Nearly done! Today (and, spoiler, tomorrow) we talk about games that are the tip-top of the gaming mountain. The games that get played multiple times. The games that, no matter what, are always enjoyable.
Mine are no surprise if you've been keeping up with this month. First off is Final Fantasy: Tactics. I love this game! Every time I play, I push myself to endgame content and then fiddle around. I have spent countless hours in Midlight's Deep (the optional dungeon at the end). I push my team to do everything possible, and then I start to max out my primary team. I haven't really done the tweaking of stats like Faith or Brave to make characters that are already overpowered into gods. I never felt the need. Most of my endgame team is so overpowered that they simply steamroll over most opponents. Despite all this, I've only finished the game once.
That sounds strange, but really, the journey is more fun than the destination. By the time I have access to the end dungeon and Midlight's Deep, I have all the story sorted out. You know who you need to kill with extreme prejudice and you know how it all ends. There really are no last second twists by the time you invade the last stronghold.
But getting there is so much fun! I love messing about and power-leveling my team. I love working to master classes like Black Mage and Summoner. They may not be useful on their own, but combined with other classes makes them super fun. My last run saw me master all the mage classes with one character. By the end, she was a summoner with Arithmatics as her secondary skill. So, she had access to (nearly) all spells in the game, and could cast all but the summons for free. Needless to say, she was a beast that wiped the battlefield clean before the enemies could do much. Having a (new to the PSP) Dark Knight helped, too.
It was so much fun (as it always is) to create a team that employed new classes. I'd never experimented before my last two plays. Before it was always the same: work up to get ninjas and the equip two weapons skill, use that with standard class to bring death to all. While this was fun, I never really branched out and tried new things. Now that I have, I love having mages with access to all spells. I also really enjoyed some of the sillier classes like Dancer/Bard. It was just silly to have one character dancing and the entire enemy force was crippled with status effects. Truly, I love how deep this game is and that each time I play, I find something new to enjoy.
The other game that gets a yearly playthrough is Final Fantasy X. I look at this as I would a favorite book. Every year I pick it up and play partly or mostly through it because I love it so much. I usually finish it because the ending is so very, very good. But if I don't, I still enjoy the time I spend with it.
I'm not sure why I can keep coming back to it when I know all that's coming. It's not like FF:T where I can employ new strategies or new classes. Instead, I think I enjoy the gameplay and the polished design that FFX offers. The hours I wile away playing it don't feel wasted to me because I get to relive a bit of my teen years. The happy nights spent now remind me of all-nighters with friends playing, laughing and eating crackers and Cheez-wiz. I suppose where FF:T is fresh each time, FFX is comfortingly familiar. It is my comfort game that I know I can pick up at any time, enjoy what I play, and walk away feeling satisfied. And there can be no higher compliment than that.
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