Clockwork Game Design Podcast – The Final Fantasy Episode

Hi all! It’s been awhile since the last episode. This year I got married and went on my honeymoon, so things have been kind of crazy. But now, they’re sort of going back to normal. Over the last six months, I guess partially because I was doing a bit of traveling, but also partially because I got a Retroid handheld and a Steam Deck (both of which are phenomenal, game-changers for game-playing, for me at least), I’ve been on this crazy Final Fantasy kick.

Growing up I had played (and beaten) I, IV, VI and VII, a couple times each, but I had really fallen off over the years, so I had a lot of catching up to do. One friend of mine also told me that Final Fantasy XIII-3 was really good, so I started off endeavoring to beat all three Final Fantasy XIII games (which I now have – mostly). From there I’ve now beaten V, and IX, played a bunch of XII and XV, and I’m currently playing through X and VIII simultaneously. Bouncing all over the map chronologically speaking has been interesting – I feel like I’m getting a weirdly horizontal view of the series by doing this – playing V and XIII-2 at the same time, for example, gives me a really interesting view of how the series progressed. I eventually plan to beat them all!

Anyway… it’s kind of insane to try and talk about all of the final fantasy games in one podcast episode, but… here’s what I’ve got. Let me know what you think! As always, you can support the show at www.patreon.com/keithburgun.

The two songs in this episode: the opening one is from FF13-2, written by Naoshi Mizuta, the game’s fight song, and the closing one is from FF11, Memoro de la Stono, which I believe is one of the few songs on the incredible 11 OST written by Nobuo Uematsu.

Thanks for listening!