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ASPECTS OF FINAL FANTASY GAMES Chocobos The six-foot bird-steeds known as chocobos are a nice addition to the cuter incarnations of Final Fantasy. However, tradition demands that they be included in every installment, even the angst-suffused grimfests. So you get characters saying things like "Who are all of us really? Can you ever know your own soul?" and in the background someone's riding a giant chicken. Plus, chocobos are always involved in the longest, most tedious minigames, so seeing one in the game is like spotting your great aunt pulling out the pinochle board. C+ Moogles You feel like a real jerk saying anything negative about teddy bears with wings and antennas. You also feel like a real tool saying anything positive about them. Luckily, they're pretty bland, so you can get away with a resounding "eh." The thing is, there isn't really a defining quality to moogles. They're shy and reclusive, unless they're productive members of society. They're friendly and helpful, unless they're jerks. But they're always teddy bears with wings and antennas, and they always say "kupo" a lot, which is less annoying than you'd think. C Cid Cid is my favorite recurring theme in the series, for two reasons. First, he almost always has a personality, which is usually more than you can say about the lead character. Second, he generally builds airships, so he's the first sign that you'll get to stop swearing every time you run into a mountain range. A Summoning The tradition here is that you can call on a sampler pack of mythological beings, who deliver the most devastating attacks in the game. These attacks generally involve your opponents standing there while some moldy god makes a Vegas entrance, poses for a while, then eventually causes a gate to open up to Hell or the moon to fall from the sky or the sea to wash over the bad guys in a massive deluge. This usually reduces their hit points by 50% or so, as a good moon-plummeting should. It also takes approximately a half-hour to finish, so in the installments where you can't skip it, the best strategy is to avoid using your summons if you possibly can. This explains why in Japanese cartoons the good guys always avoid using their ultimate attack until they're almost defeated. They're thinking "Christ, I was hoping that just this once I wouldn't have to go through the whole boring Lion-Phoenix-Titan-Zero transformation sequence. I got places to be!" C- Fire/Thunder/Blizzard You see, you start out with Blizzard spell. Then eventually you get Blizzara, which sounds like a second-rate roller coaster. Then you eventually upgrade to Blizzaga, which sounds like the noise you make if you sneeze and throw up at the same time. Uncannily so. Same deal with Fire/Fira/Firaga ("Test drive the new Ford Firaga!") andThunder/Thundara/Thundaga ("Run! Thundaga the Conqueror approaches!"). The spells are almost always functionally equivalent, it's just that you shouldn't use Firaga against fire creatures, you shouldn't use Blizzara against ice creatures, and so forth. When you get down to it, it's pretty boring/boringara/boringaga. D+ The Ultimate Attack Final Fantasy games give you a choice: you can either spend forty hours playing underwater foosball or watching chocobos screw or whatnot, which eventually gives you your ultimate weapon so that you can defeat the final boss pretty handily. Or, you can spend those forty hours actually fighting the final boss. It's up to you. You want a quick game, go play pinball. C
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