
The villains are... Well... VILLAINS... Kefka is bad becuse "HIHIHI HAHAHAHA HEHEHE ME VERY BAD, ME THE JOKER" and that's pretty much it. There's barely any backstory on him and he's just bad for the sake of being bad. I must say he is a heartless piece of shit and you truly want him to die, but I was hoping I'd get more of his motivations besides "hihi haha you are all going to die". The rest of the villains are pretty much nonexistant so I won't even mention it.
The music is incredible. By today's standards it is INCREDIBLE, plain simple. It just doesn't get better than this. The combat is also fun, I dislike this mixure between action and turn based combat, even more so when there's plenty time limit quests but I still think it is done very well.
The ending is decent but I expected a bit more. FF's generally aren't known for having a fantastic closure but I expected more closure to some of the stories (a certain ALMOST couple comes to mind, for example). I do think they just literally couldn't put more into the cartridge because the content the game already has makes no sense at all. These guys pretty much managed to put a truck inside my toilet and the toilet worked even better than prior to having a truck inside of it, to put it in layman's terms.
It is hard judging a videogame as old as this one (30 fucking years old) and I like to value everything to the era it was born in. If this game was released today I would be giving it a solid 8 or so, but I still can't believe this game was released in 1994, it revolutionized EVERYTHING for the genre. This is as close as perfection as you get when you try to judge it from the perspective of 20-30 years back in time.
Thank you Square and I truly hope we ever get a remake of this game and we also get some modern old fashioned FF games.