It's summer!
That means you can actually go outside without contracting frostbite in minutes, the daylight
hours are longer, and everyone outside is in less than pants, regardless of whether
or not that's in good taste.
Which means you, as a reasonable human being, are probably staying indoors, because that's
where the bleeding AIR CONDITIONING is.
Since you're not driving to the boards or gleaming the cube, chances are you're indulging
in any of a number of charity gaming initiatives, which may or may not involve 160-hour-plus
streaming marathons or randomized runs of one of my favorite RPGs of all time, Final
Fantasy V. I was particularly impressed by the GBA adaptation of that one, so I had high
expectations going into Final Fantasy VI Advance.
For instance, I expected to be called the son of a submariner.
What did I get?
Sandworm?
This isn't FFV, Kefka!
Get it together.
While the sordid tale of 12 people (and a moogle)(and a yeti) hasn't changed, certain
bits of it have.
It's not the kind of wide-scope translation overhaul that its predecessor faced, mind,
but rather alterations of some of the more controversial sections, like when Celes totally
isn't getting the crap beaten out of her, or just whose throat Shadow would slit and
for how much.
I can understand a little bit of revision, but when you're dealing with a game considered
by many to be the best RPG of its console generation, and which has had an absolutely
ravenous fan following going strong now almost two decades on... it threatens to run afoul
of just those folks who were looking for a decent portable copy of their favorite game.
(Well, back in 2007, at least.
We'll just pretend that the typo-laden iOS port never even happened at all.)
At least they didn't try to drastically alter the graphics or audio, more than to conform
to the limitations of the GBA.
Awright, so there are a couple stumbling blocks, but the point stands: It's FINAL FANTASY VI.
There's a reason it's stood up to the test of time... despite the notoriously buggy original
work.
A number of the errors have been patched up... and just as many haven't been.
Or, in the case of Psycho Cyan (Qu'est-ce que c'est?)
they've been kinda-patched but you can still use them but in a different way, and the stuff
that was intended to be broken...
like, most of Gau... is still quite broken.
Nightshade rage might be called Rafflesia now, but the important part is that it's still
the most absurdly overpowered thing since broken came to brokenville.
Any power that allows me to defeat an endgame boss by hitting them once and walking away
from the game for 20 minutes deserves the real overhaul.
But hey, at least the evasion stat, y'know, DOES something now.
Yes, I have some gripes about Final Fantasy VI, and this version in particular, but they're
somewhat offset by the UI improvements that've been made.
Much like 5, you have the option of converting your usual list of commands into a d-pad-aliased
system, which allows you to blaze through battles like a... uh... blue thing.
Two new dungeons have been added as well, the Dragon's Den and the 128-floor Shrine
of Souls, because who doesn't like a good postgame challenge?
While this version isn't going to convert anyone to the Cult of Kefka, it is about as
sound a version of the game as we can obtain here in the West.
It's just not the massive step forward that, frankly, Final Fantasy V needed.
At least the majority of tricks I learned as a hardcore Essentia fanboy still work.