Epic’s ad collaborations continue to be strange

**Final Fantasy** , that old ’80s Squaresoft RPG, is an incredibly important piece of the company’s history. Heck, it’s an important piece of _gaming’s_ history. It’s the beginning of a decades-long multi-million selling series that has at several points changed people’s perceptions of the genre forever. It’s the one RPG series that everyone, even today, still looks up to and draws some degree of inspiration from. I’ve never played it. I mean, not properly. I’ve _dabbled_ plenty of times over the years—on WonderSwan, on PlayStation, on PSP, no doubt on some NES emulator for five minutes before playing something else—of course I have, it’s inescapable. But I’ve never really sat down with it. The first mainline Final Fantasy released in my part of the world was VII, everything before it some mystical thing only encountered in the pages of magazines. No shared childhood stories, no chance encounters in some local game shop, no chance to play it at home. _Until now_. I’ve got the cart. I’ve slotted it into my Famicom. And… This is too big of a game for me to blindly blunder into, surely? What if I played it “wrong”? Imagine being the kind of person who played _Final Fantasy_ wrong? That’s got to be the RPG equivalent of not knowing how to hold a pencil. What if I play it right but I don’t like it? What if I understand what it’s trying to do and don’t enjoy it? I can’t do that. This game is _special_. This isn’t just some other adventure. It’s truly influential, a legend. So in recognition of its status I’ve taken the time to (carefully) stick the included double-sided fold-out map to a nearby wall. I can see it now, silently shaming me into action. Every location marked on it somewhere I’ve never been—not yet, anyway. I’ve got the matching guide book sitting close by and I’m flipping through the manual, because all good old RPGs start in the manual (and I’m terrified of the whole “playing Final Fantasy wrong” thing). Next I have to pick my heroes. Obviously I only get four character slots, and there are six classes to choose from. I know that after all these years the game is pretty much “solved”, and everyone except me has an opinion on what’s best and what’s not and what’s weird and what makes for a fun challenging run. Everyone. Except. Me. It’s fine, I can do this. I do this all the time in all sorts of RPGs. White Mage has got to be there, because that’s “my” class. There’s no way I’m leaving Thief behind, because sneaking around (or at least pretending to) is alway a lot of fun, and RPG-thieves tend to be fast critical hit dispensing machines. But who else? Warrior and Monk both look like safe, sensible choices… but I don’t want them. I just don’t. And Red Mage has a cool hat. If I’m going to spend hours with this game, I want to see cool hats in my screenshots. So with “cool hat” now being a deciding factor, that means my final Warrior of Light must be a Black Mage, everyone’s favourite pointy chapeau’d spell-flinger. I’m trying to pretend I haven’t noticed that the battle sprites shown in the fuzzy printed photos I’ve just been perusing are literal icons now, not just good examples of classic pixel art but the ongoing standard for this style, this series, and these character classes. That’s not _a_ White Mage, it’s _the_ White Mage. The definitive article. I want to shut my eyes and not see the vast importance of this game. To not feel the crushing weight of its history at every turn. It’s just another RPG with shops and airships and tents and all the other things I’m already familiar with, so I should just… You know what? Maybe it’d be easier to not play it at all. I already know what happens—Chaos, crystals, Warriors of Light, and all that. It’s not like I’d miss anything. No, that’s not true. That’s just trivia, and I want memories. Ones of my own, not reheated bullet points I’ve pilfered from the world at large. I don’t just want to be someone who has played Final Fantasy, I want my very own piece of the joy it seems to bring everyone else. I want to enjoy this game. And when I do finally give it permission to be nothing more than a vehicle for good times, it’s wonderful. The game wastes no time with anything, setting me up and then setting me off on a grand adventure that isn’t just mine to solve, but mine to discover too. The way cities are divided on the world map into “town bit” and “castle bit” and I have to walk myself over to the relevant section? Splendid. Left to wander about on my own after being given swift access to a cool boat? Sumptuous. Seeing the elf people have actual pointy ears, and the dwarves possess thick beards? Superb. “Link rests here” carved on a gravestone? Cheeky. I love the neatly divided battle window too, everything packed with character while also sticking within some very obvious limitations. I’m astonished by how expressive my Red Mage looks when they’re hunched over at low health, and can’t help but laugh a little at the way Thief’s legs comically stick up in the air when they’re defeated. Knowing that the real reason a boss or larger monster is kneeling is because it’s the only way to make them fit within a standard enemy-sized square only makes them more impressive, as if they’re physically bound by the space and could break free at any moment. Playing it for myself has broken the spell, and removed the game’s unapproachable mystique. It’s not a legend. It’s not history stored on silicon, something to appreciate from a distance, or something I could play wrong. It’s _Final Fantasy_ , and Final Fantasy’s high status didn’t fall out of the sky, unearned. It’s praised because it’s praiseworthy. It’s stood the test of time because it deserves to. All the things in here that have been reused and reimagined until they’ve become symbols of the genre have been reused and reimagined just because the initial concepts are simply that strong. I saw all those wonders and imagined the game was a monster because of them, something intimidating, aloof, and too powerful for me to handle. I was a fool. This game is a treasure, and it is my heroic duty as a Warrior of Light to accept any shining gems I come across, especially when they’re offered as freely as they are here. * * * ### Discover more from Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email. Type your email… Subscribe

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