Final Fantasy II is an interesting little title so far. I'm not a long ways into it but I'm starting to get the hang of the leveling system. It's similar to many western RPG's in that you level up all your stats individually based upon how much you use them. The big annoyance in this is that it gives me a great desire to check my characters' stat pages every time I finish a battle, which slows things down quite a bit.

The game starts off much more cinematically than its predecessor: It starts off by killing you. Yes, the first thing you do in the game is get your ass kicked by some big tough imperial soldiers, only to wake up in a rebel infirmary recieving heals from their white wizard. Final Fantasy II has characters with actual personalities, limited though they are compared to most modern RPG protagonists. You can equip them just about however you want, I've decided to make my lead male, Firion, into a dual-wielding death dealer. He just looks like he should be. I very much like the updated graphics of the GBA version of this game. In the original a great many of the characters looked exactly like sprites from the first game. Indeed, Firion who has a nice thief-esque design to him, looked EXACTLY like the Fighter from the first game in the NES version. Clearly when this game was re-made they took pains to actually model the characters after their Yoshitaka Amano designs.

There's also a rather unique system of comminicating with significant characters in the game, where you can memorize special words or phrases and, via a menu that pops up whenever you have dialogue with them, ask them specific questions or show them certain items from your inventory, preferably to provoked a plot-moving response.

Almost every even-numbered game in the FF series has had an evil empire in it. The trend apparently started with Number 2 on the dot. This evil empire in question is the Palamecia Empire. In early translations that never made it across the Pacific and fan-translations it was always called the Paramecia Empire. I don't know why they opted to go with an L instead of an R. They've been doing that a lot in fact. Corneria became Cornelia. Paramecia to Palamecia. Reina became Lenna. I guess modern translators just fucking hate the letter R. It could be that they didn't want the empire to sound like it was named after a microscopic creature. Though this way it just sounds like it's named after an engrish microscopic creature, which isn't really more appealing.

Okay, I will be starting Final Fantasy II soon, probably for a couple hours this evening before I go out to see a movie. It's a game I've heard quite a bit about in recent times, one that's considered rather controversial by most fans.

Apparently FFII has a leveling-up system that really irked fans of the series. It was a clever concept that was poorly executed and easily abused. The GBA version of the game retains this system, but apparently has cleaned it up and made it much less frustrating to work with. FFII will also, I hear, be the first game to be Story-Centric in the series. While FF was very simply about a group of four people on a quest to wander through dungeons, fight bosses, and find obscure artifacts and take them to obscure places until they saved the world, FFII is actually about a wide variety of characters and their involvement in a massive war with a diabolical empire. Wow! Originality!

But cruel sarcasm aside, I have also heard that this game has largely been underappreciated because so many were unable to look past the cumbersome leveling system. It's been said that the story is actually very good and very deep for its time. I look forward to playing it. I already like the new character designs, which, for once, actually look like Yoshitaka Amano's concept art.

Alrightly, time to start playing!

Well, that was fast. I beat Final Fantasy in only three days. Again, I'm glad for that though, the game was worthwhile, but the dated gameplay can only go so far in this day and age. I probably would have grown weary of it and quit if I were playing the much, much slower-paced NES version. And that would have made this a pretty piss-poor marathon.

I admit the game was, in the end, on the easy side of things. I never once got a game-over, and the only boss that actually put up a fight was the final one.

Poor Biggs sacrificed his life in the final battle against Chaos. What is it with ninjas and killing themselves at the end of FF games? Of course, the only reason he didn't get through the fight alive is because he got nailed with a nasty attack and Gungho struck Chaos down before Luca could get the Full-Life spell off. There wasn't any actual drama involved.

Ending: Boring. Very boring. Just a bunch of text basically explaining the vague plot of the game I just finished playing through. Not even some visual graphics of the scenes being described being played out. I think though, that this game actually makes the title "Final Fantasy" make sense. Apparently the story of the game is that the fiends draining the crystals and causing the end of the world and Garland's transformation into the god Chaos was a perpetually recurring time loop, and that the actions of the Warriors of Light finally put an end to the cycle forever, changing history and causing the crystals to remain healthy and vibrant for all time. I'm not certain, but I think it implies that they erased themselves from existence in doing so as well.

I can see how Final Fantasy was quite a revolutionary game when it came out. A cartoony, stylized fantasy game with rich graphics and a fast, streamlined (for the time) interface and gameplay that accompanied a (for the time) thick and fairly-linear story. Though FF is one of the Combat-Centric entries in the series: ie, you have more gameplay involved in exploring, fighting, and leveling up than in advancing the plot. But it laid the foundation for the more Story-Centric games that would follow in its many, many sequels and spin-offs.

One of these days I'll have to play through with a monk and a red mage as well, just to get a taste of the variety. The speed of this version helps the replay value a lot.

But I've got a lot more games on my list, so it's time to move on...

Well well, I apparently was not fucking around when I declared that Final Fantasy on the GBA plays fast. I am probably going to complete this game before the 15 hour mark. 20 hours at the absolute latest. I'm rather glad for that. It is a good game, and a very solid remake of a classic, but in this day and age it's just not a game you can play for weeks and weeks without growing weary of it. The encounter rate of the game is absolutely insane, with fights occuring almost every few steps. It barely gives you room to listen to the dungeon music, and gives you a rather large quantity of mind-numbing battles that serve mainly to drain your magic users' MP before you get to the boss.

I feel little shame in admitting that I've consulted a faq to progress through several parts of the game. There was no way I'd EVER figure out to take the god damn Levistone to some random fucking desert at the bottom of the world to get the airship. That's the problem with old NES games: Completely obtuse puzzles with absolutely no hints or logical conclusions that artificially extend gameplay. Legend of Zelda and Metroid, I'm looking in your direction too. I appreciate that they went to such efforts to maintain the integrity of the original, but I have no problems with improving the intuitiveness of puzzles for the sake of quality game design.

I have upgraded my characters to their special classes. Desh is now a Knight, Biggs is a ninja, Luca and Gungho are white and black wizards respectively. My physical characters do some pretty mad damage, and my casters now have enough MP to be able to use their spells a respectable number of times and contribute more than just during boss battles. The boss battles I've come across have still mostly been grotesquely easy. I often have more trouble from the common enemies who can sometimes come at me in massive numbers or packing threatening status-effects.

I've got three of the four crystals lit up, and I actually last saved my game in the beginning of the dungeon for the fourth. Soon I will have access to the final boss, who I hear is actually quite a doozy compared to all the others. Makes me wonder at which point it became tradition to have the final boss of the game be a relative push-over compared to the optional bosses and end-game equipment. Though, for what it's worth, the GBA has for extra dungeons in the game, all possessing a plethora of bosses comparable to or stronger than the final. I don't know if I'm going to bother with those yet.

I haven't nailed down all the rules of this Final Fantasy marathon yet. I know I intend to impose some rules that will make the games I've already beaten a little more challenging, such as requiring that all the ATB games I've beaten before be played in full Active mode, and that in FFX (if I actually make it that far), I will not allow myself to use the "Aeon Fuck" trick to defeat any bosses. I have also decided that completing all sidequests will not be a full requirement of any of the games in my playthrough, seeing as some of them can greatly extend the length of the game, and be tedious at that. Not to mention I don't ever, ever, EVER want to do the chocobo racing sidequest from FFX again, ever. Not if you paid me a million bucks. Well, maybe if you paid me a million bucks... but STILL, I would really hate it!

Well, I started playing Final Fantasy last night. I spent a grotesque amount of time deciding on my player classes and wound up choosing one of the most generic combinations possible: Fighter, Thief, Black Mage, White Mage. Pretty much your fantasy cliche standard. I considered giving them wacky names like FOOD and PUNT, but some nerdy instinct in me caused me to take the game seriously and I instead picked from the game's selection of pre-created names. My warrior is Desh, my thief is Biggs, my white mage Luca, and my black mage Gungho. Not bad names if you ask me.

I am playing the Dawn of Souls GBA remake version of the game. At first I felt a little conflicted about playing this version over an emulation of the original NES version, but I've come to be glad for making that decision. The remixed music is easy on the ears and less repetitive than the original(while still maintaining the lovely classic melodies). The game also plays much, MUCH faster. Battles are are swift and smooth and the challenge of the game is much more appropriately balanced. Managing the inventory and viewing stats for equipment is also streamlined and much easier to work with in this version. I remember thinking the NES version was ridiculously hard for the longest time because I hadn't realized I didn't know how to equip stuff properly.

The "spells per day" system of the original has also been replaced with a standard MP system in this one, which also irked me at first, but thinking about it, it's not all that different. As you level up you gain more MP, which allows you to cast spells more times before running out. It certainly makes the mages much more useful. I think they've rebalanced the thief to be much more effective in this version as well. He actually does damage comparable to the warrior with inferior weaponry.

The game is quite fun so far. People call the GBA version too easy sometimes, but I've found the challenge feels quite appropriate most of the time. Admittedly, the two bosses I've faced so far were extreme pushovers, but most early bosses in FF games are. Part of that is because I've been playing it fairly slowly, buying the best of spells and equipment from every town I come across before progressing. Despite this "slow" playstyle I'm already up to level 20 in less than a day. The oldschool FF's, especially with sped-up pacing like this, translate very well to portability. I can easily see this game being the perfect distraction to bring on trips and errands to kill time. The ability to save your game anywhere reinforces the portability aspect, though I always fear getting stuck and forced to start over with that. To be safe I always make sure I save my game in safe locations like inns or newbie areas on the world map.

The Story So Far: My very generic fantasy party has come a long way in such a shot time. I rescued a princess from a mad knight fallen into darkness to kick things off, after which I stomped a gang of pirates that had taken over a town and comandeered their ship. After that I sailed to a cave full of dwarves who seemed eager to load me down with exposition, then sailed to a forest full of elves and learned their precious prince has been put into a coma by a wicked Dark Elf. I wandered the countryside until I found a run down old castle where a nice old dethroned king asked me to bring his crown back from a cave in the marsh down south so he could restore the castle to its former glory. I was more than happy to oblige (ominous music).

The marsh cave was full of some nasty beasties that kept me on my toes, causing me to question the so-called Easysauce Mode of this game. After liberating the crown from a room full of fricking mindflayers I went back to the kindly old king only to discover he was the dreaded dark elf in disguise! We did glorious battle in which he cast a stupid death spell on my beloved Fighter Desh, costing him a fat chunk of XP when I kicked the delf's ass. He had a crystal eye that happened to belong to a wierd old witch lady, who in turn gave me some super-caffienated potion that woke up the elf-prince. The elf-prince meanwhile, gave me a -Mystic Key- that lets me raid Cornelia Castle's vast (read: small and pathetic) treasure rooms full of riches. Among said riches, mostly mediocre equipment, was some blasting powder that I remember the dwarves claiming they could make good use of. So when I next load up my game, I'll be visiting them...

And I think I spent waaaaay too much time on those last two paragraphs.

Ah, here is where it all begins. I was playing Final Fantasy XII over the past couple months, and I came up with a crazy idea upon realizing I had not ever completed the first five Final Fantasy games, despite owning all of them in some form or another:

What if I played through all the Final Fantasy games in a row?*

A crazy idea, one that would eat up most of my gaming time for months, possibly more than a year. Would I survive this endeavor? How far would I really make it? One thing is for certain: I'm up to the challenge.

I've beaten every FF game in the main series from 6 up (excluding Final Fantasy XI for obvious reasons), and Final Fantasy XII awakened an itch in me not only to play through all the FF games I haven't experienced yet, but to re-experience the others I've already enjoyed.

Honestly, I'm not sure how far I'll get. Hopefully through the end of 5 at least. In any case, I'm going to make the attempt, starting soon at the absolute number 1. This journal will be used to log my progress through this "marathon". My goal is to play through all the games uninterrupted, but I may have to take hiatuses here and there to play other games. I know I've let Eternal Darkness sit on my shelf for far too long.

Stay tuned, my pre-entry on Final Fantasy will begin soon...

*By "all" I mean every Final Fantasy game in the main series except for 11. I will be skipping that one because it's an MMO and thus "un-beatable". I have heard that there are completable storylines present in the game, but I don't want my ability to play through the series to be dependant on fickle online gamers.