The adventure begins... for the sixth time!

Hey, you guys! Kamarile here. Sorry for my recent absence from the blog. I'd like to say that it was due to vacation, and being at home with spotty internet*, but really, that is no excuse. Anyway, I'm back on track, and ready to start playing Final Fantasy 6!

I've come to the point in the playthrough where, lately, I haven't so much been discovering new things about the games as I have been noticing the ways in which they evolve from one to the next. I mean, duh, right? Isn't that the whole point of playing through the games in chronological order? Well, you see, FF6 is a game that I pretty much have memorized.




See? Even so, every few months or so, Matty and I will sit at our computers, turn on the old AIM, and have a conversation that pretty much goes like this:

Me: Maaatttyyyyy, I'm sooo borrrrred! *sad emoticon*
Matty: hmmmmm
Matty: do you want to play a game?
Me: Sure! Which ones haven't we played in a while?
Matty: Well, it's been about three weeks since we did FF6...
Me: Okay! Let's do it!

So, you might be asking, if I have played FF6 so many times, what makes THIS run different from all the others? Let me tell you: perspective makes a HUGE difference with this game. When I first played FF6, it was right after I finished FF7, which was my first game in the series unless you count Mystic Quest. Both 6 and 7 are vastly darker than every other game in the series, but you don't really recognize that when you look at the two in a vaccuum.















From the moment I started up the game, I was struck by how completely this game diverges from the style of its predecessor. FF5's opening titles are bright and cheery-- Butz is riding his chocobo and there's jaunty music playing. FF6's titles are like, written in FLAMES, and there are dramatic organ chords pounding away. If one game seems to say, "Let's go have an adventure! Come level up your characters' jobs! It'll be fun!", the other indicates that some totally epic shit is going to go down.

Really, FF6 is the first game in the series where graphics and sound play more than a functional role. Of all the "story-based" (even-numbered) games in the series so far, FF6 is the only one to convey its story in more than just the text. Okay, sure, Rydia has a pretty character theme, and there is that one frame of Rosa and Cecil kissing, but this is nowhere near the level of FF6. Not only is the general palette of muted colors darker and more evocative than those of the earlier games, but the character sprites are extremely expressive, displaying such varying emotions as sadness, happiness, surprise, or even sleaziness, as is the case with Edgar here.

The other things to note about the opening to this game are the creepy undertones... and boy, are there a lot of them:

Ewwww.


Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!


And a super-creepy salute from the evil empire. I mean, it makes sense. I always knew there had to be a reason why Amano draws so many blondes. After all, is it really a video game if you're not fighting a Nazi or two?



*As opposed to being at school in my apartment with my next-door neighbor's extremely reliable unsecured wireless network.