My God, my God, do these two games have some gameplay. The first is
Final Fantasy V, never before released in North America. It's a pretty standard fare from the plot side, with the rather typical team-saves-the-world schtick (although no other schtick has ever had such a cool guy as Gilgamesh, but I digress...), but where its strength lies is in the class-based gameplay. Your characters can be assigned different 'classes,' which they train in and learn the abilities of. You can have a Black Mage that can also use swords, or a Fighter that can heal. It's a wonderfully complex system, one that makes random battles all the more rewarding, and something I've tinkered around with for hours on end. Coupled with great gameplay and, well, Gilgamesh,
Final Fantasy V is worth the price of this set alone.
And then there's Final Fantasy VI. Often lauded as the best RPG ever made (a distinction I have to give to Final Fantasy IV, but FFVI is number two in my book), gameplay has never got as engrossing as it did in this game. It is the story of a multitude of souls, from a young girl whose paintings come alive, to a randy king; but in truth it is the story of Terra, a girl with an unknown past and a cloudy future. The story will engross you for more than 30 hours, easy. The gameplay will suck you in, with the Esper system of learning spells one of the most interesting ideas ever (and one widely copied by almost every RPG after FFVI). And the graphics are gorgeous in their own right. I worshipped this game back on the SNES, and it's fully worshippable now.
One of the excellent additions to the games is a Memo Save slot, which doesn't save to the memory card, but which stays after a soft reset. This allows you to try out things and quickly reload your position if it doesn't work out, such as going inside the Zone Eater in FFVI, or the Sunken Tower in FFV. Good job, Square! And damned good job, for daring to bring these games over anyway.
Oh, yes, I'd also like to mention that Ted Woolsey's translation of FFVI is inarguably one of the tightest RPG translations ever made. Period. Read it and wish that all other recent Sony/Square releases were that readable.
And then there's a music CD chock full of groovy tracks from the games. Not the best tracks, but still, it comes with it, for free! How can you resist?
