An eidolon of Final Fantasy glory

Note: A copy of this game was provided by Square

Some things drive me nuts more than anything else. One of these things is monkeying with a winning formula. Thus, with the past three Final Fantasy games, I was left with a distinct bad taste in my mouth. Where had the thick, cohesive plot gone? Where had character classes gone? And the ultimate complaint: where is the fantasy? I was about to retreat into my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics and never come out.

Oh, but someone, somewhere, besides me, remembers what Final Fantasy games were, and they got to make this game, the final installment for the Playstation. I had heard all the rumors, from friends that could read Japanese and from the usual gaming rumor mills. But at last, the game is in my hands. And it's fitting that eidolons, the Latin word for memory, is so prominent in the game: all the fond memories have returned.

The game begins with a duality off the bat. While Vivi, a shy and uncertain Black Mage, is going to the royal capital of Alexandria to watch a play, a young thief named Zidane is in town to perform said play and kidnap the kingdom's princess, Garnet. Of course, potential kidnappings never work the way they are supposed to, and this one is hardly an exception.

But as the plot goes forward, the characters, including the others that Zidane, Vivi, and Garnet meet, discover that the world they live in holds more secrets about them than they imagined. For each character, they soon discover that their quest is about self-discovery and finding where they really belong, in addition to holding onto the ragtag family that they have formed. The characters are thus fully fleshed out, and they clearly evidence a full range of emotions. And also, unlike in some of the more recent Final Fantasy games, the plot centers around characters that are actually charismatic and enjoy being with other people and opening up to others, which helps progress the plot.

The game also brings back the classic tradition of character classes to Final Fantasy. Clearly, the most obvious case of this is with Vivi, who is dressed in the garb that has been the Black Mage tradition since the original Final Fantasy. But there are other hints as well - Steiner, the knight, is in full armor, and Garnet first appears wearing the white robe with red triangle trim that was the uniform of the White Mages. Even Freya, the dragon knight, wears an outfit similar to the tradition set by Kain the Dragoon of Final Fantasy 4.

To go along with the excellent character design, though, is that each character has their own unique skills. Zidane, for example, is the only character that can steal items, and Steiner's skills all revolve around nullifying an enemy's advantages in combat. No more "every character can have every skill at once" in this game, or even having to load your favorite character with every spell. The player actually has to strategize about what particular ability they want to have for the coming fight.

Consequently, the game has to use a rather innovative system to learn new skills. All equipment in the game, from the lowly dagger to the mighty Oralchion can teach characters new abilities. But there is one caveat - for items that multiple characters can wear, they can only get select abilities from the item. For example, the Silk Shirt can teach both Thunder and Cure. However, only the game's White Mages can learn Cure from the item, and only Vivi can learn Thunder from it. And any other character that equips it won't learn anything from it. Thus, while each character has to be built, the game does not let a single character become too overloaded.

The graphics of the game are much cleaner than previously available to the Playstation, and are also much better designed. Yoshitaka Amano, the lead character designer for the first six Final Fantasy games, has finally returned to bring his distinctive hand to the character design, and it shows well. The characters are memorable and stand out clearly, while being well designed and refreshing to look at. Backgrounds have continued to improve and it's no longer a difficult issue to figure out where on the screen you are. Adding to the simplicity is a little thought bubble that appears over your head whenever the background can be manipulated, for either a story effect or to give you another treasure.

The full motion videos are finally much improved as well. Even though the characters are much less realistic than the ones for Final Fantasy 8, they move much more believably. This isn't to say fluidly - Vivi is presented as a bit of a klutz, and as such his motions aren't fluid. But the animation itself is fluid, and you easily get the right impression of Vivi, with his almost hopping gait brimming with energy and uncertainty. Other characters are similarly animated.

In terms of music, this might be some of the best work of Nobuo Uematsu, the composer for all of the Final Fantasy games to date. The game starts surprisingly subtle, and instead of trying to overwhelm immediately with powerful music, allows the game to build up in the excitement before hitting the crescendoes. Moreover, like the game's concept, the music knows that to be really successful, you have to learn well from what works in the past. As such, several of the classic tunes, such as the music of the Earth Cave from the original Final Fantasy, appears again, like in Fossil Roo later in the game. The attention to detail and the recall of classic musical moments adds much to the game.

Perhaps most exciting, though, is that each of the previous Final Fantasy games is referenced in this one, beyond the usual recurring Chocobos, Moogles, Cids, and Bahamuts. I'm also talking about Final Fantasy games not released here - the airship Invincible, from the Japanese Final Fantasy 3, flies in, and Cloud is mentioned as well. I won't ruin the most prominent reference from Final Fantasy 1, but suffice to say that gamers that played the first Final Fantasy when it came out will be pleasantly surprised to see the name appear.

The battles, obviously the main game play attraction of Final Fantasy, are back to the right difficulty level. Presuming you have a good party combination, the enemies will challenge you and make you use items and spells regularly, but you can still rip through them if you know what to do. But some perks have been added to the battle system. For example, now enemies carry multiple items, which means you can steal multiple times effectively, making Zidane a much mroe useful character. Also, for those of us who got bored during the humongous summon sequences from the last two Final Fantasy games, the summons are only rarely shown in their full length mode, and then to do extra damage to the enemy. Finally, I was getting fat on all those sandwiches I made during Knights of the Round.

The battle system also has what may finally be the last permutation of the near death attack. Now called Trance, it builds up much like limit breaks did, but when it activates, all characters gain new abilities, like Garnet's increased Summoning power or Vivi's ability to cast two spells at once. Moreover, it lasts multiple turns, so you can get much more use out of it, especially if it occurs during boss battles. However, there is one drawback to it - unlike limit breaks, you can't save it. Once it activates in battle, your Trance meter goes to zero at the end. Sorry, no saving it for the boss if you don't protect the Trance character. Also, one thing that's kinda funny. Each character undergoes a costume and body change under trance. For Zidane, quicker than you can say "Super Saiyan rip-off," he looks like a Dragon Ball Z character, half man and half monkey. Of course, though, any game that has a person transforming into a monkey isn't all that bad.

In addition, the side quests aren't plodding, tedious affairs, as they became in more recent Final Fantasy games. They are kept to a minimum, and they leave most of the character development for when you actually advance through the story, meaning that character development is no longer optional. Instead, the side quests, mostly consisting of helping Moogles and hunting for treasure with your chocobo, are much more refreshing, with an emphasis solely on finding interesting stuff. This is what side quests should be.

Of course, no game is perfect. One great example of this is the in-game card game. Like Final Fantasy 8, this one has a card game. However, the game steadfastly refuses to give anything but the most vague idea of how to strategically play until near the game. As is, I still only have a weak grasp of the card game. I do know that the cards can actually level and become stronger, but I still don't know in what manner they do so, or how the game determines who won or lost. I suppose there are worse things than not knowing how to play the optional mini-game, but they didn't have to make a part of the game deliberately confusing.

Also annoying is that the game is remarkably short. Even if you take time out to look for interesting things, like the Aloha T-Shirt hidden in the game (considering that I wear one of those every day, you know I had to find it), it still is remarkably short. Alright, as you can imagine, since getting this game several days before I write this, I've done nothing but play this, with time out for some of the necessities of life (eating, sleeping, seeing my girlfriend). But still... I hit the last disc in around 34 hours of game play. I was hoping for less FMVs, much more plot, although I must admit that the amount of plot was already generous.

So, as you might have imagined, my few complaints about this game are piddling at best. In truth, by hearkening back to the origins of Final Fantasy, and making liberal use of remembering everything from what made those games good to the names of the characters in said games, Square has made a fitting swan song for the series' Playstation run. With a return to a battle system that makes sense without being overpowering, by making the characters easy to like and developed, and by basically taking the elements that made Final Fantasy good to begin with and improving them, Square has finally released the specters that had haunted the original Final Fanatics about the series. Some people worried that with Chrono Cross being so good, that it would overshadow this game. Perish the thought. Rather, this game shows that once and for all, the brain trust at Square is back, and they're here to stay.