Bub’s second foray into Final Fantasy, and his third RPG with me, was Final Fantasy VII. He was around two years old when we played this game for the first time together, although we’ve revisited it over the years since it became a clear favorite of his. The only exception is that I have never actually played through Aerith’s death in front of him. I always play through that part of the game when he is asleep, and then we pick up afterward and continue playing together for… what I hope are obvious enough reasons given his age and the fact that he is autistic. So far, it hasn’t bothered him any, although I might introduce that part of the game to him at a later date. Probably much later if any of you catch my drift. I’m not looking forward to that.

Being autistic, there are certain parts of games that I have to skip through playing with him that neurotypical kids his age might not need to have skipped through, and this is one of them (Snow vanishing in the Sunleth Waterscape in Final Fantasy XIII-2 was another one). I don’t mind it, but it’s good to know, and it’s better for both of us that I do. It makes the gaming experience go a lot more smoothly to skip over these speed bumps.

Bub enjoyed all of Final Fantasy VII — what he saw of it, anyway — and was even the one to trigger Omnislash to kill Sephiroth (and surprisingly, got to see Sephiroth die). I took his small hand, extended his pointer finger since we were playing the PC version of it together, and helped him press the button that would trigger Omnislash. So not only did I equip my Bub for the final battle, but I made sure that it was he that triggered Omnislash to kill Sephiroth. I guess he can thank me when he’s older for that if it’s important enough to him to thank me for. Or not. Either way, I’m fine with it. And seeing Sephiroth die didn’t actually bother him at all(, although seeing Aerith might have since she was someone that you were supposed to grow to like, and seeing the death of someone that you were supposed to grow to like is supposed to be sad and traumatic, hence why I have shielded him from it so far). Through playthroughs, he’s also made it clear that his favorite characters are Cid and Vincent, which should surprise no one that actually knows Bub. I expected him to take a shine to Red as well myself, but so far he hasn’t shown an inclination toward Red.

Since this is a game that he’s liked a lot, I’ve made sure that we have it on multiple consoles.

And we do have the (first part of the?) remake on pre-order! We’ve actually had it there for a little while.

Bub’s second video game was Final Fantasy VI, which was also his first foray into the Final Fantasy franchise. As evidenced by the picture, and as the Generation Z kids say, he was “down for the life”. He thought he was helping the characters that I was controlling by putting his hands on top of them when they moved, which was adorable, and I managed to get a picture of it. That’s still one of my favorite pictures…

Not only is it one of my favorite games because of the compelling storyline and diverse characters, but I liked it because it was the first Final Fantasy game to have a female as the main character. I’m always down to play a game that has a female as the lead character, and I liked the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy for that reason. There was also the fact that as soon as we could go there, we went to Dinosaur Forest and pulled the old “Ragnarok Trick”, which involves using Ragnarok’s Morph ability to turn Brachiosaurs and Tyrannosaurs into items in the World of Ruin to get the full experience for the battle without actually having to fight them (or fight them minimally), getting a lot of experience in a short amount of time. This is an easy way to quickly level up characters, gain AP once you can equip Espers to them, and prepare for the final boss battle. Or you can just do what I like to do (am I the only one that can do this? drat), equip your Bub — play a video game with your primarily non-speaking autistic child in your lap or near you — and have him direct you via primarily non-verbal communication or press buttons with assistance from you, and have Kefka go down so fast that you barely get any time to appreciate the background music playing during the final battle. I actually had to find it on YouTube to listen to it, that was how short the final boss battle was. You see, Bub has a knack for helping make final boss battles easier as long as we do not walk into them grossly underleveled and have enough items to last throughout the battle. I think our battle lasted like six minutes.