Lockirby2 is one of my favorite youtubers I've kept up with over the last few years. I first found the channel through their excellent and instructive walkthrough of the original Kaizo Mario World. But the real fun has been keeping up with the Final Fantasy challenge run videos. I got a lot of joy from watching and reading along with the two most recent series, the FF6 0 EXP Solo Rotating Character Challenge and the FF7 Strahl Community Challenge, as they came out.
Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII are pretty gentle games for the most part. But they have a ton of hidden depth that I never picked up on playing the games casually. These challenge runs and their strict rulesets highlight their innumerable mechanical subtleties. Did you know Atma is vulnerable to Slow? Did you know JENOVA Life has a 1/N chance of using Aqualung every fourth turn, and N starts at 5 and gets lower as her HP decreases? Did you know, did you know, did you know—
I love these games. Getting to learn all these weird details and seeing the creative ways Lockirby2 exploits them is delightful. The videos push me hard to think critically about RPG systems; sraëka's games and criticism are the only works I can think of that make me feel similarly.
I absolutely had to write a post after seeing them bring that same level of attention to detail to Facets (after I tactfully and humbly pointed them at it during a convo on discord). I really can't overstate how gratifying it was to watch the playthrough and read the commentary. It's a level of intense formal close reading I've never experienced for any of my games before. It feels incredible to get that kind of scrutiny specifically from someone I already really respected for their RPG design thoughts.
I want to make more turn-based games with hard, chunky boss fights someday. I want to make them enjoyable for casual play, but reward deeper engagement from knowledgeable players as well. Thoughtful criticism like this is gonna help me get there.
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