Know Thy Enemy (and his theme music)

by Misery Guts 

Warning: Spoilers for Final Fantasy 1 to 9

I once resented Final Fantasy VII as much as I loved it. Why? Because of it's popularity - the fact that a great series did not receive the proper recognition until it had some flashy graphics. It's not the greatest Final Fantasy (personally I thought FF6 got it right) but FF7 had something that no other Square game, or any other RPG that I've played, never had.

The idea of Sephiroth.

Now you notice I said the idea of Sephiroth. As much as I liked him, this is not written for the sake of hero-worshipping an amazing character. My purpose is to applaud the way he was written. Sephiroth takes a turn from the Final Fantasy norm, which is the one trait in the series that I don't quite like - the mystery enemy.

I love a good final boss fight. Let's face it, it's the accumulation of forty-some hours of gameplay - the absolute climax in a polygon overture. It's the ultimate stand-off between good and evil, or at least two opposing forces. Music does not make a game, but it certainly accentuates it. That is why movies have soundtracks, as do games now. The right music helps add to the intensity of a battle. The right enemy, along with the right music, turns a final battle into a magnificent opus.

Sadly the great Final Fantasy series does not always follow this model, which is odd since they were the ones who created it. Throughout most of the series you've warred against a bitter enemy, only to find out at the last minute that your true enemy was always someone else. I will site the examples that accept or go against this trait, though I cannot include FF2j & FF3j since I've no personal knowledge of them. From what I hear, however, they do fall victim to this trend.

Final Fantasy 1 - You begin by fighting a man named Garland who has, as villians do, kidnapped the princess. After defeating him you are told of how the four fiends of the elements have dimmed each orb (cyrstal?). It's your duty to stop them. At the end you discover that Garland was behind it after all. But do you show-down with Garland one last time? No! You fight a rather cool yet still irrelevant final boss named Chaos. So what's the deal with this Chaos guy? How does he relate? How does Garland even relate when you only truly know of him in the first five minutes and last two minutes of the game? Incidentally, the final battle music is the same as any other battle. Hey, it was in the 8-bit days. It was still a great game - the birth of a legend - so we'll forgive them for that one. ;p

Final Fantasy 4 - You begin by fighting against Golbez, an evil destroyer with a personal grudge against you. After chasing him throughout one of the biggest "worlds" in FF history (overworld, underworld, moon...) you meet up with him only to have his amnesia vanish. Yes, amnesia. Turns out he's your brother. So you journey to the center of the moon to find a guy named Zemus, who turns into a monster named Zeromus. Kay. Well, it was the first 16-bit FF game, and the swirling background was cool, as was the music, so I was able to ignore this. Slightly. A showdown against an unrepentant Golbez would have been much cooler though.

Final Fantasy 5 - This game was good, though somewhat delayed for North America. FF5 re-introduced that job system that we never saw in FF3 and finally met in FFTactics. Four warriors set out to, what else, restore light to the crystals. Now this game was consistent, the first of a three game stint, in which you meet your foe early on and he stays your foe until the bitter end. X-Death, however, is the cliche and stereotypical enemy - a villain for the sake of villainy. Even his name is kinda corny. And as intimidating as he may have seemed when you first battled him (looking sorta Golbez-like), when you fought him at the end he was, and I'm not kidding, a tree. I won't say any more on the matter. The music, however, was interesting. It's drumbeat was reminiscent to that of Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People".

Final Fantasy 6 - Now this is where things came together in the FF series. This was the first game to have multiple characters in which you could pick and chose your characters at whim, and you could even manage multiple parties at one time in certain areas. This game saw the maturity of the SNES/Super Famicom in terms of graphics and music. How cool was that opera back then? The story was epic, the characters were memorable, and the finale was astounding by 16-bit standards. My only critique was Kefka. Don't get me wrong, I loved him, but he did fit that villian for the sake of villiany category, didn't he? But at least he clung on to the end and you duked it out with him, but not after fighting some demi-gods to some eiree "operatic" music. This was the ultimate Final Fantasy game, and it's just a shame it never saw the light of 3D graphics.

Final Fantasy 7 - Who could forget this game. Our favourite series attaining the higher consciousness of 3D graphics! And Sephiroth! You knew him from early on in the game - you saw his development from anti-hero to fallen hero. In other words, as you saw him slowly turn his back on goodness and do horrible horrible things, you coulnd't help but feel sorry for him. You knew why he did what he was doing, and though you couldn't condone it, you could almost understand why. And when you fought him at the end, and as that unforgettable music began with that striking beat, he descended upon you in angelic glory with arms outstretched. You hated him - he murdered Aerith. You pitied him - he bound himself to his mother's fate. Then the overture began, and the opera sang of his tortured fate. The ultimate battle in a video game past and present began. Zeromus' "Big Bang" spell was ticklinsh compared to the almighty "Super Nova". Square set a standard which would be hard to match in this game, with this final battle. Sadly they have not been able to meet that standard themselves since. Things kinda went downhill from there.

Final Fantasy 8 - Oh we all bitched about FF8 at first. It was too different from the other FF games. But I came to realize it was the FF genre reaching it's maturity. Despite it's failings in gameplay and battle system, it was still a great game. A review by a magazine once referred to it as the "War and Peace of video games". It was great! It opened with an astounding operatic overture, Liberi Fatale. However, it did not end on such a great note. Oh don't get me wrong, it has the best ending ever seen in a video game, but the final battle left much to be desired. Once again your foe turned out to be your freind, and it wasn't until the end of your 40 hour struggle that you came face to face with your true enemy and fought her to the bitter end - even though you had no idea who she was! The music while fighting Ultemecia was quite UNremarkable, though the music "The Legendary Beast" that played while fighting Greiver was SO intense. Too bad he was just floating there like a dead animal on a hangar half the time. After FF7's greatness, I was SO excited to see what they'd do in FF8's final battle to top the struggle with Sephiroth. Well, I was quite disappointed.

Final Fantasy 9 - So I got used to the realistic characters of FF8, then they revert! Hey, FF9 was a masterpeice. I had very little to complain about, though multi-party missions a la FF6 would have been nice. Otherwise this game was brilliant. Due to my disappointment in FF8's ending, however, I tried not to get my hopes up. Let's put it this way - FF9 was perfect in all respects up until you killed Trance Kuja - then it just got weird. Let's start from the beginning. You fought against Queen Brahne, who was controlled by Kuja, who was controlled by Garland, who was killed by Kuja, and then came Necron. Who the $*%# was Necron? He just appeared out of the blue at the last minute, after defeating Kuja. He was so pointless - he was completely irrelevant! What association did he have with the rest of the characters? The game should have ended with a more intense battle with Kuja, period. The music for these final battles, however, was far from breathtaking. It's a shame that the game took such a sudden turn at the end, because othwerwise it contained all the good things found in the earlier games I grew to love!

I don't like critizing Squaresoft, because they do an incredible job. I just find that sudden "shocking" turn-around at the end to be somewhat over-done. A villian that lasts is the villain that has an effect. We might quickly forget Necron, but we will never forget Sephiroth. Having those mixed emotions as you beat the crap out of a foe is part of the added effect, which can be accentuated by the right music. FF7 hit it right on the nose, and they taught us a valuable lesson - there is nothing more evil than a villian that makes us understand him.