FF6 really was a departure from the previous games in a couple important ways:
1. The setting. FF1-5 are fantasy settings with the occasional bit of ancient technology, though FF2 and FF4 did give powerful nations the ability to build airships.
2. The traditional Final Fantasy classes, like knights and white mages, are absent in FF6. In getting rid of those, much of the feel of the series is gone. (Even FF2, despite using a classless system, still had some of that feel; white and black magic are based off different attributes, equipment not meant for mages hurts your spellcasting (though the game *really* should have made that mechanic clear instead of hiding it), and there are even minor NPCs in one town who look like FF1's white and black mages.)

Also, I disagree with your assessment of FF7. I found it to be a massive disappointment after playing earlier games in the series (though FF5, which I fell in love with, I didn't play until later due to lack of a US release at the time). I would actually rate FF7 very poorly, at the low end of what I consider "playable" games. (In other words, it isn't quite kuso-level bad, but it's still not a good game.)

Also, I think FF5 may be more complex than FF6 mechanically. FF5, for example, has different mechanics for different weapon types (daggers pierce evasion, axes have lower accuracy, large damage variation, and pierce defence) that you don't see in FF6 (except for certain unique weapons like the Ultima Weapon). Then there's abilities that are in FF5 that have no counterpart in FF6, like Mix (which I would have rather had instead of the boring Throw ability).

The one thing FF6 has going for it, which is there but less prominent in FF5 and completely absent in FF7, is the open world late game. In FF6, and to a lesser extent FF5, there's a point where the game allows you to go into the final dungeon, but encourages you to go on side quests instead, and even steers you toward doing them before the final dungeon; that's gone in FF7.

There are terms I don't like, and that I avoid using, including the following:
* buff/debuff
* mob (when used to refer to a single common enemy rather than a group of them)
* grind
* nth generation, for any value of n. (There are two issues here; one is that the NES/SMS generation is not descended from the earlier games; notice that none of the major companies of that generation appeared in the previous one; the other is that not all game systems conform to this separation, the Dreamcast being the most obvious counter-example here.)

By the way, I forgot to mention that in MoS, the RPG-style combat is rather underused; there's no boss fights that use that style of combat, and I wish there were some. (The 3 gorgon fight that you usually see right before the final boss is the closest I can think of in that game.)

Personally, I would have rather seen an evolution of FF5 than what the series turned into at that point. Some other SNES games that felt like they had similarly good graphics:
* Secret of Mana (likely its Japan-only (until really recently) sequel as well)
* Dragon Quest 6
* Dragon Quest 3 remake (which they even managed to port to the Game Boy Color)
* Romancing SaGa 3

(By contrast, Dragon Quest 5 and the remake of 1 and 2 do look like they belong on the NES/Famicom, and I actually prefer the GBC soundtrack to 1&2 to the SFC one.)

Haven't played all those SNES RPGs yet but Seiken 3 is a big step forward from Seiken 2/Mana in terms of detail and certain effects - It's on par with CT, Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean I think. SoM still looks great but not one gen ahead and Evermore improved on it to me.

Looks really good, though I prefer the animation and effects of both Tekken 3 and Soul Blade (the latter also had nice backgrounds for the PS1).

Yeah Doom 3 looked awesome for the time. I remember playing it and completing it.

Yeah Dragon Quest 6 could have been on PlayStation because the graphics were that good on the SFC/SNES.

Also Secret of Mana started its life as a game for the CD-ROM addon for the SNES which turned what we know as the PS1 and it had alot of bumps in its development like the CD-ROM addon was never completed and SquareSoft/Square Enix had to cut a lot out from the game which made them none too happy which lead them ditching Nintendo for PlayStation for FFVII and not just sticking to cartridges for the N64 which was indeed a nail in the coffin.
Secret of Mana could have been a PS1 game.

I know how those categories work in the console world (NES and SMS were 8bit, SNES and Genesis were 16bit)... but at some point I got confused what "bitness" is e.g. Amiga 500 considered to be. Its CPU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68000

How about MS-DOS games? Were they considered 16bit games, until DOS extenders?

Well I'm not sure but if you kept reading I compared 80s to 90s DOS games as a rough equivalent since VGA was introduced around 1990 IIRC, and not long after you started seeing some CD-based games as well as sample-based music (besides Roland MT-32 and SC-55).

Edit: Seems A-10 Tank Killer and Budokan were among the first VGA graphics games.

I gotta read up more on Amiga 500 games specifically, but the 68000 CPU was the same as in the Mega Drive I think.

If that's your view of FF7, then I'm pretty sure you never played the game. Or. You played it blindfolded. With fingers in your ears. And toes on the gamepad...I suppose ;)

Yeah, um, not sure what else to say here. Except maybe you're talking about some other game than FF7 when you say no endgame exploration or endgame sidequests...?

Don't get me wrong, FF5 was great and all due to its job system. But it had really poor writing with childish storytelling. And it didn't exactly look great either.

Actually, I did play up to the beginning of the third disk, which I hear has only one dungeon for whatever reason

Edit: Fair disclosure: I did not have a gamepad, so I played it with a keyboard. The version I played had a few issues that made the game even worse, like the game crashing to desktop (in a game that only lets you save in specific spots), and the fact that the default controls require a numeric keypad (which the desktop I was using had, but it meant the game could not be played on laptops that didn't have the numeric keypad). Also, the names given for the controls were somewhat non-obvious, which became an issue whenever the game would give a completely different set of controls for a minigame, often a minigame of the sort that does not belong in an RPG.

Yes, that can be fuzzy here, but at least it's better than numbering the gnereations, which has the issues I've mentioned before (where do you put the Dreamcast?).

When I'm talking about the classic Bard's Tale games, there's a clear destinction graphically between the 8-bit versions (Apple 2, Commodore 64) and the 16-bit versions (IBM PC, Amiga, Apple 2GS). (By the way, there's also some gameplay differences that appear, and I should remind you that Bard's Tale 3's 16-bit versions are garbage because of fun-reducing bugs not present in the 8-bit versions.)

Yes, the PC port was pretty bad. Kudos for a Japanese dev trying to do it back in those days. I got it for my Pentium 120Mhz. It barely worked. It took a couple generations more to play it fluidly, and it still looked bad compared to the PS version due to the 2d backdrops scaling horrendously at higher resolutions. I would only play the STeam version heavily modded (it's pretty glorious these days). Can't wait for the remake to land on PC.

But sorry - if you didn't even play the endgame, how can you say such things about its endgame? I did more sidequests and grinding in FF7 than almost any other until FF12 maybe. You get an airship to explore and roam the world fully - there are ultra bosses etc. Not at all what you're describing. In fact, it's very similar to FF6's endgame, except there's even more to do and explore.

?

also. chocobo racing and breeding was awesome.

Yes, but:
* The racing is still not the sort of thing that belongs in an RPG. (Breeding I'm OK with, it's the racing that I'm not.)
* The final reward for doing so is a key example of Square's disregard for game balance at the time; who thought an attack that could hit 13 times, dealing very nearly the damage cap with the right set-up (I remember breaking 9,000 per hit), was even remotely balanced? (At the very least, it should have been a lot weaker, or at least requie 1,000 MP to get (which is possible).)

Also, what happened to classic abilities like the Dragoon's Jump ability, the Geomancer's Gaia ability (damage based off the terrain), or eveh the Chemist's Mix? (At least there's Blue Magic, though it feels a bit on the powerful side in conventional ways (as opposed to FF5 where Blue Magic focused more on special-purpose and mechanically unusual spells).)

(By the way, one nitpick in your post: I think the correct verb conjugation in the quited sentence would be "were", not "was".)

It fits the whole setting - betting, racing, casinos and chocobos. It's perfect. And fun.

It's a very endgame summon. At that point you only have the super bosses to deal with, and you pretty much needed the Knights summoned for them.

You don't need it for the regular play and game, where indeed they would be overpowered. But at that stage in the game, with your Materia's all maxed out and you're all leveled up, you're overpowered anyways for the story fights.

Cid. He has a spear and everything ;)

Even 6 didn't have these anymore.

Strictly speaking, you may be right. But I'm not very strict. Not into that sort of thing ;)

If what you're saying is that FF7 was a departure from the series (and to some extent FF6) and it changed from the old classic, formulaic FFs, then well you're absolutely right. Some would say that it's not only fine - but great. I'm one of them.

Since 6, the theme of Final Fantasy is evolution. No two are alike. And I think that's a good thing.

Still, it's nice that we get to scratch that pixel art JRPG itch these days with some new and upcoming titles. Shame they're on Steam, though.

Racing may be fun, but it belongs in a racing game, not an RPG.

Except that, at the point you can first get the summon, there's still quite a bit of game left. For example, there's the whole return to Midgar section, not to mention the final dungeon

Speaking of summons, one other complaint I have about FF7 is the lack of non-damaging summons. Phoenix is the closest you see here; what happened to the likes of Asura, Golem, Remora, Unicorn, Starlet, Palidor? (The fact that the summon animations (except maybe Choco/Mog) are an order of magnitude longer than what I consider reasonable doesn't help here.)

Cid doesn't have a Jump command, and if you look at limit breaks, they don't cause him to avoid combat for an entire round.

FF6 did have something somewhat similar to FF5's Gaia; Mog's Dance command. With that, you can get terrain dependent effects, some of which are quite nice (Sun Bath), albeit at the cost of loss of control. (We see a similar trade-off with Gau, who is my favorite character to use in battle (not counting Gogo), but whose antics were partly responsible for a softlock.)

FF6 did lack Mix, and I would say that is a negative of that game; as I said, I would have rather had Mix than the boring Throw command.

Actually, I would argue that it's no longer evolution when it comes to the series from FF6 onward.

Where we see evolution is when we take FF1, FF3, and FF5, where each one feels like an evolution from the previous game; the fundamentals are still there in some form, but there's still been major upgrades (aside from FF3's issue with boring random encounter design).

Edit: I'm thinking I'll make another post in the topic, where I discuss one other, spoilery, thing in FF7 that I think really huts the gameplay. (Hint: It involves a particularly infamous event that happens at the end of Disk 1.)

Also, the version of FF5 available there has a lot of little differences; for instance, apparently some attacks that used to be blockable no longer are, and vice versa.

There's also one change I strongly disagree with. In classic FF5, whenever it comes time to enter a command, time will pause briefly, giving you a chance to make a selection. In modern (post-GBA) versions, this is no longer the case. (By the way, if you don't like the brief pause in classic FF5, just set the battle speed to the fastest, as that removes the pause; by contrast, on the slowest setting, the pause becomes very noticeable.)

I'm amazed you can say such a thing, especially when followed by

It's like you're playing a completely different series, or you just don't have much experience post FF5 in the series. I mean, some of the games in the series are barely recognisable as Final Fantasy (12, 13 trilogy and 15), whereas others took the series in a very different direction and evolved to become excellent on their own merits (6-10 pretty much) yet maintained that familiar Final Fantasy vibe and atmosphere.

The reason you can divide them into those two groups of course is that after 10, the team working on Final Fantasy changed quite a bit (Sakaguchi, Uematsu and so on).

The classical early ones FF1-5 are remarkably similar in their simplistic and childish storytelling, unremarkable presentation and predictable plot. It's like they're geared for a younger audience, and the series later on 'grew up' along with its fan base. Pretty much the only thing that evolved 3-5 was mechanics/combat system. Arguably one of the better ones in 5, the job system was just complex enough to satisfy even later playthroughs years after release whereas the traditional turnbased mechanics in 4 were nice, familiar and pretty polished.

So I really don't understand where you're coming from - certain things are left to judgement and preferences, bias and the eye of the beholder sort of thing, but others are almost factual objective stuff - not too far from facts. Like the whole 'there's no exploration in FF7 and no endgame nor sidequests' that you believed not too long ago.

I really wouldn't use the term "childish" to describe the plot of the early games; more like "not the main focus of the game" (except maybe FF4, but even that has interesting boss fights, certainly more interesting than in the previous entries).

From a standpoint of someone who's familiar with the early games of the series, and ignoring games released post-FF7, I could argue that FF7 is only barely recognizable as Final Fantasy. Similarly, if we cut out FF7, then FF6 is also only barely recognizable. This pattern does not continue if we extrapolate; FF5, FF4, and even FF3 are clearly recognizable as FF games in the context of the games at the time. FF2, as well, though much of that is the aesthetic rather than the gameplay, which feels closer to early SaGa (despite having completely different growth mechanics than SaGa 1). To put it another way, the early games (FF1 through FF5) had a very specific Final Fantasy feel to them, which was lost when FF6 appeared.

When you get to the post-FF5 games, it feels like it's no longer evolution, but rather throwing out everything from the previous games with each new installment. It's as if they kept starting a new series with each game and not continuing it, rather than evolving from each game to the next. Remember, contrary to what Pokemon might make you think, evolution is a gradual process.

As for FF7 late game, I did do all the sidequests except for the two superbosses that aren't even in the original Japanese release. The problem is that the game is balanced with the assumption that you *don't* do the sidequests, and the game doesn't clearly steer you to them; furthermore, one of them (the Chocobo one) gives you stuff that clearly breaks game balance. FF6, by contrast, expects you to explore the world and recover your lost companions before tackling the final dungeon, and is balanced with that assumption in mind (well, aside from Ultima, but that still needs Quick and a Gem Box to reach KotR levels of brokenness, and it costs 500 MP to do so without an MP reducing accessory). FF5 outright tells you that you should get the stone tablets and unseal the 12 legendary weapons (even though some aren't that useful) before you go into the final dungeon, even though you can do so.

One other difference: FF5 and FF6 late-game side quests often involve going through substantial dungeons, and FF6 also has some significant plot associated with them (FF5 doesn't except for the one at the top of the Phoenix Tower). FF7, by contrast, does not; there's one forest, but it's short, and while there are puzzles, it doesn't have any enemies that can pose a meaningful challenge; even the two superbosses are isolated bosses, without a dungeon needed to get to them.

(Side note: Chrono Trigger uses an FF6-like approach to late-game sidequests; you're expected to do them before tackling the final boss, and there's some significant story content associated with them. Then again, Chrono Trigger also lets you attempt the final boss before you finish the linear portion of the game, but expect the boss to do over 1,000 damage to your party (HP cap is 999) unless you're on New Game +.)


Actually, mentioning Chrono Trigger reminded me of another thing; the 3 party size just doesn't feel as epic as the 4 party size (or 5 in FF4) of the FF games up to that date. To me, this felt OK for a side game, but putting it into the main Final Fantasy series just feels wrong to me. Also, I could mention that FF7 lacks the classic victory fanfare that every previous FF game had used (and which appeared later in the series, like FF9 (which might be interesting to discuss in the context of this discussion) and FF12).

A few from 1985:
DokiDoki Penguin Land (SG-1000, 1985) - This scrolling puzzle platformer seemed like a NES/SMS level game in terms of the animation, visual variety and mechanical depth.

Deja Vu (MAC, 1985) - One of the first P&C adventures and with a more advanced interface and presentation than previous ones, including a set of on-screen verb icons.

Mercenary: Escape from Targ (PCs, 1985) - Flight & Spaceflight Sim/Action Adventure, FP view
-Wireframe 3D graphics w/ a decent framerate
-Interplanetary travel and on ground exploration
-Open-ended structure (can help either of two factions to earn money and buy your escape (the goal of the game) or find another way to escape)
-Trading
​-Partially destructible environment
-Compass

Brain Breaker (Sharp X1, 1985) - An impressive Platform Adventure/Mech Action game for the humble X1, pre-Metroid 1
-Intro gameplay is similar to Super Metroid in terms of its environmental storytelling (first area seems abandoned until you find a weapon and return, at which point the enemy robots are activated)
-Save feature
-Flight via jetpack
-Warps
-EMP gun (called brain breaker, also disables force fields, neutralizes a tank which can then be used as a vehicle)
-Destroy building walls with a certain gun and with a late game power
-Can pick up and drop items (used in a certain puzzle)
-Explosions from destroyed land enemies create small craters in the ground
-Can reach a God form of sorts by freeing a crystalline alien encountered some ways into the game (it'll give you (temporary?) invincibility, the ability to fly and to destroy walls and floor tiles with your body) - the abilities given are needed to destroy the central computer and beat the game?
-Elevators
-Not sure about these (I base the info on an article as the game isn't translated yet): Can communicate with a computer on your ship for tips?, No map?