War, as told through Final Fantasy Battles

I don’t remember how this thought entered my brain. I think it was around the time I was doing this tongue-in-cheek post on “how to win the war in Afghanistan,” which, by the way, I still think is true, if you pay close attention.

Anyway, it occurred to me that you could kind of compare war to different Final Fantasy battles.

For example.

Conventional war looks something like this:

That is to say, it’s a lot of grinding. Attack. Defend. Counter-attack. Push forward. Over and over again.

Special purpose missions, like the raid that nabbed Osama bin Laden are like this:

Lots of special equipment checks immediately before sending your best guys in to do the final deed.

Counter-insurgency? Without a doubt, that’s a dungeon crawl:

Please ignore the un-ignorable commentary. But COIN is essentially a long slog. Bring lots of equipment that you’ll use occasionally. Get sniped and harassed by pretty easy enemies who wear you down over and over again. It sucks. You just want to get to the end, but it takes forever.

And there are shuras, where everything you say has significant consequences: