First Fantasy — A Hard Reboot

Welcome! Or, for some, welcome back. This is where I’m going to play all the numbered mainline Final Fantasy games, each for the first time.

Let’s address the obvious: This is not the first post on this WordPress blog. Some of you might know that some time ago, I had started this project. Without much scholastic rigor or sense of thesis to the germ of the idea (What If Someone Played Final Fantasy For The First Time), it ended up falling through. I did not finish my initial playthrough of Final Fantasy V. I ended up switching computers about 4 years ago and lost all my rom saves. Discouraged and then soon afterwards preoccupied with moving and surgery, I was happy to wordlessly abandon this blog and thus the project as a whole.

In the past 4 years I have not played any further in any Final Fantasy games. As the enduring quarantine slowly coiled itself around my brain, the idea to reboot this had occurred to me a good few times. Yet as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t shake the aimlessness of it. Why did I start at 5? I had asked a few dozen friends for their general opinions on the “best ones” and even the “worst ones,” or even the “good ones to start with.” My only takeaway from this exercise was finding out that every single person on Earth has very specific and passionate opinions about every single title in the series, and they all disagree with each other at all times. To say that I picked 5 because it “seemed like the consensus” would be a lie I told myself. It was largely arbitrary! For everyone recommending 5, there were twice as many arguing for their favourite title instead. Ultimately, I like the number 5 (it’s the square root of 25!) and “Bartz” is a pretty funny name.

To stave myself off of the inevitable endpoint of my growing boredom that is re-opening this project, I spent the last couple of months looking for my physical copy of the only Final Fantasy game I had ever completed: Tactics Advance. Luckily for all of you who cared enough to read this far, it has vanished entirely from my room. Faced with the traumatic notion of getting (my roommate to get my computer to run) the EmuParadise workaround to even download a rom again, just to re-replay an old favourite, I figured I may as well say fuck it and strap in. Clearly I’ve got the time for it.

So if I’m going to do this again, then I want to do it right. In this re-inaugural blog post, allow me to elaborate on my plan, my desire, and my methods.

My Plan: I am going to play at least some of every title in the Final Fantasy mainline series, in chronological order. I will be slotting in (by chronological order of initial release) a selection of side-titles^* if the mood especially strikes me. I will be playing through the game on whatever version I deem “most playable” but I’ll be touching on and studying original releases

My Desire: I want to wrap my head around the impact these games have had. I want to see nascent forms of extremely familiar objects, things so hammered into the foundation of RPGs that unearthing their origins feels like archaeology. Every friend I have known who “plays video games” has one or two or a dozen-plus of these games that they call home, and I wanna invite myself into their homes like the proverbial stork and inspect every one of their pots and pans for myself. Of course, as such an iconic series with its legendary lineage, I will observe not only how the franchise evolves and iterates on itself but also how it has changed the genre and industry as a whole.

My Methods: In a perfect world, the goal is to complete every successive game in my path. In this perfect world I might have also completed any number of other abandoned vanity projects, or even my high school diploma. This is to say I am going to attempt to be realistic about the daunting length and tedium of these games (especially the early ones) and will allow myself the ability to skip completing a game if I deem it truly hopeless. This is going to be used exclusively as a last resort.

I will be updating the blog on Wednesdays, probably biweekly but it will depend on my progress through the games. Expect faster and frequent updates as I start new titles and more dead air as I chew through the middles and ends. I’m also going to leave up all my previous posts about FFV for transparency on how much of that game I got through, once we get to it. And with that, I’m off to Cornelia! Thanks for reading, and watch this space!

^*One of these side games I will almost certainly be including is Final Fantasy Tactics but discussing this before I get any further along would be biting off more than I could chew!

First Fantasy Log #5: Arrested for Werewolf Crimes

The Walse Meteor looms in front of the party, stone facade revealing nothing. Now that we’re all prepared for the worst, let us step inside and greet whichever aliens, hostile or otherwise, that may be present.

Kinda… empty. And small. Anyone home?

First Fantasy Log #4: Just Walse-ing Around! Characters Die in This Update.

You already know what it is. Walse Tower awaits! Any and all cliff hanging ends here. Time to get my ass beat by arugula a garula.

The tower reveals a simple layout, consisting of a series of short floors connected by stairs… and some holes in the ground. Wait- hold that thought.

Faris learned Learning!

First Fantasy Log #3.5: Plot Supplement

When I first started this gameplay diary, it was under the assumption/misconception that everyone had played a Final Fantasy game but me. Furthermore, once I got to the writing itself, I was writing with the intent that my audience would all be people I knew who had played FF5. It turns out that’s not exactly the case, and this supplementary entry is my plan to rectify that.

After the cut, I’ll be going over the main characters we’ve met so far and the events of the plot that I’ve mostly been skimming through in the updates. In future gameplay updates, I’ll try to devote more space to the actual plot of the game, so ideally there won’t be too many of these supplements going forward.

First Fantasy Log #3: If You’re Reading This, The Game Gave Me A Free Drake

Welcome back! The party emerges victorious from the sunken ship zone, still swatting seaweed off and wringing out their hair. The first look at the overworld proper is… kinda scary honestly. You just gotta walk until you find shit! It rules!

I don’t have a great pic for the preview here so let’s cut right to the read-more:

First Fantasy Log #2: Taking the Family to Red Lobster

Welcome back! We rejoin my playthrough at the first town of the game, Lute. Time to hit the shops! Gotta stock up on armour, weapons, maybe a potion or two–

–wait… you buy spells from the store?

First Fantasy Log #1: We’re Live! w/ Five

Here we are! Final Fantasy V! This is where I would talk about the game I guess, if I knew anything about it. Well, I know that it has a job system, I know that it… I think it’s the one that has Bartz in it… Barth? Lemme check.

Nailed it!

First Fantasy: A Project Explained

Hello. My name is Mal, and I have a confession to make: I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game. I mean, I’ve played some of the spin-offs like Tactics or Crystal Chronicles, and I’ve played a lot of FFXIV but like, that doesn’t really count*. It’s an MMO and it plays like an MMO. I’ve never played a numbered, main series, single-player, classic, JRPG-ass Final Fantasy title. My shame as a self-proclaimed RPG fan! How can I possibly know shit about anything RPG without having played a single one of them?

When I asked my friends for recommendations on FF games to start with, the response was genuinely surprising. Almost all of my friends had finished multiple titles, and over the course of everyone weighing in, I think every single numbered release had been spoken for**. Everyone I knew had a personal relationship with something in this series; at least one of these games had resounded with them. As the recommendations poured in, my fears were realised. I seem to be the only person I know who gives even a passing shit about video games who has managed to not play a single Final Fantasy. Combining that with my tendency to not finish half the games I start, I felt the gamer clout rapidly draining from my body. I had to do something drastic.

First Fantasy is going to be a written record of me actually playing through a Final Fantasy main-line game. As far as format goes, I’m aiming somewhere between an actual article and those old text-based LPs from the pre-YouTube era of GameFAQs and the SA board. The term I’m settling on for this project is “gaming diary,” and the rules will be as follows:

1. I have to finish the game. I will define “finished” as beating the final boss and/or a credit roll. I know there’s bonus bosses or something in these games but I don’t care. I’m not trying to 100% anything here, as will be reinforced by the next rule.
2. I will not look up anything to do with the game until I have finished playing it. No spoilers, no gameplay tips, no secret items or boss locations or whatever. If I manage to completely break a job system, it will be via my own experimentation. I’ve somehow managed to live for 23 years without knowing anything about these games so why would I ruin that now? Also this is like, the main hook of this series. Don’t be ridiculous.
3. When I am playing the game, I won’t listen to other music with the game on mute. I know this one probably sounds weird but trust me. The amount of video game music I’ve skipped or ignored would amaze you. I have too much brain space devoted to memories of playing FFXIV while listening to 2 Chainz. Technically, I’ve already ignored some of these songs before. I can’t hear Los Campesinos! without immediately thinking of Maple Story. It’s probably my worst habit as someone who plays video games and I won’t let it interfere with my RPG fundamentals education plan.

As for the diary, I plan to post here at least once a week, possibly more than that if it’s going well. I’ve already decided my inaugural Final Fantasy game will be Final Fantasy 5, specifically the GBA port, played via emulator. It came recommended by a translator friend of mine specifically for its great localisation. I have no idea what to expect and I’m very excited!

Next Time: I dig in to FFV! For the very first time!

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*If you catch me in a certain mood, I’d probably say FFTA is my favourite game of all time. Definitely top 5. And FFXIV is probably the best MMO ever made on the level of objective fact.

**Except for FF2. Sorry to FF2, the least loved FF game by the metric of “people I know’s opinions on Final Fantasy games.”