7. Final Fantasy VI
      I’m going at this one a bit differently then the others. The big one is, who here hasn’t heard everything absolutely wonderful about this game? No, what I’m going to do is firstly say regardless of that, if I were to take off the Nostalgia and memories this game isn’t as high quality as some make it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, this is genuinely an amazing game. But what I am going to do is go into what doesn’t work with the game, and then say why it is I still rank it so high. (It would still probably be on the lower end of 20 regardless. )

      Most issues with this game come in after Kefka smurfs with the three statues. It’s around this point where character selection starts becoming useless. Abilities and inherent stats begin fading next to the superiority of magic and per-level esper bonus’s. While it takes a bit for it to happen, it is most certainly unfortunate it does.

      The other one is there isn’t as much a sense of unity amongst your group. When collecting people past Setzer, there really isn’t any dialogue between the recruited and recruiters, most of the time there isn’t even any. The stories can be good, but then they just kind of end and the come back to fight Kefka.

      There is a problem earlier in game as well, which is some odd balance issues. For the first couple hours having them, Sabin and Edward’s damage output is insane, and lacking in any way to limit that output. Gau, with the right couple rages, can either physically out damage anyone else, or Magically out damage anyone else.

      That pretty much ends the games main flaws, though even with those it’s still rightfully an amazing game. Though now I’ll get into just why this game is so amazing for me.

      You had Super Mario World, the game that introduced me to gaming. Then there was Final Fantasy IV, the game that introduced me to RPG’s in general. It wasn’t long after that I had picked up VI. This was the game that, in a sense, opened up my eyes. While I enjoyed games prior, this was the game that showed me just what a game was capable of.

      You could get a massive world to explore and detail in ways a movie never could. It lacks any kind of time constraint. At the same time, you can tell one epic story without having to worry about episodic breaks and arcs as one would have to do with a TV series. Best yet you could also get some great music and visuals that books could not offer.

      What else makes this so great us that this could all be done without having to sacrifice narrative quality. It was this game that allowed me to appreciate the gaming medium, and even games I’d played prior I was able to look at in an all new light. When I actually dived into FF VI, I ‘got it’ in a sense.

      So I feel I owe more to Final Fantasy VI then any other game out there, and I don’t think there is a way to deny this game had a massive role in shaping who I ended up becoming today. Whether or not that is a good thing, whose to say. ;P