The Church of Takwanza

So, in my last blog , I did a pretty in-depth review about Final Fantasy 5, which is a game that is very near and dear to my heart. Due to Final Fantasy 5 being my favorite game in the series for sentimental reasons, I decided that I wanted to wrap things up because I personally felt that my last blog post was rather biased, and I felt the need to look at the game more objectively.  Firstly, what I was trying to get across was that Final Fantasy 5 is sort of like the weird child in the family in the sense that Final Fantasy 5 is really different from the rest of the games in the series, not just because of the story, but also because of the game play. I also wanted to note that Final Fantasy 5's story was definitely one of the weaker ones in the series because of how cliche one could say it is, but I thought that even though it was cliche, it was well put together because of the lack of plot holes in the story. Secondly, even though the job class system was really nice, there w...

If I were to pick my favorite game out of the Final Fantasy series thus far, it would have to be Final Fantasy 5. Final Fantasy 5 is a vastly underrated game, and it isn't really the game's fault. The reason why people overlook the game is because it was released between Final Fantasy 4 and Final Fantasy 6, and those two games are considered to be two of the best games in the whole series. However, the reason why Final Fantasy 5 really sticks out to me was because of the comical tone throughout the entire story, the amazing class based system, and finally the memorable characters. When I was younger I used to watch a lot of Let's Plays on YouTube, because I liked watching people play games that I knew I wasn't going to be able to beat. The first game that I ever watched and fell in love with was HCBailly's Final Fantasy 5 Let's Play . After watching the first few episodes, I instantly got hooked to the story of the game, and I watched the whole Let's Pla...

In most of my blogs that talk about RPG's, I talk about how a game needs really strong characters to help carry the player through the story. Strong characters can help a game's story because strong characters can help out the game through some its weaker story elements. However what makes a character a strong one, and what makes a character a weaker one? Well, instead of describing what makes a character strong v.s. what makes a character weak, I decided that I would talk about a character that I believe to be a prime example of a strong character, Golbez from Final Fantasy 4. However, I am warning you that if you plan on playing Final Fantasy 4 in the near future, or you do not want any spoilers regarding the game, I suggest that you stop reading now. Golbez's in-game boss sprite Now, when I think of Golbez I think of one of the best Villains ever created in an RPG game still to this day. Throughout the game, he is always one step ahead of the main party, and he is ...

Final Fantasy 3 was an interesting game if you ask me. It was interesting because the game that we got in america that was titled "Final Fantasy 3" was actually Final Fantasy 6, and in my opinion, the games are not even comparable. It was also the first game in the series that introduced the "improved" job class system that would be an integral part of every other Final Fantasy game to come, and it would also be the first game in the series to attempt a more compelling story even though it was fairly weak. Even though I don't think that the game's story really holds up today, I think that this game really helped shape the Final Fantasy series into what it is today, so let's take a look at Final Fantasy 3. Final Fantasy 3 mixed a lot of the gameplay elements from the first two games, and also adds some new stuff. First of all, they kept the turn based battle system from the first two games which was a good thing, but then they also decided to update the...

Most people remember seeing The Lion King by Disney as a little kid, and I will say, it was one of my favorite movies as a kid and it still holds up till this day. We all remember the feels that overcame us when Mufasa was killed by Scar and when Simba avenged his father's death. When I was a kid, I never really thought about the story of the Lion King too much, and I haven't thought about it a lot until recently. After thinking about the movie more, and taking some history classes, I started seeing the Lion King in a whole new way. Was Mufasa really the good guy? Was Scar really the bad guy? I won't know for sure, but I think that the story draws some parallels to some events in history. After thinking about how the Lion King drew parallels to some events in history, the conclusion I came up with was that Mufasa only catered to the interests of the elite (Lions, Monkeys, Birds, etc.), which is why the common people (the Hyenas) sided with Scar to overthrow Mufasa. Scar n...

The last time I did one of these blogs, I did a review on Final Fantasy 1, and what I thought it brought to the JRPG genre. This time I will be taking a look at Final Fantasy 2, and when I say Final Fantasy 2, I mean the one that was released in Japan, not the one that was released in North America which was actually Final Fantasy 4 (I'll get to that one eventually). So please enjoy my take on Final Fantasy 2. During the past couple of months, I have been playing Final Fantasy 2 non-stop. The game was a lot more fun than I thought initially going into the game because of all of the negative things I had heard about the game. However, even though I had fun with the game, I had a hard time with the battle system that they decided to implement in this installment, and I also did not really like the characters too much. Even though I didn't really like the characters and battle mechanics too much, the part that really carried the game for me was the story, even though it is cons...

Final Fantasy 13. The game that is considered to be one of the weakest Final Fantasy games ever created in the history of the franchise. The original Final Fantasy 13 wasn't even that bad to be honest, but things turned south once they decided to milk the story for everything it was worth by giving it not ONE, but TWO sequels. Yes, TWO sequels. Now I know what some of you are thinking, "Final Fantasy 13-2 and Lightning Returns were great games." First of all, those of you who think that FF13 was one of the strongest games in the franchise need to leave, now, and never come back...ever. Secondly, the sales speak for themselves people. *First of all, I just want to get this off of my chest. I hate the Final Fantasy 13 trilogy, and when I say I hate it, I mean I really HATE it. To be more clear, I think that Final Fantasy 13 is a fine game, I would even say that it isn't as bad as people say it is. When I say I hate the trilogy, I am mostly talking about the 2nd and 3r...

In my previous blog, I talked about how the Final Fantasy series took a wrong turn starting from Final Fantasy 10 when plot and setting got put onto the back burner, and that Square Enix needs to fix these problems if they want to make another great games like Final Fantasy 6 and 7. However this blog is about taking a look at the game and seeing how good it would be from the information that we have, so without further ado, let's begin. So, from what we know we know that the main character of the game is Noctis. Noctis is the prince, and heir to the throne of Lucis, one of the 4 major nations in the game. Each nation holds onto 1 of the 4 crystals to keep the peace and keep each nation on equal grounding. This time of peace is shattered though because the nation of Niflheim wages wars on the other nations in hopes of taking their crystals. Noctis and friends now have to stop Niflheim from taking the crystals, and also restore peace to the world. Now I know what you are saying, cl...

For many Final Fantasy fans like myself, Final Fantasy 15 seems like a ray of sunshine on a stormy day that will bring the Final Fantasy franchise to its former glory. The hope for us fans is that the game will be able to bring Final Fantasy back to mainstream gaming industry like it used to be years ago. A lot of hype about the game has been generated due to how good the game looks, but one question still remains. Can Final Fantasy 15 deliver? Well let's take a look at the Final Fantasy franchise history, and see where things went wrong. In my opinion things started to get rough for the Final Fantasy series around Final Fantasy 10. Even though Final Fantasy 10 is admittedly an extremely good game, the story was not as strong as the previous games. To make things brief, Final Fantasy 10 is basically about a summoner and her guardians on a quest to defeat Sin, a giant monster who comes back after every time you kill him. The baseline for the story seems okay at first, but the exec...

The league of legends world championship has always been a time where emotions are high and crazy things happen. Some of the best plays in League of Legends history have been made here, and also Cinderella stories have happened like when TPA won the season 2 world championship. However, today one of the largest upsets in league of legends history happened when Brazil's Kabum E-Sports beat EU LCS champs, Alliance. The dream for Kabum started when the won the international wildcard tournament, making it into the World Championship by taking down Pineapple Express 3 to 0 in a best of 5 series. The league of legends world championship is structured in a way that 2 teams in the championship are wildcard teams. These teams generally tend to do very poorly, and usually end up losing all of their games. Even though Kabum failed to make it out of group stages this year, their win against Alliance is very important to for them.  Recently, people on social media, especially Reddit, hav...

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was a game released for the SNES on October 5th, 1992 in North America. The Final Fantasy series is characterized by an easy to use but hard to master kind of game play in each of the main series titles. However, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was different from the rest of the games in the bunch. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was originally released in North America first because the Japanese producer, SquareSoft, worried that their games were too hard for the North American audience, so they made Mystic Quest as an easy to play game. Mystic Quest was intended to be an easy game for people to play, but due to its lack in difficulty, it has amassed a bad reputation over the years. Even though most reviews of the game are generally averse, I personally really like the game. It might be my nostalgia talking, but I found the game sort of relaxing after playing some of the harder games in the Final Fantasy series, (I'm looking at you Final Fantasy 2). Fina...

When I think of Squaresoft, the first game that comes to mind for me is Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is one of the most iconic Role-Playing Games, RPG's for short, in the gaming industry. A game that was originally created to be the final game of a failing company (hence the name final fantasy), ended up becoming more than just a fantasy for the creators of this game. Now what made such a simple game so successful that it ended up bringing a company out of bankruptcy, and made them one of the top dogs of the industry? Luckily, modern technology has allowed for me to get my hands on the game, so I was able to take a look into the game that would end up becoming part of a franchise of over 20 titles. The player controls the 4 characters in a boss fight against Lich, the Earth Fiend in the iOS port of Final Fantasy 1 I was a little skeptical when I was about to play Final Fantasy 1 for the first time. I thought that the game feel outdated due to how old the game was, but t...

During the last couple of months, a new terrorist group has arisen in the middle east. The group of Islamic radical militants, known as ISIS, has gained plenty of notoriety on the news recently, and for all the reasons that you would expect. The most recent thing that ISIS has done to get their face on the news was the killing of U.S. Journalist, Steven Sotloff. Mr. Sotloff was abducted and taken hostage by ISIS in Syria in 2013. About a month ago, Mr. Sotloff was seen on video, with a militant claiming that Mr. Sotloff would be killed if the U.S. did not comply with their demands. After not complying with their demands, Mr. Sotloff was killed, and ISIS claimed that they would kill another one of their captives. Now, first of all I can see how the death of Mr. Sotloff would deeply disturb some people. The guttural reaction that most people would have is that we need to go into Syria, and take the group out, or that this is all the Obama administrations fault. Now, I am not saying t...