By its own merits, FFVI gets this game to a 9.9. Deduct roughly one point for V, and 0.4 for the obnoxious load times.

User Rating: 8.5 | Final Fantasy Anthology PS
By Irvine78 | Review Date:
Squaresoft, by far the most renown maker of RPG's in the world, made a killing during the PlayStation era. Final Fantasy VII is regarded by (too) many as the single greatest thing to happen to anything in the history of mankind, and broke the role-playing genre to the major United States. Tactics weaved an incredibly complex storyline with a depth of gameplay that, while daunting, made the game ridiculously addicting. FFVIII, as the GameSpot review said, is a bit like watching the greatest silent film ever made. And Final Fantasy IX fell just inches short on unmidigated disaster. But Square also realized that it had a back catalogue, and after the success of VII executives realized that maybe these silly Westerners would like to see the development of the Final Fantasy series before the perplexing Cloud Strife, the introverted Squall Lionheart, or the emo-child Vivi broke into the US market. So, in August of 1999, Final Fantasy Anthology took its first steps into the world. The game is actually two games; emulated versions of Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI (Released in America as III back in 1994). Both were released for the Super Fanicom/Nintendo. Final Fantasy VI is a masterpiece. It would still warrant hunting down a Super Nintendo, paying $60+ on eBay and playing as it was originally intended to be played. It follows Terra Bradford, a girl with unusual abilities, and her struggles. Along the way she will encounter Moogles, a ninja, a stiff old man with worthless special powers, and a madman hellbent on controlling the world (Where would RPGs be without this bit?) along with countless other cameos from characters that will still linger in your head. Final Fantasy V looks like your standard RPG flair, but hidden beneath it is an interface not that unlike Final Fantasy Tactics. So a game that feels like it should take you 30 hours to complete could be stretched to nearly 100 hours. Coupled with weak plot, this makes the game little more than a bonus for buying VI, and a poor one at that. So we have the masterpiece VI, which I have scored as a 9.9 on its own merit. Taking into consideration the game was made in 1994, the visuals and music of the game were unrivaled on the SNES until the release of Chrono Trigger in 1995. The boss battles are memorable, and random battles are not as frequent (AKA annoying) as in some other such games. V docks an entire point. Had this game been packaged with Chrono Trigger, this set would have been near perfect. Near. Near, not because of the games themselves, but because of the translation the games had to go through to wind up on disc format. The cartridge versions were loadless wonders, but playing through FFVI will envoke many a dirty word as you are forced to sit through a load before and after each "random battle" (Originally these were sorta startling as they appearent instantaneously, but a slow wipe and a blank screen make it seem as if these games were developed for slower people..."Oh look, some Dark Leafs. It's time to fight. Get ready... ... ... go!"). You will also face a load before and after you get to your menus for arranging inventory, assigning magicite, and changing configurations. Load, load, load. Had these loads (And a few minor emulation querks) been ironed out, and if Squaresoft had chosen to package FFVI with the clearly superior Chrono Trigger, this game would be worth the exorbitant prices requested for their original carts on eBay. As it stands, I bought this game new for $25 and felt like I had spent the money alright. As I've said, VI alone fetches about what it was originally worth. I look forward to seeing these games re-released in the future, perhaps together with the rest of the series on one of the massive Blu-Ray discs being developed for the PS3. But for now, we can either pirate them online, hunt them down on eBay, or dig in bargain bins and vintage game stores for this flawed yet worthwile compilation.

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