Final Fantasy Anthology (PlayStation, 1999)

Final Fantasy Anthology has 2 games in one, FF5 and FF6. They are both about a 4.3 out of 5 rating as each has their own unique pros and cons.

I first saw FF6 11 years ago at a friend's house and I since wanted to play it. I got Final Fantasy Anthology since it had FF6 and the first thing I noticed was a sudden loss in the frame rate, especially during battles (usually dropping to 30 fps, even 20 under rare conditions). It happens when scrolling through lists, while effects occur (such as from casting a spell or numbers popping out of things) and it makes things a bit difficult. Fortunately the battles were easy enough that this isn't much of a problem. The lag also occurs in towns where there are many objects visible, but rarely. Although the game was originally for the SNES, I was surprised that the faster PS1 couldn't even keep up with it.

Outside the lag, there are some other downsides. The most annoying is the fact you can't do more than 9999 damage. I could very well be doing beyond even 80,000 damage at the best possible. The battles are also unchallenging, even bosses, as I'm able to go through caves and things without having to restore anyone's HP. The sound effects are quite limited in variety and Kefka's laugh sounds very distorted. Lastly, figuring out what you're supposed to do next in order to proceed further was the most challenging part. The case where Locke escapes from a town surrounded by soldiers was the worst, taking me 6 hours to figure it out. It was much easier for me to defeat all the soldiers without curing Locke than it was to figure this out. During the second half of the story, it's even more difficult since you have almost no hints on what to do next, especially where to go next.

FF6 does have some strong upsides as well. The music is the obvious strong point in the audio (especially the world map music early in the game and the battle music). Some of the looks on the characters are also quite funny and like in one of the early boss battles, some of the comments made are humorous. The story is about a 4.1 out of 5 rating.

FF5, however, is a lot different. It's music isn't as well-liked music, but the battle music doesn't even sound like there was a battle (as FF6 does very well with). The design is a bit awkward, but it's the fact you can only equip one single ability and cannot use spells on multiple targets is the game's major downside. The biggest annoyance (flaw?) is the fact that it takes so long to level up (50+ battles) and without doing all that, bosses are very difficult to defeat (and with the case of not being able to use spells on multiple targets, made even worse). On top of that, even when it does take 50+ battles to level up, regular enemies can take as much as 15% of your character's HP in a regular hit (30% if critical), bosses doing 50% more. At first, this isn't a problem, but by the time you get out of the central area that you start in, it gets really bad. Even though it was taking 40 battles just to level up, I could barely manage to defeat a fire-based boss enemy. By 12 hours' play time, I lost interest in the game. Even though battles are my top favorite thing, and that the series lacks difficulty with battles, this is rather ridiculous. The story, from what I've seen, is only about a 2.8 out of 5 rating, but without playing through the full game, it's hard to give an accurate rating.