Thoughts on Final Fantasy

 I've really been wanting to get back into the Final Fantasy series for a long time now. I claimed it as my favorite game series growing up, and still think of it as one of my three favorite. But I don't have a lot to add to conversations about the modern series, and I'm not sure I really stack up well as a true Final Fantasy fan. I realized recently that I've only played 4 of the 15 mainline games more than once (the ones that existed when I was growing up). And I haven't played hardly any of the spinoffs or side games that have come out in the last decade and a half. Even though I got a copy of Final Fantasy XV many months ago, I've yet to play it past the tutorial.

Five years ago, I made a five-year goal for myself to catch myself up on my three favorite game series: The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy (in no particular order). I wanted to not only have played the main games, but to have really fleshed out my game files and make sure I'd done the bulk of what each game had to offer.

I had started with the Zelda series, knowing they were less time intensive and I could get through it better. I finished my goal more or less with that one. (I still have a lot unfinished on Breath of the Wild, but that's fine with me since the game is still a current generation game and I have plenty of time to revisit it before whatever next Zelda game comes out.)

The Dragon Quest series is still in progress. It's taken my longer than I thought because I got sidetracked some with doing a variety of challenge quests on the early games that weren't part of my original goal; some of which were fairly time-intensive. I've had a few burnout periods, too, where I had to take a break from large scale RPGs.

Since I was doing Dragon Quest before Final Fantasy, this means I've left my Final Fantasy goal largely unaddressed. But every few months I go through a stronger desire to come revisit it.

I booted up my NES game file, which is about 19 years old now. I want to replay the original, but I don't want to erase my current game file yet. I've decided to bring my characters up to max level on that file before restarting it, to give me stronger closure on my old file. I've gone from about level 39 to level 43 after a few nights at it this week.

I don't think I'm going to go strictly sequentially on this series, as it will take far to long to get to newer entries I still want to try. But I haven't decided just how I'll go about it. It's hard to think about starting a big name RPG I haven't played until I finish my Dragon Quest V playthrough, but I can redo some of the earlier games I've played during that time.

I'm also wanting to reboot my Theatrythym and try to ace the last handful of songs and series that I don't have SSS rank on. I think its just about half a dozen battle scores and their respective series modes I need to finish off.