Jonathan Hubbard

I want to preface this by saying that if by chance anyone reading this has the rights to this game - or knows who does - please, by all that is good and just in this world, tell me so that I can beg and plead with them to do an HD remake. God, if ever there was a chance for you to make me rethink my atheist ways, this is your moment. -- One of the best RPGs I've ever played - the combat is turn-based but with a challenging twist that makes even the random trash monsters fun to fight. To successfully continue your regular attack combos (called Additions), you need to make a timed button press which sounds lame but is varied, challenging and rewarding to master. On the flip side, the Additions are OP which diminishes the Dragoon aspect of the combat - it's pretty weird to think I prefer slapping enemies with a weapon rather than transforming into a magically powered dragon knight that can launch fireballs but there you go. That said, both aspects let you scratch a different itch so I still find myself using both throughout the game. I'll admit hands down that I view this game through a haze of nostalgia a mile thick but, despite that, I genuinely think this has one of the best stories of any game I've ever played. I've been looking for something that comes close for almost 20 years and, while there have been some notable ones (Lost Odyssey springs to mind), nothing has topped it. Nothing. Period. I'm going to steer away from spoilers because you have to experience it all for yourself but I'd say it edges FF7 out by a small margin, it's really that good. The stakes are escalated in a series of events that naturally follow on from each other, ballooning from fairly a fairly localised problem (hero's childhood friend is kidnapped - hero goes on the rescue) through a divided nations civil war and on to a crescendo of crazed gods, ancient monsters and wars with a 10,000 year legacy of plot. The world-spanning events are driven by a group of characters with a rich collection of backstories, personalities and motivations. Your party all have stakes in the plot and their involvement directly drives the events going on around you, so as you go through the game and learn to love them, you feel a sense of emotional investment that makes what could be uncharitably called standard plot beats hit hard. Minor spoiler in principle coming here but for real, this game has the most emotionally blindsiding character death I've ever known. (There's that mile-thick nostalgia showing through). I will admit that it does lose its way a little around the disc 3 stage but it gets back on track eventually. Relatively speaking, even the "bad" bits are still leaps and bounds ahead of most other games. The graphics have aged like milk under a desert sun but it's a pre-2000 PS1 game, cut it some slack (or give it the HD remake it deserves). That said, the FMVs still look pretty good today which should tell you how mind-blowing they were at the time to the point where you'd be forgiven for thinking they're from a late PS2 game. The pre-rendered backgrounds in most of the environments are pretty easy on the eyes as well though. So, in summary, worth your time for the story alone but earns your investment anyway with engaging gameplay and an interesting world. If you can pick this up 21 years after its release and enjoy it anywhere near how I do then imagine how great an HD remake would be. Think of the extra worldbuilding they could do with the processing power of a modern PC! 5 stars, would play again (... and again, and again, and...)