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Capsule Review - Final Fantasy Anthology

Title Final Fantasy Anthology
Developer Square
Year 1999
Platform PSX
Capsule Rating
 
Capsule Review:

Final Fantasy Anthology is a reissue of two Super Nintendo games, Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VI, for the Playstation. This can be viewed as a move by Square to capitalize on the increased popularity of the Final Fantasy name in the Playstation era, or an attempt to bring two classic RPGs to a new audience that may be unfamiliar with them. I personally am more inclined toward the former view, due to certain circumstances surrounding this release. See, originally, the plan was to release Final Fantasy IV, the first Super Nintendo Final Fantasy game, as part of Final Fantasy Anthology. This would have made perfect sense; after all, the games were all released on one system, and together mark a whole epoch of Square's creativity. But for some reason, Square decided to drop Final Fantasy IV, and later release it together with Chrono Trigger as Final Fantasy Chronicles. As a result, Final Fantasy Anthology became that much less meaningful, because there's really no reason why the fifth and sixth games together comprise an "anthology" of anything, whereas the fourth, fifth and sixth games would be just that.

Still, the reissues are pretty good. Final Fantasy V was never much of a game, but here it's given a new translation, which may be of some interest to gamers. I personally prefer the fan version that has been available for years online, but that's just me. Final Fantasy VI is still an all-time classic, and it only gets better with age, so it's good to see it again. Both games get some extra FMV here and there; it's pretty good, but doesn't really add anything new to either game. Unfortunately, both games also suffer from long load times, which is especially unforgivable in the case of Final Fantasy VI, which is a marvel of pacing and conciseness. There's no reason why they couldn't have done a better job here.

All in all, I'd probably advise you to just play these games on an emulator, like you've probably been doing all along anyway. The reissues do just as much harm as good to them.