Since 1987, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy series has now reached its 16th game in the franchise. For the past four decades the franchise has continuously expanded with new and exciting innovations to the game play and story over the years and now with the newest installment being Final Fantasy Seven Rebirth; fans are more excited than ever to come back to this amazing franchise.
Lucy Forbes is a teacher at Farrington High School as well as the Advisor for Farrington High School’s Anime Club, Forbes is a massive Final Fantasy fan and has been playing the game since elementary school. “My uncles used to play the original Final Fantasy Seven and I would sit there and watch them, as I got older; I would play all of them up until Final Fantasy Eleven.” Quoted Forbes. She would go on to talk about her favorite moments. “I’m a stereotypical girl so I really enjoyed the love story between Cloud and Aerith in the original series.”
Besides Final Fantasy, when it came to any other games under Square Enix; Forbes would mention the hit game Kingdom Hearts. At this point in time, Forbes is currently playing through Final Fantasy Remake, when asked about her favorite moment in Remake, Forbes stated, “My favorite part would be the game play, seeing the graphics look so much better than the original and the evolution from a little block that you follow around to a full fledged character is just so amazing. Along with the crisper cutscenes, I’m just so happy that they went back and I hope they remaster the other games too.” Forbes’s favorite game in the franchise was originally Final Fantasy Eight because she connected a lot better with the main character in that game since Squall Leonhart was much more down to earth and less broody than cloud, but her favorites at the moment would be Final Fantasy Ten and the spinoff being X-2.
Interesting fact, Forbes’s husband says that his favorite game in the franchise is Final Fantasy Nine and according to Forbes states, “He’s the only person that I know who says they like Nine.” And a question that will either unite or divide fans, “who is best girl” (spoilers ahead) and in Forbes case, “Before I was a die hard Aerith fan, she dies and I was so heart broken, but in the new one; I feel like they went back and redid the story so it makes you lean more heavily on Tifa’s team than Aerith because in the original, they didn’t really expand on Tifa’s character and we didn’t really get cutscenes of them as kids but as the games went on; Tifa’s character was further deepen.” she would continue with, “so if we’re talking remake, I’m leaning towards Tifa (Editor's note: This statement was hard for her to say since she even states that she's an extremely die-hard Aerith fan.”) Forbes would also bring up an interestingdetail about how desaturated the orginal games color pallet was, (mainly talking about why Tifa didn’t stand out back then) Forbes would state that since Aerith's sprite was much more colorful and bright compared to the rest of the art design, it made the player gravitate towards her character naturally and as the games went on, the colors began to start blending in and now Aerith wasn’t the only one standing out. Forbes was asked about her favorite character in the series and she replied with, “Yuffie from Final Fantasy X2, I loved her character and spunk as well as game play as well as any characters that repeat through the series like Sid.” Forbes does plan on playing Rebirth but has not gotten to it yet since she’s still going through Remak; she also expressed her thoughts about how dividing the games and splitting them up wasn’t the best decision on Square Enix’s part “I feel like they did that to siphon money.” All in all, Forbes would rate the entire franchise a 10/10, “It’s my most favorite game that I’ve ever played, Nine was a bit forgettable to me. I prefer the newer gameplay compared to the RPG elements of the old games (Role player games typically use a turn base system, where you attack with a member in your party and wait for the enemy to attack before you can make another move.) I liked that they adapted the Kingdom Hearts game play into the newer Final Fantasy games.”
Her closing thoughts on the topic would be that she is extremely happy that people are playing these games, especially kids from a newer generation as she describes it, “I feel like it’s a very millennial type of game so I’m happy that the remakes are bringing in new fans and I hope that you can get all your friends to play it, please keep these games alive.”