The Monkey plays games

So I've been replaying Final Fantasy IX lately. It actually stemmed from me starting to play Final Fantasy VII again, getting bored because I was at a tedious as hell part, and deciding to go play the FF I know like the back of my hand. I thought I had a save about half way through the game, but apparently, I did not. So even though I've played through the beginning about a thousand times, I decided to start up a new game. No matter how many times I sit through the opening FMV, I feel like I'm that little fourteen year old again, excited for a new addition to the game series I was rapidly falling in love with.

Of course I was an idiot who played the games in the wrong order. My first brush with Final Fantasy actually came about because of my older brother. We shared a Playstation between us, and given he had a part time job, he tended to buy most of the games. He picked up Final Fantasy VII second hand one day, and gave it a shot. He died at the first boss because the translation on what to do is pretty messed up (“Attack while the tail's up! It's gonna counter with it's laser!”) Would it have been so hard to and an 'If you' at the front of the sentence?

Either way, neither one of us could figure it out, and he eventually got bored of the game and went back to his others. I'll add here that neither one of us had played a Final Fantasy game, or an RPG before, so we didn't know this was standard fare for some first bosses. But me? I was intrigued. I was slowly getting into anime around that time, and I fell in love with the look of the game. I loved how pretty Cloud was, how dark and cyberpunk Midgar was, I even loved the battle system once I got used to it. I also wasn't used to playing games with such a deep storyline, and I loved it.

So I tried again. And again. And again. I read through the manual back to front. Then I tried again. And then my tiny brain sparked to life and I thought 'hang on, what if I DON'T attack when the tail is up?' and it worked! The countdown to escape freaked me out at the time (I still hated timed parts on games) but I got out in time and YES! I had fallen in love with Final Fantasy. My brother took up the game again once I had figured out the strategy, but he still didn't care for it all that much (he renamed Aeris 'Meowth' and Tifa as 'Teefal', as a fun fact) and so it was all mine. I sucked at it to start with, that's for sure, I didn't really grasp the point of levels, equipment, etc, until further into the game.

Give me a break, I was only twelve. I played the game right up to the Temple of the Ancients, which is when I got stuck. Literally stuck. The graphics are pretty shoddy in parts of the game, and it's hard to tell where you have to go next. Given the area in the temple is coloured all the same shade of yellow, and was full of twisting paths and archways, I still couldn't see where to go. I spent hours trying to run anywhere past this certain part, but I couldn't figure out where to go . I didn't have the internet at the time, so it's not as if I could look it up, and I was just lost as to what to do. My brother even bought me a bootleg strategy guide (I love that guide.. the person who wrote it had such a personality going through the whole book) and I still couldn't figure it out.

Until one day I was just messing around there (incidentally, gaining lots of levels), and hooray! I accidentally stumbled through the arch that didn't look like an arch. I had spent almost months on this one part, it was such an elation to get past it! I carried on playing, right up until the final boss. Now, bear in mind I still didn't really have a grasp on levels, weapons, materia, or anything. How I got this far was nothing short of a miracle, on replaying certain bosses, I have to ask myself just HOW I managed to do it the first time around. I couldn't defeat the final boss. I could stay alive, I could keep hitting him, but I just couldn't kill him. I was there for almost hours, with two of my friends watching, and I still couldn't get anywhere. I gave up eventually, intending to go back and raise my levels.

I never did. Final Fantasy IX came out, and I fell in love with that. It's an easier game because it's explained so much better, the translations weren't such a hack job, and I loved the magic stone system over the materia one. I pretty much completed the game in one run through, I even completed most of the side quests, and I loved it. So you might think after I had owned IX, I would go try VII again? No.. that was when I finally found Final Fantasy VIII, and started playing that instead.

I did go back to complete Final Fantasy VII eventually. I got bored of VIII, and turned to other, non-FF games (heathen!) like Shadow Hearts, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, etc. I had a Playstation 2 now, and so much more was on offer. And with Final Fantasy X on the horizon, I couldn't wait. I even bought Final Fantasy VI just for the FFX demo that came with it. I played that for a bit, then accidentally fucked up my party in an area where you have to choose them (long story short, I hit the wrong button and only ended up with Locke in my party.. yeah) and then I played FFX when it finally came. And poor... poor FFVII, it sat there, gathering dust during all this time.

By then, I had lost my original memory card (I know, I suck), so I started a new game. With the internet on hand to help me, I breezed through the game, with my experience of the other FF's under my belt, I got to the end, and I kicked some arse! And this was supposed to be an entry about me playing FFIX, but it somehow turned into how I finally completed FFVII. Ahh well.. go figure!