Laments from an Old-School Gamer

by Jesse Goonsantiviboon 

How many of us remember figuring out that stupid riddle from Matoya the Witch and finding the "hidden" Map Screen? How many of us remember spending six hours fighting ogres to gain enough strength to fight through the Marsh Cave? Or how about the days when you had to fight your way through a dungeon, fight the boss, and make it back out without Saving? Or my favorite, pressing A and B 55 times in the Pirate ship to access the hidden number game? Yes sir, I'm talking about old school Final Fantasy, back when games were games (And to inform Mr. Cooke, I did cry when Tellah died)

On to the issues. OK, FF VII was a pretty good game, as far as games go. But I'm particularly disturbed by the continuing trend towards character individuality. Granted, the characters in FF VII were developed far better than most games, but they really weren't unique in terms of abilities. Sure, limit breaks are great, but you never seem to get them when you really need them. And the only other special abilities are granted through materia, and anyone can use any kind of materia. So I could have Cloud, Tifa and Barrett all do Bolt 3 till the bad guys are dead. Yay.

In the old days, characters had specific job classes that had specific abilities. For example, Black Wizards under no circumstances could use white magic. In later FF games, characters each had their own unique support skill, FF IV(II) used Black, White, Twin, Ninja, and Call magic, each of which could only be used by someone skilled in that area. Not to mention the non-magic skills like peep, aim and jump that were only available to that one character, making their uses completely different.

Even the Great FF VI(III) used an esper system that allowed each character to all the magic. But the characters still had distinctly different abilities. What's more, you could choose what characters to use, adding more to the strategy.

As an example of my point, let's say I knew I was going to encounter an enemy that used strong magic, but was weak against physical attacks. In FF VI I would bring Celes because of her Runic Skill, which could be used when needed. I would also bring some physically strong characters, such as Sabin or Cyan, with their Blitz and Swordtech skills, respectively. If faced with the same scenario in FF VII, I would have to take Cloud and then I would just pick the characters that look the coolest. You can factor in the nature of that character's limit breaks only so much because, well, you can't use them when you need them. And all I have to do to turn someone into a powerhouse fighter is slap some good materia on, so, what the heck, why not bring Cait Sith and Yuffie this time?

Not to say that all hope is dead. FF Tactics was still old school-style. It still had the beautiful, classy, hand-drawn, super-deformed characters that we've come to know and love. And you had to choose wisely what abilities to give to your characters. Giving battle skill to a wizard would obviously be foolish, but equip gun to a priest, now that's genius. You really had to think who to bring with you (until you got Orlandu, of course).

My final point being that I think the uniqueness of the characters these days is too dependent on the CG Eye Candy and not the actually character's strengths and weaknesses. I like the Limit Break system, but why can't we also have a support skill unique to each character? Let's hope Square can do something more in FF VIII.