Recently I have been on journey. A journey of replaying old JRPGs and beating them to completion. You see, when I was a young boy, I used to play JRPGs for weeks on end without any stopping and loved them to death, but I was harboring a dark secret. I never actually beat a single game that I played. I owned a Gameshark and at the first sign of a struggle I would plug it in and turn on every cheat available to wipe through monsters with ease. Yes, I finished the games, but I did not beat them. Now that I am older (27) I have decided to replay these games without cheats so I can finally say that I beat them. Legend of Dragoon, Legend of Legaia, Final Fantasy VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2 are all on my list and LoD, LoL, FFIX, and FFVII are the ones I have completed so far. Let me tell you, kiddies, Final Fantasy games are terrible.



Final Fantasy IX was the most annoying and unfair game I have played so far. After disc 2 every enemy will hit you with status effects over and over again that last after battle and stop you from getting XP and AP. On top of that, there are almost 14 different ways to inflict instant death on your team and, especially near the end, it is the only thing that enemies will cast on you. The final boss will hit you with every single status ailment in the game, over and over and over again. Even with magic absorbing armors and all status ailment defenses equipped as my abilities on every character, I still only won after 25 attempts with two characters dead and one confused. I did not enjoy how unfair and unfun this game was. The storyline might have saved it, but it’s not as cool as you remember. Zidane takes a verry jarring turn in character when the plot needs an epic twist and it ruins everything. I found myself lost without direction numerous times, which may have been fun when I was younger but I have a full-time job and workouts and projects and you know...a life now. I walked away from the ending of this game fully understanding just how terrible it was. Who cares, though, right? It wasn’t my favorite in the series as a kid, FFVIII was! I haven’t made it through the first disc of FFVIII yet because it turns out, you have to grind for 8 hours right in the beginning and then just sit back and watch the cutscenes unfold without random battles and with easy boss battles. Why the heck did I ever think Final Fantasy games were so great?

