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A Roast of Final Fantasy Fandom: Part 1

Nothing too serious, just a balls out rant on Final Fantasy.

Whether your a serious JRPG junkie or merely enjoy the genre on occasion, then there’s a good chance that you have at least one Final Fantasy. Each one of these games from this seminal series has its own endearing foibles for people to hang on to, something unique to offer to the gamer. Each Final Fantasy follows its own set of logic; each is representative of a unique evolutionary mutation of the same basic concepts. This means that there’s a lot of variety, a lot of quirky stylistic and gameplay variants to enjoy, or crucify.    

Unfortunately the Internets are abuzz with debate over the quality of these titles, especially in relation to one another. They make the diversity of this series profane; the best and weakest elements are rather trumpeted and merely utilized as ammunition for their malicious bile spilling purposes. Flamers and message board trolls perpetually debate upon the “worthiness” of each of the games within the series. Each game is ritualistically raised up as an idol for a specific sentimentality, and then is ceremonially torn down by a legion of naysayers bent on seeing their prized horse become the next golden idol in the pantheon raised to the heavens. The debate over the absolute nadir and the peak of the series still rages, a seemingly endless Civil War, a constant infighting of factions seeking some semblance of supremacy over their competitors.

This being the nature of things, now seems like the perfect time to utilize my particular brand of pseudo-sociology to assess the fans of these games. My purpose in this blog is to inspect the core concepts of each of the games iterations and use that information to create of profile for the fans of that particular game. To generate or determine their personality based off of my generalized and biased assumptions of those games and then reducing that it to a singular, easy to read diagnoses. Now, lets start from the beginning!

Final Fantasy I: Simple, Determined

 

If Final Fantasy I is your favorite game, there’s a good chance that you’re a decisive decision maker, you’re someone who chooses a path and then sticks to his or her guns. You decided to moronically have an all White Mage party and you find yourself halfway through the game, constantly losing to random monsters? Well, too bad! There’s no direction but foreword baby, either you’re sticking with your poorly balanced party or your starting over from the beginning! The ability to change jobs is for the weak heart, for yellow bellies afraid of making mistakes.


As far as problem solving, you like to keep things simple. Garland has absconded with the Princess? You follow the path of least resistance. You simply walk into his stronghold, bop him on the head a few times, maybe set him on fire a bit and then reap the inherent rewards from his demise. Witch bugging the poorly translated NPC's you don't care about? You simply waltz into her stronghold and bop her on the head till your victorious. Then you clean, rinse and repeat till the world is saved. This was a game from a simpler time, when black mages didn’t need faces and battle backgrounds were vague and insubstantial, and we liked it that way! Character development? Please, don’t bring your modern conception of the genre to Final Fantasy I; you’re cramping our style.


     
                                                            You just got bopped on the head by my inexplicably named party of Vagabonds!


Final Fantasy 2: Cautious


If Final Fantasy II is your game of choice then you maybe a person who tends to ere on the side of caution. New things are inherently scary to you, you feel infinitely more comfortable with a weapon or a skill when you have had time to master it and learn how to properly manipulate it. Practice, that is your mantra of choice. You are most comfortable when you have the ability to practice something over, and over, over, over and over again.

When a new powerful weapon, lets say an axe, falls into your possession you use it only gingerly at first. Your lack of confidence means that you’re initially only doing pathetic amounts of insubstantial damage. But, as you grow more confident you swing with greater authority and slowly become more adamant and decisive with your strikes. Your favorite strategy is to practice these techniques on your friends. By constantly smacking them with your unwieldy axe you get used to the ins and outs of the weapon, soon feeling like your ready to graduate to perhaps actually using it against random foes! And honestly, what are friends for if not to be used as focal points for your insatiable need to master a fire spell? I mean, practice does make perfect, right! Right?

                                                   

                               Caution is the greater side of valor, so make sure to practice up and use your best magic and attacks on your friends!




Final Fantasy III: OCD

If Final Fantasy III is your favorite game, then you’re probably not a big believer in destiny. You believe that life is fluid, that you should be able to change your way of life, your job if you will, whenever you damn well feel like it! You like to make life-changing decisions on the fly, when you’re a knight your determined to be a knight, no magic allowed. What kind of Knight can cast magic anyway? A Magic Knight? That sounds kind of lame, not a lot like a knight at all, knights are meant to bash things with their swords, so you’re going to bash away!  

Whether your a black mage, a white mage or hell a cowboy lets say, your obsessed with that role until you find something new and different to go crazy on.


                                                 
                  We may be cute and cuddly, but we can't leave your house till we make sure all of the frames to your paintings are at an exact 90 degree angle.



Final Fantasy IV: Straight up Schizophrenic or A Martyr


If Final Fantasy IV is your favorite game, there’s a good chance that you've lost touch with reality. Seriously, you should probably be in a padded cell right now! What? Your evil brother is an Alien from the Moon bent on world domination  because he's under Lunarian mind control? If that statement made a lick of sense, clearly you have lost touch with reality and are a danger to yourself and others. You probably even think its possible to fly to the moon using a giant ship shaped like a psychedelic purple whale.  It’s truly sad when people lose the ability to distinguish reality and believe in Lunar Alien world takeovers.

If Final Fantasy IV is your game of choice then there is a chance that you were able to ignore the story and thus maintain a semblance of sanity. If you did, then you may have developed an over stimulated sense of martyrdom when confronted with major social situations in lieu of bat shit craziness. The hero of your tale trapped in a sticky situation? If this happens you may feel the urge to throw your life away for the "Greater Good." Blowing your self up, using a deadly forbidden spell or turning yourself into stone; your obsessed with being the center of attention and making sure everyone knows how much you slave and sacrifice for them. Then you curse them from the grave for taking so long to save the planet already, ungrateful bastards!


             

                                                                                                   Please Rosa, just make the voices stop!



Final Fantasy V: A Glutton


Lovers of Final Fantasy V are the kind of people who like to have their cake and eat it too. A Knight who can heal? Go for it! A Blue mage/Dragoon? Already did that and moved on to the next meal! You like to take a small sample of everything and then open up the buffet when you find a combination to your liking. Delicious gameplay indeed! You relish in the knowledge that your game has the best pure gameplay. Story? Ummm…. Wouldn’t you rather talk about how awesome the job system is! Inherently everything always comes back to food, I mean gameplay, I mean… maybe I should stop harping on that metaphor and just move on to the next game. 

                         

                                                                               Tonight I dine on Pirate, with a side order of Ninja!



Final Fantasy VI: Cultured; a Big Fat Snob

 

Television, movies, plays? These are merely forms of media for the vast platitudes of philistines who are unclean and barbarous in their etiquette and tastes.  You know that only the truly cultured, that only the sugary crust of society know the true brilliance that is Final Fantasy VI. You raise your perfumed kerchief towards your breast every time you see the disgusting plebeian masses enjoying their modern day Final Fantasy games. Don’t they know that the genre was perfected with Final Fantasy VI? That Final Fantasy VI was the very peak of video games as a form of media? Nay, Final Fantasy VI is the epoch of all human existence, a feat in the arts that will never be topped!  

As a lover of Final Fantasy VI, you find solace in your own perceived notion of superiority. Your game was the ultimate culmination of the gameplay trends and story telling ability that was possible in Role Playing Games before the proliferation of 3D polygonal consoles. For you, no singular piece of story in any media will match the virtuosity, the sheer crescendo of love and drama that was depicted in the games Opera scene. Kefka was also pretty awesome, you muse to yourself while swirling your glass of twenty-year-old brandy as you gaze upon Celes visage majestically tossing her flowers from the castle walls.


                                                       

                         When you saw this scene you cried, even though they sounded like they were gargling water, you cried and you wept!        

 

 

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