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Sunday 13 January, 2008
Summary:
Final Fantasy(FF)VI Advance is a role playing game from the FF series where you take command of a group of rebels trying to protect their world from an evil empire who is trying to use magic to control the world. Throughout the game, you control up to four characters as you level them up, defeating warriors and magical creatures, completing many tasks, until you ultimately defeat the evil empire.
Gameplay:
I have played a couple of FF games in the past, notably FFI&II: Dawn of Souls and FFX. Although I did get far on FFX, I stopped playing Dawn of Souls due to it was a real basic attack and magic system and very early in the game I got lost and couldn't figure out where to go. But this was not the case with FFVI. One thing I liked about VI was there was an emphasis on characters with unique secondary attacks. The main character, Terra, is the only one for a while who has the ability to use magic attacks to defeat her enemies, while her companion, Sabin, can use attacks known as "Blitz", where the player has to input a sequence of inputs from the control pad to perform a different blitz. This makes fighting the endless amounts of enemies and monsters much more fun and exciting.
The story was quite intriguing as well. I liked how I would meet the characters and get a small background of them, give them a name, and then discover their story as the game progressed. Another aspect of the story that I found very cool was that the world in which Terra and her allies live in is going through almost a "industrial revolution" if you might say, where you have machines capable of walking and destroying villages and people set within a very simplistic, mid evil world where the average warrior still fights with a sword and shield.
Another factor that made the game much more exciting was at a certain point in the game, your party splits and you must determine which scenario to deal with first. I know this has been done before in other games, but for me this is something quite new and exciting within the FF series. This broke up the monotony of having to follow a predetermined path of events, where now I have the decision of either sneaking around a village that was just captured by the enemy, or teaming up with a mysterious warrior only known as "Shadow" and taking on a enemy camp ready to attack another kingdom.
Thanks to this new secondary attack system and new scenarios within the game, FFVI is a wonderful game to play until you have gotten all the way through it. It's just a shame it took this many FF games to finally get it right.
Second Gamelog:
Gameplay:
During this interval, the game has kept up with the same elements that were mentioned before. New characters were introduced with new secondary attack systems. One of the characters depending on how long you would let his charge gauge go, would perform either a real basic attack if you only waited 1 second and a 4 person enemy KO attack if you waited for 4 seconds. I found this to be quite interesting and now the character is one of my primary party members. The game also took a turn for the worse.
In this FF game, you must take part in a tragic sequence of events where a enemy general doesn't wish harm on his enemies, just to capture them while a jester who is on the same side as the general wants to poison the kingdom they are trying to capture. Within this, you get to see how these characters have emotions and interact with each other. You'll have to play the game to see what happens, but I can tell you that it's pretty bad.
Design:
FFVI's design is just like that of any other FF game, except of a few changes to the levels and fighting system. As mentioned before, characters now come with a secondary attack system that is specifically unique to their character. One character can use magic, another can use tools such as crossbows, and another can perform attacks based on the player's input. There weren't many cutscenes, but whenever a long period of conversation, it usually was well planned as to reveal more information about a character and the story in general.
The levels were basically the same as the other FF games. As the others, you walk around on a large overworld map and would either enter towns and kingdoms or caves when you got close, or engage with enemies. One thing that made this not so bad was sometimes you battle formation would change when engaging an enemy. Usually when you enter a battle, your party lines up vertically on the right side and your enemies on the left. Now you can get a "back attack" where you line up on the opposite sides, affecting certain attacks such as Sabin's blitzes. Another formation is where you become surrounded, so only certain party members can attack certain enemies.
There isn't much I would change about the design of this game. Since they had 5 FF games before this, the game designers finally got it right. I haven't got to far but one thing I would like to see is more weapons I can give to my characters and more magic spells to Terra, the main character in the game. Another thing that made this a better design was that I have a large amount of money, so it's not like I can't afford new stuff for my party. Hopefully I can finish the game soon and find out what more awaits in the world of Final Fantasy.
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