Magic
Like many role-playing games, the titles in the Final Fantasy series feature a system of magic. While the first game in the series had eight levels of spells with one to eight uses per level, later games jettisoned this concept for a common pool of magic points that all spells consume. Magic in the series is generally divided into classes, which are usually organized by color. The actual magic classes vary from game to game, but most games include "White Magic", which is focused primarily on spells that help teammates, and "Black Magic", which is focused on harming enemies. A character who is proficient in White or Black magic is often known as a White Mage or Black Mage, respectively. Other games include other types of mages and spells, such as Geomancers, who can cast spells based on the terrain, Blue Mages who can cast spells that are learned from enemies in battle, and Red Mages who can cast both white and black magic. In most games, the most powerful offensive White Magic spell is "Holy", while the most powerful black magic spell is often "Ultima" (a White Magic in Final Fantasy II), "Meteor", or "Meltdown".
How magic is acquired in the series tends to differ radically from game to game. For example, in Final Fantasy VI, magic is obtained from the remnants of a dead "Esper" called magicite; this also allows for the ability to summon the "Esper" during battle when the magicite is equipped. In Final Fantasy VII, materia works similarly to Final Fantasy VI's magicite, but unlike in Final Fantasy VI where magic learned by a character is permanently at their disposal, magic in Final Fantasy VII is attached to the materia and not the character.
Read more about this topic: Final Fantasy Gameplay
Famous quotes containing the word magic:
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“Self-esteem is the real magic wand that can form a child’s future. A child’s self-esteem affects every area of her existence, from friends she chooses, to how well she does academically in school, to what kind of job she gets, to even the person she chooses to marry.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion.... Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat’s meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)