Wednesday, April 8, 2020

Wednesday: Why I Will Probably Never Finish a Final Fantasy

A Note: I'm going to try to write more over the time of the pandemic. That probably means that I'm going to write about things that I'm watching or reading or playing. I don't know if I will write about Scripture in these but it might come up. We'll see.

Earlier this year I made a commitment to play through some of the games that I had started but never completed. I like many PC gamers have collected a lot of video games at low cost through Steam sales. I have also collected many games in other formats through gifts from others and through impulse purchase. Offhand I can think of about twelve games that I have started and gotten some distance through before putting them aside to return to something else (usually Destiny). My commitment was to try and finish some of the "low hanging fruit" in my library.

I started off really strong. I finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 2 Remake within the first two months of this year. It was a strong start. Then I decided to tackle Final Fantasy VI which is sitting on my SNES Classic. It's been a game that I've heard good things about, but I hadn't gotten deep into yet. I started off strong and really enjoyed the first chunk of it. But then something bad happened. I got stuck.

The Final Fantasy games have this unique characteristic in which many of the battles are based around making use of certain skills or abilities that your characters have. You need to use certain skills in the right combination in order to successfully dispatch your opponents. This is kind of interesting and leads to a lot of experimentation but there's a catch. You can only change your party members and by extension the skills you have access to at certain times. Because of this there are cases in which you can start out with a party that seems capable of taking on things, but then suddenly discover that you are unable to progress past a certain boss with your current party. I have reached this point.

I'm ten hours into the game and at the final boss in the Magitech Factory but my party choice means that I only have two members in my current party and with no hope of actually beating this boss. The way that my saves have been set up means that there's no going back. I'm stuck. The only way to get around this problem is to start the entire game over again. I'm feeling pretty deflated about the whole thing at this point.

This has happened to me before in Final Fantasy VII. I have played FFVII for a total of 45 hours, but I have never progressed past Rocket Town. This is because every time I get past a certain point, the PC port deletes my save files and I have to start the entire game over again. I'm pretty good at the first ten hours now having done them four times but I am almost positive I will never go back and finish the game.

So I think I might just never finish a Final Fantasy game. I still have at least three others that I could play. FFVIII - FFX are just sitting in my Steam library, but I'm not sure I ever will. I'll get back to you if I ever manage it.

Update: Immediately after writing this I completed the fight I thought I was stuck on and am now unstuck. ONWARD!

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