| frictionini said: My greatest games were Chrono Trigger, Suikoden series and recently, Persona 3/4 because those games for me are definitely the ones that you can say has some certain aspects that make them "great" from the other RPG's of their time |
The above are all incredibly original games, and near the top of my "greatest games of all time" list. So I salute you there : )
I just want to point out that many people often seem to think of FFVI as an evolution more than a revolution in RPGs in the time it was released. I think this may be because, in retrospect, the graphics aren't so different from FFIV and FFV (the latter no one in the US had played when FFVI came out.)
As an RPG-obsessed eleven year old when the game was released, who waited for it, read about it in game magazines, and played it as soon as it came out, my experience was the complete opposite. Whatever we say about the "greatest RPG of all time," which is something that will always come down to personal preferances, that doesn't change the fact that FFVI felt like a revolution in the context of every game I had played. And still does -- here are some ways it did what no game had done before:
***SPOILERS***
First RPG to have the bad guy win and destroy the world. A lot of games have done this since.
First RPG to take the "you never fight the end boss just once" rule to its furthest extent, which is that the first ending of the game turns out to be only the beginning of another game, after the world is destroyed.
First RPG to have a linear half of the game which feels like a complete RPG, followed by another half of the game which is non-linear, and could pratctically be a separate game, a sequel.
First RPG to have major characters live or die based on the player's decision making.
First RPG to feature RTS-like battles in which you create and use several different parties of characters to engage the enemy and defend objectives. This would get picked up and expanded upon in the Suikoden games.
First (only?) RPG to incorporate fighting game special moves into RPG combat, and to have every character get at least one defining ability while also allowing for complete character customization.
(This one's not a fact, but...) Greatest RPG soundtrack of all time, with close competition from Chrono Trigger!
First RPG to feature the soundtrack self-consciously within the game world, and to have a focus on thematic musical gestures which run throughout the entire score.
First RPG (that I played at the time, anyway -- and I played a lot) to include a lot of high quality hand-drawn backgrounds, which is a technique that would later be expanded upon in games like FFVII, VIII, and IX. This technique is one major reason that RPGs began to get the reputation for having graphics better than most other console-game genres. (Before that they were usually considered worse.)
First Final Fantasy to include moogles (I think? Please don't hurt me, Final Fantasy Gods...)
