★★★★★ 5
Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Review
Format: Hardcover
This is a quick review of the book from darkhorses latest production the Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive.
This book coves covers final fantasy 1-6 in various sections. The various sections for all the final fantasy games are listed as follows :
1. Art
2. Final Fantasy (Insert number here) Story
3. Characters
4. World
5. Monsters
6. Extra Content - goes into different sub catagories and varies from final fantasy to final fantasy.
7. Last section is - Final Fantasy (Insert number here) Memories.
I have to say I really like this book a lot, but then again It's a dark horse bool publication of course it's going to be good. The pages are THICKKK. When I thought they were glued together or something by accident but nope, these pages are just really that thick. The hardcover is nice, although best to keep it clean since it's mostly all white.
My favorite section is probably the character section. Not only does it list which character is conected to who in some way as well as the villians but also it shows Yoshitaka Amano complicated and beautiful artwork bellow each of the characters pixilated forms. It really gives you a perspective in how Amanos art work was translated into these sprites. Even though the section on art is nothing special seeing as I own "The Sky The Art Of Final Fantasy Slipcase Edition" which I recommend btw, It is still no less nice to see his work here too. I do think we get to see more of his monster desgins here though, but also the art covers for each variation of the game like from the Famicon to Android to PlayStation. It also shows the different logos that were in other platforms/handhelds or media devices. Really cool stuff here.
The story section is OK, doesn't really go indepth about it though. Nice but overall just an OK section.
The world section is pretty cool, showing the entire map of each game. The final fantasy 1 map is super basic, with some green here, dots of green for bushes, some yellow there, etc. Overall a neat little section.
The monster section does the same thing with the characters section in the sense that it shows you Yoshitaka Amano fantasic drawings along side the pixel forms they take in the games. Incredibly fascinating if I do say so myself.
The extra content section is were you see the technical side of what went to making into these games like the sprite data, the map, color list and so on and so forth. This section varies from final fantasy to final fantasy but it gets really technical about it, really cool.
The final section the memories section is just that, memories of the game with random images and quotes of the game.
Final Verdict - 10 out of 10 I did check in the back of the book for a final section called creators voices which are short interviews with the grand masters of the final fantasy series itself and how they feel about their work. Really nice. Overall this is a well done book by dark horse books, yet another fantastic release guys. I highly recommend buying this book regardless if your a collector or not.
My recommendations? Pre-order Volume 2 of The Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive, it comes out in december but still. As well as Pre-Order any of the upcomimg dark horse books, they are all really good regardless if you played the games or not.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2018
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