Hello again. You there. Yes, you. With the face and eyes. You may remember that last week I covered the Final Fantasy series through from its inception up until its groundbreaking seventh installment. You do? Excellent. Well, now I’m back to take a look at everything that followed and speculate on the future of the series. So with that said, what say we pick up where we left off?
Right. Good. Then without further ado.
But all this begged the question - What next? How could you possibly follow Final Fantasy VII?
The answer was really quite simple.
With Final Fantasy VIII.
Released for the Sony PlayStation in 1999, two years after Final Fantasy VII had conquered the gaming realm, Final Fantasy VIII was yet another triumph. Earning more than fifty million in just thirteen weeks, it became the fastest selling Final Fantasy game of all time until Final Fantasy XIII came along and knocked it off that particular perch. (Though Final Fantasy XIII did have an advantage being as it was a multi-platform release.) The game focused on a troupe of cadets (known as 'SeeDs') from a prestigious military academy and their mission to stop a time-compressing sorceress from the future. The protagonist was Squall Leonheart, a character that built upon the anti-hero mould established with Cloud in Final Fantasy VII. Squall was a lone wolf type, difficult but talented, who did things his own way who gradually softened and opened up as the game progressed as a result of the bonds he formed with his teammates. According to the character’s designer, Tetsuya Nomura, Squall’s appearance was actually inspired by the late River Phoenix.
The dawn of the new millennium saw the release of another stellar installment in the Final Fantasy canon, arguably the best yet. Looking forward, the Final Fantasy series decided to look back for its inspiration and so Final Fantasy IX was designed as a return to a more traditional style, reminiscent of earlier games in the series. In this, it succeeded wildly. Holding the highest Metacritic score of the entire series and selling 5.30 million units worldwide, Final Fantasy IX is one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful of the franchise. With knights, princesses, a tyrannical queen, black mages, thieves, mist plains, and a place known as the Evil Forest, Final Fantasy IX’s throwback to traditional fantasy tropes was refreshing, as were its characters. Zidane Tribal was a marked change from Cloud and Squall as a protagonist in that he was not a dark or brooding loner and was, in fact, rather laid back, cheerful and upbeat. He valued friendship, had a strong moral code, and was a bit of a ladies’ man. He also had a tail.
The gameplay of Final Fantasy IX introduced ‘Active Time Events’, which allowed players to see events occurring in different locations and could sometimes be used to control two parties simultaneously when the main party was divided. In place of ‘Limit Breaks’ was something called ‘Trance Mode’ which was essentially the same basic idea, being an amplification of character’s powers when they sustained enough damage. The traditional class system was also revived and modified.
In 2001, the future arrived in the form of Final Fantasy X on the PlayStation 2. It was the most visually stunning of the series so far, for the first time featuring fully three dimensional locations. This was it. The exploration of fantasy worlds had never been so engaging or had ever felt so real. It was also the first game in the series to include voice acting (to mixed results). The setting was Spira, a world that differed greatly from those that came before it, incorporating a more Southeast Asian vibe (with Tidus’s home city Zanarkand noted to have been inspired by the Uzbek city of Sanarkand) and the first one to touch properly on the notion of religion within its civilization.
The story begins in media res, which is nice because I enjoy using the term ‘in media res’, and revolves around a group of ragtag pilgrims on a quest to defeat a gigantic monster named Sin. In particular it focuses on star ‘Blitzball’ player, Tidus, after he is seemingly sucked through a portal that transports him to Spira one thousand years into the future. Seemingly. What makes Tidus such a great protagonist is that, unlike the lead characters in previous Final Fantasy games, he is as new to the world of Spira as the player is and so acts an audience surrogate, asking the sort of questions we find ourselves wondering about the rules, traditions and characters of the world we are venturing through. Gameplay wise, Final Fantasy X did away with the ‘Active Time Battle’ system that had become the norm and replaced it with the ‘Conditional Turn-Based Battle’ system. This meant that the pressure of selecting an action within a certain time limit was lifted. The class system was also completely transformed into a new system known as the ‘Sphere Grid.’ Without going into too much detail, the Sphere Grid allowed the player to decide which skill sets to emphasise on each character and meant that any character could take on any desired role within the party.
And, of course, I can’t discuss Final Fantasy X, without mentioning Blitzball. Building upon the mini-game modes introduced in Final Fantasy VIII and IX, Blitzball is a game within a game that can be enjoyed whenever players want a break from the main story. Players can work their way through an entire season of the sport, as well as compete in tournaments. The game itself is basically underwater Quidditch without the brooms or bludgers and holds up as a solid game in its own right. Upon its release, Final Fantasy X became yet another contender for ‘greatest video game of all time’ and was actually voted as such by readers of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu in 2006. It was a critical hit (Enemy Rattata fainted!) and a commercial smash, becoming the first game for the PlayStation 2 to surpass two million sales. It has been listed as the eighth bestselling game for the PlayStation 2 and has sold in excess of 6.6 million copies overall.
It is at this point, ladies and gentleman and suspiciously intelligent pigeons, that I would like to take a ...
Brief Musical Interlude
This concludes our Brief Musical Interlude. We will now resume our regularly scheduled article.
Due to Final Fantasy X’s overwhelming popularity, the decision was made to produce the first ever direct sequel to a Final Fantasy title, the oddly yet appropriately named Final Fantasy X-2 (not to be confused with Final Fantasy XII). The game saw the story of Yuna, one of Final Fantasy X’s primary characters and Tidus’s love interest, continued as she took on Charlie’s Angels style missions and sought to find her lost lover. Many of the characters and locations from Final Fantasy X were featured and revisited, but the game differed greatly in tone and the class and battle systems were heavily modified. Blitzball also returned with some modifications. The game was met with mixed reactions from fans of Final Fantasy X as some felt the shift in tone and style was too extreme, while others were happy with the changes and praised the game overall. Despite this, it was an undisputed commercial success and went on to sell approximately four million copies a mere nine months after its release.
Final Fantasy XII, meanwhile, reverted back to original formula but with enough changes to keep things fresh. Carrying over from Final Fantasy XI, random enemy encounters were scrapped in favour of enemies being visible in the overworld. This meant that players could decide whether or not they wanted to engage in battle. The battle system itself was overhauled, now taking place in real time and incorporating something known as ‘gambits’ – pre-programmed character responses to certain conditions. It also saw the return of the job system. Final Fantasy XII was the first game after the merger between Square and Enix in 2003 and the last available for the PlayStation 2.
The next generation of consoles arrived and with them came a state of great anticipation for the next generation of Final Fantasy games. Visually, Final Fantasy XIII did not disappoint one iota, being as big a leap in graphical improvement as Final Fantasy X had been from its predecessors. However, the game’s story and restrictive linearity came under fire from some critics and fans, although its fast-paced battle system did earn it some praise. Despite its perceived flaws, Final Fantasy XIII became the fastest selling game in the franchise to date and, due to such high sales figures, became the second game in the series to receive a direct sequel. (In fact, it received two.) The character of Lightning was well received by the gaming community at large, regarded by many as a strong female lead and dubbed by some as the female equivalent of Cloud Strife.
Soon after, Final Fantasy XIV became the second game in the series to follow the MMORPG formula. Upon its release it received an overwhelmingly negative response and was declared by some as essentially unplayable, so much so that the game developers were forced to completely redesign and relaunch the game as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn to a much warmer critical reception.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
'Once Lady Yuna fixes her hair, we leave.'
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