Final Fantasy 1-6

Might not need its own topic, but in the interests of diversifying from PWB…

I bought the pixel remaster of 6 a couple of years ago, made a dent in it and walked away. I've started again on Switch 2 and it's grabbed me more this time. It's the most 90s game I've played in a long time.

There's zero hand-holding. You spend half your time not knowing where you're supposed to be going, running around towns trying to get certain events to trigger to advance the story. Half the time it's a random NPC that you need to speak to, half the time it's something more obscure. There's a bizzare system (that I only know about from Reddit) where you have to leave certain chests closed until later in the game, when the loot in them gets upgraded. But there's literally zero way to know which, so you have to read a guide (or ignore that mechanic completely, like me). There's copious amounts of old-school videogame sexism.

The battle system is mad. One character has the usual magic. One has a 'tool' mechanic that seems to make all other attacks pointless. One plays like a character in a fighting game, complete with move combos.

It all adds up to something totally bonkers, and while I couldn't recommend it to everyone, I can see why it's considered a classic. The music is perfect too, of course, and there's a particularly gnarly CRT filter on the Pixel Remaster that looks like the telly in question has been used since the days of the BBC Micro.

The auto-battle function is a lovely quality of life feature too. As well as speeding battles up, it seems to remember your last inputs. So rather than stupidly attacking at random, you can trust it to always use Steal, fire the correct Tools etc.

If/when I finish this, are there any other essential Pixel Remasters I should pick up?

Can't speak for the Pixel Remasters but if you want any semblance of a story/narrative like 6 than probably 4 and 5, 4 is usually considered when the series really started with telling an actual story (although the previous games all had them in their 'modern' forms at least) and 5 can be said to have a job system more in depth than 3's and less grindy than Tactics'.

3 I've only played the DS remake but if the Pixel Remaster is similar it's pretty hard. 2 is a black sheep in the series, with some weird systems like how you got stronger for hurting yourself.

And 1 is the most simplistic yet has a fairly simple job system where you choose one class per character at the start and stick with it, giving it some replay value imo.

FF6 is the best retro one by far, there's a reason 6 and 7 fanboys butting heads used to be a thing