Final Fantasy Anthology review

Game: Final Fantasy Anthology
Platform: PlayStation
Genre: RPG
Developer: Square

Reader review by icelake

Date unavailable

Like an excited little child opening a big Christmas present and unsealing the magical golden wrapper, I was excited when I finally got a hold of this game. Why? Well, I've wanted to play Final Fantasy 5 ever since I played the original Final Fantasy 4 (2 USA) on the Super Nintendo system. I always saw pictures of this game and always wanted to play. Sure I know the game is substandard in some respects nowadays, but back then, the graphics looked awesome. I couldn't believe my eyes when I was looking through EGM and saw pictures of FF5. I thought Square had really outdone themselves.

I don't care if the graphics are old and weak by today's standards. I still think the game looks great for the style of game that it is. Games that use polygons nowadays look great but are based on comparisons of other games that are displayed in polygons--that's not the case with this game. The two games in this package are displayed in pixels and sprites and not polygons. The games' basic layouts are blocks that, for the most part, take up equal amounts of space. So it's not organic. Doesn't have to be to look great. The graphics still look great for the video game system that they were originally intended for. They're colorful and appear hand-drawn, which I find a relief from the blocky polygonal structures that exist in most games today.

The music is excellent. I don't even think those words are enough to describe it. I don't like Final Fantasy 5's music quite as much as Final Fantasy 6's, but it has some great songs too. I've listened to the music CD that came with the packaged collection, and I'm disappointed with their choice of songs to put on the CD. I know the original Final Fantasy 6 well. Maybe because I've played the game all the way through more than 30 times and maxed out all the characters to levels 99 and had every spell and 99 of just about every item I could find. I still like the game, though. Only a few of the songs have grown stale over time.

The story for Final Fantasy 5 needs major work, but the other elements in the game keep it interesting enough to play for a while (like building up character classes and so forth). Final Fantasy 6 has a great storyline. It has many elements that I considered original in their time, but which are now over-used by many competitors trying to steal from FF6's original glory (like the floating island scene). This was the first RPG I've ever seen with a floating island, and after this game I've seen many many RPG's that have floating islands (i.e. Chrono Trigger, Granstream Saga [ugh], etc.). Keep in mind that this is the game that started it all (Final Fantasy 6).

Both games are very easy and leave little room for aggrevation that comes naturally with hard games. I think the games could have been a little harder, just to make things a little more interesting. But games like Final Fantasy 8 that require many, many, many hits against the bad guys in order to defeat them make me appreciate this game's challenge level more.

The games are both fun, although I think Final Fantasy 6 is more fun. I don't find Final Fantasy 5 to have that great of a replay value, but Final Fantasy 6 is definitely worth going through more than once. There are always new things to discover second and third time around in the game. The game's fun enough that it makes you want to play again, hence my 31 quests on the game at 99:59.

This game really is a great buy. You have two great Final Fantasy games in one, and for only $40! That's a steal, especially considering I payed $86 for the original Final Fantasy 6 (3 USA) when it came out, and never got Final Fantasy 5. My only complaint about Final Fantasy Anthology is that Final Fantasy 4 (2 USA) was not included in the package. That is probably my favorite Final Fantasy game, along with FF6. In the event that Final Fantasy 4 was included in this set, I would say it's worth $60. Considering it's not though, $40 doesn't sound like too bad of a deal for this game. Not if you consider each game worth $20 each. Sounds fair to me. Truly two great games to add to your library of games. Get them today!

Rating: 8.5/10

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