Retro Reviews from Memory
Welcome to a new segment where I review my favorite childhood games from memory, go back and play the game. Then revise my opinion because, let’s face it, some of those games from the 80’s and 90’s just don’t hold up. The Score above is provisional. I’ll be back (probably, maybe, like… solid 25% chance)* after I play the game again and write a new review and link it to this post.
Enough of the preamble… on with the review!
Ok so I actually am mostly drawing a blank on this one. I remember playing the inaccurately numbered snes version and there being a bard who hides all the time. Was this the one with the wizard who couldn’t remember the meteor spell or was that 3?
Oh wait! I think this was the one with the dark knight, Cecil who had that insane jump ability. I didn’t love this game as much as the first FF on the NES. I imagine it was a logical succession to the versions released in japan since they had like… i dunno, 3 or 4 games on the NES that we didn’t get. Overall I immediately missed the feeling of making up the stories for the characters on screen with my friends. Instead of filling the gaps with our own nonsense, we were playing a story based on someone else’s nonsense. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, playing a story allowed for greater depth of locations to visit and world lore to engage with. It also made exploration more interesting because the characters had very unique abilities that could change how you approached a given area. Truth be told, I had an A team and that was about it. While I could have spent a lot more time playing around with the magic system, team builds, etc. I never really felt compelled to. Maybe I’ll try playing with a “B team” on my next playthrough.
Disclaimer(s)
*We should probably keep in mind that, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for games. Where others may have experienced the “rent before you buy” phenomena… that wasn’t really a thing in our house. I saved up babysitting money for an entire summer to buy the SNES. If we were doing well, I might get a single game for Christmas or my birthday, but they were almost always used from the swap meet or new from the discount bin. We didn’t have gamestop or many used game store options at the time. In any case, a LOT of my historical game memories are based on a rental window period that had to align with money, time (I had school, sports, occasionally a girlfriend, and a few part time jobs to juggle with my gaming habit), and whether my save file still existed when i rented the game a second time (assuming it was even available). Some games I didn’t play in their entirety until I got to college and had a tiny bit more money and a teensy bit fewer obligations. Which is to say, these reviews are patchwork at best. But let me know in the comments if you want me to replay any of these games and do a revised opinion review!
