And completed it!
This was an (unintentional) binge to get this series started. I was
procrastinating something for school, excited to start, and the game
absolutely sucked me in more than I expected.
Plus: it was cathartic.
Weird, right? But this game has been hanging over me since I was like
seven years old. Failed early, gave up, and let t slide. My life is in
kind of a bad, broke, lonely place at the moment, and I rarely
follow-through on plans, desire for change, anything. I'm still giving
up, just like I did then (though I of course don't blame my seven year
old self - the interface and explanation was really not well-done iirc,
and that shit was tough!).
I sometimes wonder whether I can use something I'm passionate about -
gaming - to kick off wider change. Like, maybe if I can follow-through
on this, I can follow-through on my other goals. Gaming can help me
build a life instead of destroying it.
-----------
On a less personal note, some thoughts on the game itself:
-Did the ending confuse anyone else?
I get that some kink in the elemental powers sent Garland back in time,
where he sent the Fiends forward to send him back to send the Fiends
to... Fine. Weird, but fine. But when did Garland become Chaos? Was
he Chaos all along, or did he go back in time so often that he became a
monster or am I entirely misreading this?
-The Chaos fight was really tough and really fun. My black wizard was
pretty ineffective, and the knight and ninja were okay but nothing
special. The white wizard though - she was the real champion. Her
"Holy" spell did the most damage, but most of her mana was spent keeping
my party alive.
-Chaos' spell effects were phenomenal. Tsunami was my favorite, but
Cyclone (a lightning-filled twister spinning my party around and
spitting them out) was great too.
Sunken Shrine was beautiful, with my favorite music of the game.
-Tiamat (lol at seeing her here in FFI today and the MW SPN on Monday)
was fun. And the whole cloud castle thing was awesome! Great music,
atmosphere, and was easy to follow. I didn't get lost the way I did in
the fire volcano.
-The Shrine of Chaos skirted the line between boring and epic. I like
the four floors each with enemies from a different element with the
redux boss fights at the end of each, but it was just so densely packed!
My party one-shotted most of them, except those FUCKING DARK WIZARDS
AND THEIR POISON. Plus, there was like no treasure or stuff to find, so
exploration felt punitive rather than exciting.
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And that's FF1!
I plan to go more moderately here on out. One post every couple of days
with some notes on what I've been doing, fun/funny/frustrating stuff
that happened, etc. The plan is to go from here through FFX and FFX-2.
(Are those PS2 games easily available on emulators? I haven't tried
emulating anything past SNES, so not sure how common/good those are.)
I'll also be starting up FFXIV at some point, probably midway through,
as a double-play of whatever single-player game I'm at in the series and
XIV. I know very little about it, and so that'll be pretty fresh too!
So.... yeah. Woo hoo! Yay for Final Fantasy!
