Final Fantasy Union released this historical recounting of red mages throughout the Final Fantasy series. It surprised me that red mage only showed up a few times; the job I main in FFXIV, the job I started as in FFXI, a job I see as so iconic to the series. My first exposure to the Final Fantasy series was the first game. When I first put a party together, having a mage that could use both schools of magic and swords seemed so cool to teen-aged me. It stuck in my head ever since.
August 23, 2019 — 9:31 am
I started playing Final Fantasy with VI so for a while I didn’t think of any of the classes as really being iconic to the series. Once I found out the games in the franchise that had classes, the ones that became iconic for me was Dragoon (because of Kain and his iconic look) and Black Mage and White Mages (due to their iconic looks). It also helped that they had very well-defined roles and specializations.
Red Mages always felt to me like the odd-one and being a Jack-of-All-Trades made them harder to justify choosing over a Black Mage or White Mage that could use higher level versions of their respective schools.
But I admit that in Final Fantasy XIV they are pretty fun to play and probably among my top favorite Jobs to play. 🙂