While a great throwback to the NES Era of video game, Final Fantasy simply fails to live up to its predecessor Stranger of Paradise, keeping in mind its shortcomings and lack of content this game should've been a DLC bonus for Stranger of Paradise rather than its own standalone title.
Final Fantasy is a total step down in everything, even the combat, and story which was greatly shocking to me as I found those aspects of the original to be phenomenal.
Gone are the complexities of the soul shield system, and in exchange, we have a watered-down job system with a tiring and exhausting turn-based combat system which is a complete insult to everything Stranger of Paradise was.
The story is a complete rehash of Stranger of Paradise with plot points removed, despite the fact this is a sequel which greatly upsets me as the story was one of the best aspects of the original game and a follow up had a lot of potential, yet the execs over at Square care not for artistic integrity but trying to make a quick buck cashing on a massively popular IP which makes it safe to assume that Stranger of Paradise was a lightning in a bottle that they will never be able to capture again.
Final Fantasy is a total step down in everything, even the combat, and story which was greatly shocking to me as I found those aspects of the original to be phenomenal.
Gone are the complexities of the soul shield system, and in exchange, we have a watered-down job system with a tiring and exhausting turn-based combat system which is a complete insult to everything Stranger of Paradise was.
The story is a complete rehash of Stranger of Paradise with plot points removed, despite the fact this is a sequel which greatly upsets me as the story was one of the best aspects of the original game and a follow up had a lot of potential, yet the execs over at Square care not for artistic integrity but trying to make a quick buck cashing on a massively popular IP which makes it safe to assume that Stranger of Paradise was a lightning in a bottle that they will never be able to capture again.
Around 1986-1987, a little company by the name of Squaresoft, or simply just Square, was in deep trouble. They were facing the threat of bankruptcy, and while they had previously made several previous titles that were somewhat noteworthy at the time, such as Rad Racer, King’s Knight, and The 3-D Battles of WorldRunner, none of those games were successful enough to keep the company afloat, coupled with plenty of other factors that would play a part in this. With a single spark of hope still remaining in them, they had decided to give it one last shot, to develop one final game that would decide the fate of their company. If it had succeeded, they would go about business as usual for the foreseeable future, but if it hadn’t, they would close their doors forever and become a forgotten studio of the past. It was quite a gamble, to be sure, but one that they were willing to take. And so, in 1987, Square would go onto release that game for the NES, known simply as Final Fantasy.
I’m sure we all know where the story goes from here: the game was a smash hit, it allowed Square to keep making games, and since then, the series has become the flagship franchise for Square, now Square Enix, and has been going strong all the way up to this day, with the latest title, Final Fantasy XVI, just releasing a few months prior to me typing this. The series has evolved in many ways over the years, both good and bad, and despite the many, MANY hurdles it went through, it is considered by many to be one of the best RPG series of all time, and even one of the greatest video game franchises of all time. But, with all that being said, how does the original Final Fantasy, from all the way back on the NES, hold up after all this time? Well… it is good… but it has definitely aged A TON since 1987. It did introduce a lot of elements that would be a staple in not just this series, but for RPGs in general, and it can be fun to go back and play every so often, but many will agree with me when I say this is definitely not the first title you would go back to when revisiting older Final Fantasy games, and even if you were to go back to this one, it wouldn’t be with this version.
The story is extremely basic for an RPG, about four chosen heroes on a quest to restore their respective crystals involving the four elements, and saving the land from the forces of evil, but I will give it some slack, seeing as it was the story for the first game in the series, the graphics are pretty good for the time, not being too impressive when compared to other titles, but providing that sense of wonder and adventure that visuals like this need to provide, so it works, the music is iconic, with plenty of main staple tracks of the series being introduced here, and many of these tracks are still great to listen to now, even if they have been made better in subsequent remakes, the control is… exactly what you would expect from an RPG, so no need to discuss it any further, and the gameplay is… also exactly what you would expect from an RPG, but it helped evolve it in ways not seen previously, and would help make the genre a mainstay in many players’ eyes.
The game is a classic role-playing-game, where you take control of four player characters that you give unique names to, as well as choose their own class of warrior for out of six choices, you travel around a large world filled with plenty of towns, dungeons, and more, talk to NPCs, buy items and equipment to give you an advantage in battle, gather plenty of other helpful items that will allow you to explore more of the world, and of course, get caught in a series of random battles, where you and your party take on a wide assortment of creatures, using main attacks, magic, items, and your own strategy to take down these monsters, gain gil + experience, and level up. Now, this is all stuff we have all seen in RPGs before, and plenty of other games before this, such as Dragon Quest, also did a lot of the stuff that this game does, but as any RPG fan knows, execution is one of the big factors that defines whether an RPG is good, and the original Final Fantasy has a pretty great execution.
The game does make it feel like you are going on an epic journey across this world, not only due to the many faces you meet and interact with, but also with the opening sequence seen after beating the first dungeon and setting off into the world. It may not seem like much for players nowadays, but I’m sure back in the day, this was more than enough to get a player sucked into what they were about to experience. What also helps is that the game still plays pretty well, having a basic RPG formula that many can understand and get a feel for pretty quickly, and with all the stuff that you can get not just from battles, but exploring more of the world laid out to you, it definitely keeps you wanting to move on and see what more you can find. This is also made better with the fact that, halfway through the game, your entire party is given a substantial upgrade, where you all now look much more badass, and have plenty more skills that you can dish out on monsters, giving a sense of progression that feels extremely satisfying, especially for someone like me who doesn’t typically play traditional RPGs all that much.
In addition to this, while it doesn’t do too much different when compared to other RPGs at the time, what it does change up does make the game feel more enjoyable. Pretty much every other RPG before this always had battles take place in a first-person-view, which was cool and all, but it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of how battles can be shown. In this game though, battles now take place from a side view, where you can not only see your opponents, but also your entire party at once. Again, it may not seem like much, but it does add that little extra bit of flavor to make it more exciting, seeing these characters that you made and helped get more powerful take on these fearsome foes, and feeling satisfied whenever they do gain experience from these fights, while doing their victory dance after every fight. And finally, this game does have plenty of replayability, with the previously mentioned selection of classes that you can give to your four warriors upon starting the game. This makes it so that you can make whatever kind of team you want, whether it be a varied team with four different classes brought together, or maybe even a team full of people of only one class. It is neat seeing what kind of combinations you can make, how they will fair in battle, and also finding the right set of characters that suit your playstyle.
With all that being said though, any fan of both Final Fantasy and RPGs in general can all agree with me when I say this game has issues. While this game did a lot of things to benefit and popularize the RPG genre, nowadays, it is pretty bland in comparison to plenty of other games not just in the genre, but in later sequels. That is to be expected, of course, but it can make going back to the original game more difficult for those curious about the series. In addition, this game can be pretty fucking brutal at times. There will be plenty of instances where you will be bombarded by a whole gang of enemies, even up to 9 of them, and they can easily take you down if you aren’t careful, with there being plenty of times where they can gang up on one party member, and kill them immediately. And speaking of which, whenever a character dies, you can’t just simply revive them with a Phoenix Down like in other titles in this series. The only way you can revive them is by going to churches in the towns of the game. So, basically, if you are deep into a dungeon, and one of your party members happens to die in a battle, you have to go alllllllllll the way back to a town just to revive them. That pretty much means you will be FUCKED, as it is pretty difficult to get back to a town when you are caught in this scenario, let alone get out of the battle you are currently in unscathed if the dead party member just so happens to be your strongest one.
And finally, I must stress this: if you are planning on checking out the original Final Fantasy at any point in the future, don't play the NES version. That’s not to say that the original version is a bad version, as it is still perfectly playable, but anyone who has played it compared to any other version knows that it is pretty busted. For example, a lot of the magic spells and stats just straight up don’t work, such as the case of intelligence doing nothing whatsoever, and some spells do the exactly opposite of what they are supposed to do, which can be bad when you use them on a tough foe. In addition to this, some of the classes in the game are completely useless compared to others, such as the case with the Thief class. Not only does the class not have the ability to steal anything, making the class’s entire existence a fucking joke, but it also has no access to magic in the first half of the game, and while it is supposed to make running from battles easier, OOPS, that doesn’t work either! So yeah, needless to say, if you are going to play the original Final Fantasy, play one of the remakes, preferably the Pixel Remaster, since it is the most accessible. Trust me, you will have a much better time with it.
Overall, despite having plenty of issues that hold it back from true greatness, as well as there being plenty of updated remakes that make this version obsolete, the original Final Fantasy for the NES is still a good time, and I did enjoy my time with it when revisiting it, even if I will never be touching it ever again after this review, and sticking to other versions of it. I would recommend checking it out for hardcore fans of not just Final Fantasy or hardcore fans of the original game, but also for major RPG nuts as well, but for those who are just casual fans of Final Fantasy or RPGs, then there are definitely much better versions out there. But hey, at least we can appreciate the game for saving Square in their time of need and allowing them to still develop not just this series, but plenty of other games all the way up to this day. Let’s just hope they can keep up this level of quality and increase it further with the next game to come after this. I mean, they couldn’t POSSIBLY screw that one up, right?
Game #366
I’m sure we all know where the story goes from here: the game was a smash hit, it allowed Square to keep making games, and since then, the series has become the flagship franchise for Square, now Square Enix, and has been going strong all the way up to this day, with the latest title, Final Fantasy XVI, just releasing a few months prior to me typing this. The series has evolved in many ways over the years, both good and bad, and despite the many, MANY hurdles it went through, it is considered by many to be one of the best RPG series of all time, and even one of the greatest video game franchises of all time. But, with all that being said, how does the original Final Fantasy, from all the way back on the NES, hold up after all this time? Well… it is good… but it has definitely aged A TON since 1987. It did introduce a lot of elements that would be a staple in not just this series, but for RPGs in general, and it can be fun to go back and play every so often, but many will agree with me when I say this is definitely not the first title you would go back to when revisiting older Final Fantasy games, and even if you were to go back to this one, it wouldn’t be with this version.
The story is extremely basic for an RPG, about four chosen heroes on a quest to restore their respective crystals involving the four elements, and saving the land from the forces of evil, but I will give it some slack, seeing as it was the story for the first game in the series, the graphics are pretty good for the time, not being too impressive when compared to other titles, but providing that sense of wonder and adventure that visuals like this need to provide, so it works, the music is iconic, with plenty of main staple tracks of the series being introduced here, and many of these tracks are still great to listen to now, even if they have been made better in subsequent remakes, the control is… exactly what you would expect from an RPG, so no need to discuss it any further, and the gameplay is… also exactly what you would expect from an RPG, but it helped evolve it in ways not seen previously, and would help make the genre a mainstay in many players’ eyes.
The game is a classic role-playing-game, where you take control of four player characters that you give unique names to, as well as choose their own class of warrior for out of six choices, you travel around a large world filled with plenty of towns, dungeons, and more, talk to NPCs, buy items and equipment to give you an advantage in battle, gather plenty of other helpful items that will allow you to explore more of the world, and of course, get caught in a series of random battles, where you and your party take on a wide assortment of creatures, using main attacks, magic, items, and your own strategy to take down these monsters, gain gil + experience, and level up. Now, this is all stuff we have all seen in RPGs before, and plenty of other games before this, such as Dragon Quest, also did a lot of the stuff that this game does, but as any RPG fan knows, execution is one of the big factors that defines whether an RPG is good, and the original Final Fantasy has a pretty great execution.
The game does make it feel like you are going on an epic journey across this world, not only due to the many faces you meet and interact with, but also with the opening sequence seen after beating the first dungeon and setting off into the world. It may not seem like much for players nowadays, but I’m sure back in the day, this was more than enough to get a player sucked into what they were about to experience. What also helps is that the game still plays pretty well, having a basic RPG formula that many can understand and get a feel for pretty quickly, and with all the stuff that you can get not just from battles, but exploring more of the world laid out to you, it definitely keeps you wanting to move on and see what more you can find. This is also made better with the fact that, halfway through the game, your entire party is given a substantial upgrade, where you all now look much more badass, and have plenty more skills that you can dish out on monsters, giving a sense of progression that feels extremely satisfying, especially for someone like me who doesn’t typically play traditional RPGs all that much.
In addition to this, while it doesn’t do too much different when compared to other RPGs at the time, what it does change up does make the game feel more enjoyable. Pretty much every other RPG before this always had battles take place in a first-person-view, which was cool and all, but it does leave a lot to be desired in terms of how battles can be shown. In this game though, battles now take place from a side view, where you can not only see your opponents, but also your entire party at once. Again, it may not seem like much, but it does add that little extra bit of flavor to make it more exciting, seeing these characters that you made and helped get more powerful take on these fearsome foes, and feeling satisfied whenever they do gain experience from these fights, while doing their victory dance after every fight. And finally, this game does have plenty of replayability, with the previously mentioned selection of classes that you can give to your four warriors upon starting the game. This makes it so that you can make whatever kind of team you want, whether it be a varied team with four different classes brought together, or maybe even a team full of people of only one class. It is neat seeing what kind of combinations you can make, how they will fair in battle, and also finding the right set of characters that suit your playstyle.
With all that being said though, any fan of both Final Fantasy and RPGs in general can all agree with me when I say this game has issues. While this game did a lot of things to benefit and popularize the RPG genre, nowadays, it is pretty bland in comparison to plenty of other games not just in the genre, but in later sequels. That is to be expected, of course, but it can make going back to the original game more difficult for those curious about the series. In addition, this game can be pretty fucking brutal at times. There will be plenty of instances where you will be bombarded by a whole gang of enemies, even up to 9 of them, and they can easily take you down if you aren’t careful, with there being plenty of times where they can gang up on one party member, and kill them immediately. And speaking of which, whenever a character dies, you can’t just simply revive them with a Phoenix Down like in other titles in this series. The only way you can revive them is by going to churches in the towns of the game. So, basically, if you are deep into a dungeon, and one of your party members happens to die in a battle, you have to go alllllllllll the way back to a town just to revive them. That pretty much means you will be FUCKED, as it is pretty difficult to get back to a town when you are caught in this scenario, let alone get out of the battle you are currently in unscathed if the dead party member just so happens to be your strongest one.
And finally, I must stress this: if you are planning on checking out the original Final Fantasy at any point in the future, don't play the NES version. That’s not to say that the original version is a bad version, as it is still perfectly playable, but anyone who has played it compared to any other version knows that it is pretty busted. For example, a lot of the magic spells and stats just straight up don’t work, such as the case of intelligence doing nothing whatsoever, and some spells do the exactly opposite of what they are supposed to do, which can be bad when you use them on a tough foe. In addition to this, some of the classes in the game are completely useless compared to others, such as the case with the Thief class. Not only does the class not have the ability to steal anything, making the class’s entire existence a fucking joke, but it also has no access to magic in the first half of the game, and while it is supposed to make running from battles easier, OOPS, that doesn’t work either! So yeah, needless to say, if you are going to play the original Final Fantasy, play one of the remakes, preferably the Pixel Remaster, since it is the most accessible. Trust me, you will have a much better time with it.
Overall, despite having plenty of issues that hold it back from true greatness, as well as there being plenty of updated remakes that make this version obsolete, the original Final Fantasy for the NES is still a good time, and I did enjoy my time with it when revisiting it, even if I will never be touching it ever again after this review, and sticking to other versions of it. I would recommend checking it out for hardcore fans of not just Final Fantasy or hardcore fans of the original game, but also for major RPG nuts as well, but for those who are just casual fans of Final Fantasy or RPGs, then there are definitely much better versions out there. But hey, at least we can appreciate the game for saving Square in their time of need and allowing them to still develop not just this series, but plenty of other games all the way up to this day. Let’s just hope they can keep up this level of quality and increase it further with the next game to come after this. I mean, they couldn’t POSSIBLY screw that one up, right?
Game #366
A Fantasy so Final that they made 15 more games about it
Oh great, I’m reviewing Final Fantasy. A game that has been talked about for decades. While I do sometimes talk about popular games, it’s stuff like this I’m inexperienced with that makes me feel I shouldn’t really be one talking about the subject. I want to someday talk about a lot of the entries in this series. Besides the spinoff Seiken Densetsu, I’ve never beaten a Final Fantasy game. After all of these years I’ve finally done it and here is my story…
It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!
Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.
The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”
Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.
Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.
The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.
By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!
I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!
It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!
Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.
The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”
Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.
Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.
The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.
By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!
I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!
if nothing else, i can applaud final fantasy's ambition and the scale of its journey for a 1987 jrpg. the clear d&d roots here show their blatant influence throughout in some pretty charming ways, too - but that said, perhaps enough attention to the balance and purpose of certain elements may have needed some polish as opposed to simply fulfilling a quota. for example, thieves are essentially useless and team composition is no more complicated than "create as much universal damage output as possible and also be able to teamheal". it's evident within the next year, enix had a much finer understanding of console jrpgs, as there's basically no reason i'd ever recommend this title over the masterful dragon quest iii, far as nes jrpgs go. ultimately, though, what we have here is the first entry in a series which would take another title or two to really start and find its identity - and that's ok! it's a cute little bauble and the passion is there, in its own way.
[PSP Version] To think it all started here. The series has definitely come a long way. I can't say I connected with the story or the characters because they weren't really all that deep, and I never really expected them to be. But it was neat enough coming back to see how it all began, even if I played a later version of the game. And all the new dungeons and things that were added into the PSP version were all pretty bad in my opinion. As in overly difficult and not fun.
Anyway, it was a decent enough start. I look forward to moving on to better and more interesting games in the series. Hope the next one isn't considered to be one of the worst, or anything!
Anyway, it was a decent enough start. I look forward to moving on to better and more interesting games in the series. Hope the next one isn't considered to be one of the worst, or anything!
Wow what a little piece of gaming history here. Look, I went into this game expecting to either drop or get filtered right the fuck out of it. This game is ancient after all and while the pixel remaster did have some modern boosts here, it's still dated, and I figured that this was gonna be a problem for me.
And to be honest I almost did. I got my ass handed to me in the Marsh Cave a few times, and I quit the game, uninstalled it, and was ready to move on. However, something pulled me back a couple hours, and I'm so so glad I did. This game is genuinely really great for it's time, and it's clear why this series has lasted for as long as it has from the very start.
Obviously the story here isn't anything too special, in its humble beginnings, but it's fun making up your own storylines as you go, with your party members. It's so cozy, and the music is wonderful. The combat is super simplistic but quite fun in a weird way, and even grinding is made to be enjoyable here.
This is where I embark on my journey of playing 1-6, and if this is the starting point, I can't WAIT to see what some of these future games have in store for me. Banger.
And to be honest I almost did. I got my ass handed to me in the Marsh Cave a few times, and I quit the game, uninstalled it, and was ready to move on. However, something pulled me back a couple hours, and I'm so so glad I did. This game is genuinely really great for it's time, and it's clear why this series has lasted for as long as it has from the very start.
Obviously the story here isn't anything too special, in its humble beginnings, but it's fun making up your own storylines as you go, with your party members. It's so cozy, and the music is wonderful. The combat is super simplistic but quite fun in a weird way, and even grinding is made to be enjoyable here.
This is where I embark on my journey of playing 1-6, and if this is the starting point, I can't WAIT to see what some of these future games have in store for me. Banger.
Played the GBA version
Despite being another very early example of establishing the general conventions that would become staples of the JRPG format, it's honestly pretty amazing how stylistically different Final Fantasy feels when compared to the early Dragon Quest games. While at their core, both series had their roots in some fairly similar territory with the gameplay loops being functionally the same, there are some pretty interesting differences in how each is presented. Furthermore, the game allowed for a much greater sense of customisation and a stronger sense of openness to how one could approach exploration, all culminating in a game which in some regards felt far larger than that the DQ games achieved on their first 2 tries.
While Dragon Quest would put the player in an inhospitable world where they had to both carve out a name for themselves in such an environment, Final Fantasy instead takes the approach of making the game feel far more grandiose, putting your party in a position where they're the legendary heroes right out the gate. What could potentially seem like a simple narrative difference ends up affecting the gameplay in a fairly substantial way, the biggest of which being the way that the player is made to feel very powerful at a rapid rate. Rather than slowly building up a party as the game goes on, the player gets to choose all 4 members of their party and their archetypes immediately, being able to choose between 6 different classes and even have multiple of the same ones along for the quest. This immediately establishes the stronger focus this had on having the player form more concrete strategies while also being able to tailor it more around their own playstyle, such as being able to bring along an extra melee powerhouse if they wanted to focus around more aggressive strategies.
There's almost a sense of maximalism to how the game approaches encounters on the whole as well to further reinforce the fact that your characters are meant to be legendary right out the gate, not only with the damage numbers being comparatively high, allowing players to dal hundreds of damage within the first half hour, but the groups of enemies themselves are made to appear far more threatening when really being reasonable for the most part. The sense of power you feel from fighting a group of 9 enemies and absolutely destroying them effortlessly is pretty satisfying and manages to contribute to a game that feels a bit more like a power fantasy on the whole. I also thought that the magic system was pretty neat even if a bunch of the spells seemed to inexplicably just, not work properly. While unconventional, the fact that you purchase magic spells from the shops throughout end up bringing another element of strategy with team composition, only being allowed to get 3 spells of each level often leading to situations where the player will have to think about what will contribute to their goals the most and how to mitigate any potential shortcomings that they'll suffer as a result of not just being able to get everything. While this ultimately doesn't actually work too well due to the aforementioned fact that some spells just don't seem to work properly or as well as you'd think, leading to pretty easy choices most of the time, I still think that this approach is pretty cool and unique, and would be neat to see implemented more thoughtfully in another game.
Unfortunately, Final Fantasy's attempts at making for a more epic adventure come with its own set of drawbacks, the biggest of which being how open the game feels without giving the sufficient tools to facilitate a truly compelling experience with it. The first stretch of the game works pretty well, giving a short little tutorial section that's entirely on land and feels pretty linear while still having enough moving pieces to leave a sense of intrigue, it's simplistic, but it works well at establishing the world without overwhelming the player. I feel like the player is given access to the boat a bit too early however, and while at first it's fine when you're essentially confined to a huge lake enclosed on all sides, only giving you access to another couple of areas, once you get out of here, all bets are off. The game opens up at such a rate that you get given an airship before even completing the 2nd huge quest objective, and this is after having to mess around with sailing across these huge expanses of empty ocean just hoping to find another piece of land to do anything on, and from here it essentially devolves into a mindless fetch quest without anything interesting to frame most of it.
So many steps required to progress further are presented in a very generic way, often just being a random item in a random dungeon that's not tied to anything other than player progression. Without any way to tie a lot of these key items to something interesting within the world, it ends up feeling overly artificial, and while it occasionally brings something interesting, like revealing this weird sci-fi aspect to the world, it's too few and far between for it to have a proper impact on the experience outside of these isolated moments. It's just fortunate that despite the cryptic and boring way the player explores the overworld past the first couple hours, that the dungeon crawling is actually pretty fun. Each place the player has to explore feels sufficiently different in its layout and atmosphere, aided by the phenomenal soundtrack and the fact that the core combat is pretty satisfying, and it made these sections the clear highlights of the experience for me, even if the random encounters were undoubtedly way too frequent.
On the whole though, despite the many, many prominent issues I had with this game, at the end of the day I still don't really dislike it either, not just for its influence, but because I do respect what it was trying to do, and just think that it perhaps didn't really understand how to properly execute some of the big ideas that it had. It's a good, but archaic foundation for a series and it had enough positive qualities and was short enough that it was totally playable for the most part (even though a guide was required), just don't go in here expecting any sort of masterpiece.
Despite being another very early example of establishing the general conventions that would become staples of the JRPG format, it's honestly pretty amazing how stylistically different Final Fantasy feels when compared to the early Dragon Quest games. While at their core, both series had their roots in some fairly similar territory with the gameplay loops being functionally the same, there are some pretty interesting differences in how each is presented. Furthermore, the game allowed for a much greater sense of customisation and a stronger sense of openness to how one could approach exploration, all culminating in a game which in some regards felt far larger than that the DQ games achieved on their first 2 tries.
While Dragon Quest would put the player in an inhospitable world where they had to both carve out a name for themselves in such an environment, Final Fantasy instead takes the approach of making the game feel far more grandiose, putting your party in a position where they're the legendary heroes right out the gate. What could potentially seem like a simple narrative difference ends up affecting the gameplay in a fairly substantial way, the biggest of which being the way that the player is made to feel very powerful at a rapid rate. Rather than slowly building up a party as the game goes on, the player gets to choose all 4 members of their party and their archetypes immediately, being able to choose between 6 different classes and even have multiple of the same ones along for the quest. This immediately establishes the stronger focus this had on having the player form more concrete strategies while also being able to tailor it more around their own playstyle, such as being able to bring along an extra melee powerhouse if they wanted to focus around more aggressive strategies.
There's almost a sense of maximalism to how the game approaches encounters on the whole as well to further reinforce the fact that your characters are meant to be legendary right out the gate, not only with the damage numbers being comparatively high, allowing players to dal hundreds of damage within the first half hour, but the groups of enemies themselves are made to appear far more threatening when really being reasonable for the most part. The sense of power you feel from fighting a group of 9 enemies and absolutely destroying them effortlessly is pretty satisfying and manages to contribute to a game that feels a bit more like a power fantasy on the whole. I also thought that the magic system was pretty neat even if a bunch of the spells seemed to inexplicably just, not work properly. While unconventional, the fact that you purchase magic spells from the shops throughout end up bringing another element of strategy with team composition, only being allowed to get 3 spells of each level often leading to situations where the player will have to think about what will contribute to their goals the most and how to mitigate any potential shortcomings that they'll suffer as a result of not just being able to get everything. While this ultimately doesn't actually work too well due to the aforementioned fact that some spells just don't seem to work properly or as well as you'd think, leading to pretty easy choices most of the time, I still think that this approach is pretty cool and unique, and would be neat to see implemented more thoughtfully in another game.
Unfortunately, Final Fantasy's attempts at making for a more epic adventure come with its own set of drawbacks, the biggest of which being how open the game feels without giving the sufficient tools to facilitate a truly compelling experience with it. The first stretch of the game works pretty well, giving a short little tutorial section that's entirely on land and feels pretty linear while still having enough moving pieces to leave a sense of intrigue, it's simplistic, but it works well at establishing the world without overwhelming the player. I feel like the player is given access to the boat a bit too early however, and while at first it's fine when you're essentially confined to a huge lake enclosed on all sides, only giving you access to another couple of areas, once you get out of here, all bets are off. The game opens up at such a rate that you get given an airship before even completing the 2nd huge quest objective, and this is after having to mess around with sailing across these huge expanses of empty ocean just hoping to find another piece of land to do anything on, and from here it essentially devolves into a mindless fetch quest without anything interesting to frame most of it.
So many steps required to progress further are presented in a very generic way, often just being a random item in a random dungeon that's not tied to anything other than player progression. Without any way to tie a lot of these key items to something interesting within the world, it ends up feeling overly artificial, and while it occasionally brings something interesting, like revealing this weird sci-fi aspect to the world, it's too few and far between for it to have a proper impact on the experience outside of these isolated moments. It's just fortunate that despite the cryptic and boring way the player explores the overworld past the first couple hours, that the dungeon crawling is actually pretty fun. Each place the player has to explore feels sufficiently different in its layout and atmosphere, aided by the phenomenal soundtrack and the fact that the core combat is pretty satisfying, and it made these sections the clear highlights of the experience for me, even if the random encounters were undoubtedly way too frequent.
On the whole though, despite the many, many prominent issues I had with this game, at the end of the day I still don't really dislike it either, not just for its influence, but because I do respect what it was trying to do, and just think that it perhaps didn't really understand how to properly execute some of the big ideas that it had. It's a good, but archaic foundation for a series and it had enough positive qualities and was short enough that it was totally playable for the most part (even though a guide was required), just don't go in here expecting any sort of masterpiece.
this is indeed the first final fantasy
played on ps1
played on ps1
its aight...
Garland is #3 on the “Final Fantasy in least to most order of how lame their major antagonists are” list
Garland gets a lot of leeway on this list due to the one simple fact that he can claim what a good 60% of other FF villains can’t: he can clap his hands because he’s bad and he knows it. As a black knight he looks as cool as a final fantasy villain probably can look, and his disappointing introduction notwithstanding (we all know about “I will knock you all down,” of course, and then the relative ease your party gets to knock him down instead) he proves to be a surprisingly effective antagonist within the limitations that come with being the first ever JRPG known to mankind. He is, of course, merely playing as a pushover in the beginning, slyly hiding the fact that not only is he responsible for unleashing the four fiends upon the earth, and not only will he continue to do so via a time-loop should the heroes prove successful, but he is also the fearsome demon Chaos! (Chaos is by a mile the coolest looking final form boss the franchise ever put out, in my opinion, and not to mention also in dissidia’s opinion, as he is that franchise’s main antagonist. I remember seeing him the bestiary in the instruction booklet for the game as a blacked out silhouette of some horned winged freakish beast, and I couldn’t wait to see what he looked like). The game hints that Garland used to be a noble knight and was maybe influenced by Chaos, but that’s as far as that goes. He made the choice to be bad, to have Chaos act through him, and it’s refreshing to finally see a baddie in one of these games delight in his own wicked actions. Points do have to be deducted, however, for the aforementioned time-loop scheme, which to this day I am still trying to figure out if it makes sense or not.
Now that I got that out of my system, let’s talk about the rest of this game. This was the first RPG I ever played, and while it is not the best FF it is probably my favorite. When I was a kid my mom let my sister and I each pick a game at the Toys R Us, and while I picked TMNT III: The Manhattan Project, my sister picked this one because the cover looked cool. And while TMNT III was fine, I still think about this game to this day, as a grown ass man in his thirtysomethings. It was in fact this game that got me into the other more popular ones in the series. I saw a commercial on TV for FFVII and recognized the name from this one, and the rest, as they say.
The FF series always straddles an uneasy weird three-legged line between medieval DnD nerd shit, steampunk, and straight up anime nonsense. With the exception of the steampunkish Sky Castle and airship, this one leans almost entirely into the medieval nerd shit here, and I am here for it. As much as I love Dragon Quest, that series really fucked up by having front-facing encounters. The enemies are wonderfully designed, especially the bosses, and even when they’re common zombies or ghosties or skeletons or dragons, their dynamic poses make them look like they’re floating or diving toward your party, and it was satisfying to see your party swing their weapons and cast their spells at them.
If there is a gripe I still have with it though, it’s the “ineffective” glitch. I’ve seen a lot of people try to defend it and they’re all wrong. They’ll say something like “it really forces you to pay attention to what kind of enemies you’re fighting and how much damage they take.” First of all, no it doesn’t. You still end up encountering these monsters over and over again and it’s no less grindy and tedious when you know that your five thousandth goblin takes a little less damage to beat than your five hundredth ogre. And second, that’s not how fighting works. You’re not artillery! You’re not aiming for the real estate your baddie is on, you’re fighting the baddie itself! You really are gonna sit there and try to tell me that when you wind up to kill an imp, but I kill the imp first, that you’re just gonna swing at where you were aiming anyway, and not just move on to the next baddie to help your friends out? No, it’s a glitch and it always was. The only other rpgs to persist with the stupid ineffective glitch are FFII, which is objectively the worst FF, and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, which is objectively the worst RPG. And if you think it’s a good feature then you’re either a mark or you’re ProJared, and neither one is anything to be proud of.
Aside from that, feel free to check this out on a mobile or GBA version, or maybe a patched NES rom which fixes some of the other stupid glitches, like finally being able to buy more than one potion at a time. Well sure, and why not? Come on, don’t act like you still have a working NES. I know you don’t, those things are like fifty thousand dollars.
Garland gets a lot of leeway on this list due to the one simple fact that he can claim what a good 60% of other FF villains can’t: he can clap his hands because he’s bad and he knows it. As a black knight he looks as cool as a final fantasy villain probably can look, and his disappointing introduction notwithstanding (we all know about “I will knock you all down,” of course, and then the relative ease your party gets to knock him down instead) he proves to be a surprisingly effective antagonist within the limitations that come with being the first ever JRPG known to mankind. He is, of course, merely playing as a pushover in the beginning, slyly hiding the fact that not only is he responsible for unleashing the four fiends upon the earth, and not only will he continue to do so via a time-loop should the heroes prove successful, but he is also the fearsome demon Chaos! (Chaos is by a mile the coolest looking final form boss the franchise ever put out, in my opinion, and not to mention also in dissidia’s opinion, as he is that franchise’s main antagonist. I remember seeing him the bestiary in the instruction booklet for the game as a blacked out silhouette of some horned winged freakish beast, and I couldn’t wait to see what he looked like). The game hints that Garland used to be a noble knight and was maybe influenced by Chaos, but that’s as far as that goes. He made the choice to be bad, to have Chaos act through him, and it’s refreshing to finally see a baddie in one of these games delight in his own wicked actions. Points do have to be deducted, however, for the aforementioned time-loop scheme, which to this day I am still trying to figure out if it makes sense or not.
Now that I got that out of my system, let’s talk about the rest of this game. This was the first RPG I ever played, and while it is not the best FF it is probably my favorite. When I was a kid my mom let my sister and I each pick a game at the Toys R Us, and while I picked TMNT III: The Manhattan Project, my sister picked this one because the cover looked cool. And while TMNT III was fine, I still think about this game to this day, as a grown ass man in his thirtysomethings. It was in fact this game that got me into the other more popular ones in the series. I saw a commercial on TV for FFVII and recognized the name from this one, and the rest, as they say.
The FF series always straddles an uneasy weird three-legged line between medieval DnD nerd shit, steampunk, and straight up anime nonsense. With the exception of the steampunkish Sky Castle and airship, this one leans almost entirely into the medieval nerd shit here, and I am here for it. As much as I love Dragon Quest, that series really fucked up by having front-facing encounters. The enemies are wonderfully designed, especially the bosses, and even when they’re common zombies or ghosties or skeletons or dragons, their dynamic poses make them look like they’re floating or diving toward your party, and it was satisfying to see your party swing their weapons and cast their spells at them.
If there is a gripe I still have with it though, it’s the “ineffective” glitch. I’ve seen a lot of people try to defend it and they’re all wrong. They’ll say something like “it really forces you to pay attention to what kind of enemies you’re fighting and how much damage they take.” First of all, no it doesn’t. You still end up encountering these monsters over and over again and it’s no less grindy and tedious when you know that your five thousandth goblin takes a little less damage to beat than your five hundredth ogre. And second, that’s not how fighting works. You’re not artillery! You’re not aiming for the real estate your baddie is on, you’re fighting the baddie itself! You really are gonna sit there and try to tell me that when you wind up to kill an imp, but I kill the imp first, that you’re just gonna swing at where you were aiming anyway, and not just move on to the next baddie to help your friends out? No, it’s a glitch and it always was. The only other rpgs to persist with the stupid ineffective glitch are FFII, which is objectively the worst FF, and Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, which is objectively the worst RPG. And if you think it’s a good feature then you’re either a mark or you’re ProJared, and neither one is anything to be proud of.
Aside from that, feel free to check this out on a mobile or GBA version, or maybe a patched NES rom which fixes some of the other stupid glitches, like finally being able to buy more than one potion at a time. Well sure, and why not? Come on, don’t act like you still have a working NES. I know you don’t, those things are like fifty thousand dollars.
Goof troop ass game.
This game does so much with so little. This is the ultimate minamilist underdog fantasy game story. A world that opens the imagination with hints of a large, bustling environment and ecosystem of traditional fantasy elements done with unique, personal twists.
eh.......... its mid.
FF1 is very cute and fun. It's always a joy to see where the series got its start, and Uematsu was cooking surprisingly hard right from the beginning. It's easy to see how it revolutionized JRPG gameplay as well.
The first Final Fantasy blew my mind. Maybe it’s because it’s the first Final Fantasy game I’ve ever played, maybe it’s because it’s the first RPG I’ve played on the NES that physically shows your characters fighting the enemy rather than using the classic 1st-person view, maybe it’s because of that stupid flying boat I’m now obsessed with. Who knows. But what I do know, is that Final Fantasy I is a fucking AWESOME game that has withstood the sands of time beautifully. Throughout this review, I will be comparing Final Fantasy with other NES RPGs I have played, which is just Dragon Warrior (1986/1989) and MOTHER (1989).
I played the game on my NES and had absolutely no issues with lack of save points, enemy/boss difficulty, and getting around to figure out what to do next. The manual for Final Fantasy 1 is insanely kind, going above and beyond what the already jampacked manuals for the time usually had. Again, the manual, not the guidebook, gives the player information for where to go until you discover the airship. That’s pretty much the end game, with help knowing the best weapons and places to go until that point. The manual of course also includes all the information for enemy, weapon, and armor stats, and a map of the whole area to boot. Final Fantasy gameplay wise is also just very, very player-friendly, with little need to ever grind if you focus on destroying every group you run into. In fact, I would argue you will quickly become OVERpowered if you focus on eliminating everyone you run into. With Dragon Warrior and MOTHER, I definitely had to put aside time just to level up between bosses, while Final Fantasy seemed to always lead me to be just the right level at just the right time, even when running away from a lot of the bigger groups.
Final Fantasy is a gorgeous game on the NES, even including cutscenes and a credit roll, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a 3rd-generation game (though I still have lots to check-out!). The music is really impressive too, with a very large variety that I can think back on fondly (though my wife eventually had me mute the TV because she couldn’t stand it lmao). I loved all the effort put into both the visuals and music in this game, and appreciated even the little things we might not think much about today, such as being able to change weapons and visibly see your change (I love the Coral Sword for being a bright hot pink hehe), the cute little dance after beating an enemy, large and varied groups of monsters to fight against, and the awesome and varied transportation you unlock throughout that only helps you move faster and faster! That’s what’s great about the original Final Fantasy, it really feels like a great video game conversion of DND. You pick who you want in your party, get to name them, create little stories in your head, and play them through a fairly open story that you can adjust to fit in a way you may prefer. My party had two fighters, a thief, and a red mage. I drew my own interpretations of them which you can see here!
My biggest complaint with Final Fantasy is that a bunch of the spells and magic are just plain broken in the game, so stuff like mages not being able to raise their intelligence and certain spells simply not working was a bit frustrating, but I heard they fixed that in later adaptations, so that’s good! Sadly, it did affect my playthrough, so I gotta dock some points towards the game for that as it was a bit annoying, and had me restart from my original team of fighter, thief, white mage, and black mage.
I feel there’s so much more I could say about Final Fantasy I, but I feel I’ve already rambled enough. It’s truly a wonderful experience and has so many fun visual elements that I felt were missing in Dragon Warrior and MOTHER. MOTHER came out after Final Fantasy I, and I’ve never played Dragon Quest/Warrior II though which is a NES/Famicom RPG with a party system that came out a year or so before Final Fantasy I, so that might be a more fair comparison, but oh well! This is the experience I have so my review is going to play off of that! If you’re looking for a 3rd-gen RPG to get started with, Final Fantasy I has to be the most player friendly I’ve ever played, and I can’t recommend it enough!
4.5/5
I played the game on my NES and had absolutely no issues with lack of save points, enemy/boss difficulty, and getting around to figure out what to do next. The manual for Final Fantasy 1 is insanely kind, going above and beyond what the already jampacked manuals for the time usually had. Again, the manual, not the guidebook, gives the player information for where to go until you discover the airship. That’s pretty much the end game, with help knowing the best weapons and places to go until that point. The manual of course also includes all the information for enemy, weapon, and armor stats, and a map of the whole area to boot. Final Fantasy gameplay wise is also just very, very player-friendly, with little need to ever grind if you focus on destroying every group you run into. In fact, I would argue you will quickly become OVERpowered if you focus on eliminating everyone you run into. With Dragon Warrior and MOTHER, I definitely had to put aside time just to level up between bosses, while Final Fantasy seemed to always lead me to be just the right level at just the right time, even when running away from a lot of the bigger groups.
Final Fantasy is a gorgeous game on the NES, even including cutscenes and a credit roll, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on a 3rd-generation game (though I still have lots to check-out!). The music is really impressive too, with a very large variety that I can think back on fondly (though my wife eventually had me mute the TV because she couldn’t stand it lmao). I loved all the effort put into both the visuals and music in this game, and appreciated even the little things we might not think much about today, such as being able to change weapons and visibly see your change (I love the Coral Sword for being a bright hot pink hehe), the cute little dance after beating an enemy, large and varied groups of monsters to fight against, and the awesome and varied transportation you unlock throughout that only helps you move faster and faster! That’s what’s great about the original Final Fantasy, it really feels like a great video game conversion of DND. You pick who you want in your party, get to name them, create little stories in your head, and play them through a fairly open story that you can adjust to fit in a way you may prefer. My party had two fighters, a thief, and a red mage. I drew my own interpretations of them which you can see here!
My biggest complaint with Final Fantasy is that a bunch of the spells and magic are just plain broken in the game, so stuff like mages not being able to raise their intelligence and certain spells simply not working was a bit frustrating, but I heard they fixed that in later adaptations, so that’s good! Sadly, it did affect my playthrough, so I gotta dock some points towards the game for that as it was a bit annoying, and had me restart from my original team of fighter, thief, white mage, and black mage.
I feel there’s so much more I could say about Final Fantasy I, but I feel I’ve already rambled enough. It’s truly a wonderful experience and has so many fun visual elements that I felt were missing in Dragon Warrior and MOTHER. MOTHER came out after Final Fantasy I, and I’ve never played Dragon Quest/Warrior II though which is a NES/Famicom RPG with a party system that came out a year or so before Final Fantasy I, so that might be a more fair comparison, but oh well! This is the experience I have so my review is going to play off of that! If you’re looking for a 3rd-gen RPG to get started with, Final Fantasy I has to be the most player friendly I’ve ever played, and I can’t recommend it enough!
4.5/5
While I prefer the other three games in the series that I've managed to finish (6, 7, and 9) by a fair margin, there is something to be said about how the original Final Fantasy nails the feeling of creating your own adventure more than most later RPGs and wears its D&D influence on its sleeve. For instance, I did a playthrough where I role played as four beings of pure evil.
Very strange design decision to give the final boss so little defense that basic imps are tougher than it
This review contains spoilers
(this is based on the pixel remaster but I did play and complete the NES original a few months ago at the time of writing)
The original Final Fantasy casts a long shadow on the genre and was one of its earlier modest successes in the West, outselling the original Famicom release in North America alone. Still, it's one which often doesn't get much praise today despite its innovations in the nascent genre on home console, as well as its narrative which is a bit more complex than is often given credit.
The story of Final Fantasy at first glance is very simplistic both in content and presentation, the later ports and remakes did spruce it up a bit with some additional bits of dialogue and scenes which do flesh things out a little, but they're relatively small in the grand scheme of things. What gives the story more to chew on is the additional breadcrumbs of lore that the game sprinkles throughout with its art and offhanded comments made by its various NPCs that when pieced together give it more than just a simple heroes journey in a world on the brink of collapse, the twist that the Lufenian people were, in fact, highly technologically advanced recontextualises how far the world fell as a result of the four Fiends ravaging the planet, and this isn't the only example of this as other NPCs mention that dragons and humans once lived together in harmony, the Elves of Elfheim and the Kingdom of Cornelia once had a strong alliance, the mermaids of the sunken shrine have slowly started to abandon their home and sprout legs never returning home. These might seem like fairly inconsequential details or fluff. Still, they do give the world a far greater sense of history and place rather than just being mere pit stops on the quest to defeat the Fiends, to compare it to similar contemporary RPGs like the previous year's Dragon Quest, it certainly gives the player more to think on and ruminate about.
On a mechanical level, the game deserves praise for giving you far greater options and freedom of choice in how a player can shape the experience, the various classes all have distinct roles and utility to them, sans the Thief in the NES original, which gives you a huge number of potential combinations and whilst not all of them will be viable per se, they do make for good challenge runs if you want to test your knowledge of the systems and how best to use them with each class. For myself, I used a fairly standard pick of Fighter, Monk, Red Mage and Black Mage in the NES version and substituted the Red Mage for a White Mage in the Pixel Remaster and Fighter for a Thief, the reason being that the Thief in the original game is sadly extremely undertuned with an attack power comparable to that of the Black Mage and very limited magic ability that does not make up for its shortcomings, the changes in the Pixel Remaster make them a significantly more viable option with greatly buffed attack power that means they can out damage the Fighter and save you some money in the long run with more limited but cheaper equipment needs.
Of course, the raw battle system is only one part of the equation as the game is also rather infamous and hated by some for its D&D-inspired magic system, utilising spell charges instead of the more typical Magic Points systems common of RPGs today, but I maintain that this was necessary to the tension of the game when in combat and dungeons, some of the later ports did replace the spell charges with MP and they became significantly easier as a result, the game just often plays itself in those versions, without the need to carefully consider the usage of magic, do you use room clearing Dia spells on the Undead at the expense of your charges for Cure? Use elemental weaknesses on enemies that the boss of the dungeon might not share? It's all stuff the player has to account for which is completely absent in those versions, the Pixel Remaster did right by going back to spell charges and the game is better for it than not.
The main stumble in the NES version is its lack of auto-targeting when an enemy is killed or flees but the player still has a party member set to do an action to them, resulting in an ineffective message and a wasted turn. Whilst this does mean the player has to remain more invested in the battles and be more observant of the amount of damage you deal and the total HP of each enemy, it can also just extend the amount of time in battles to some tedious lengths, which given the large number of enemies the player can encounter at a given time during a battle does add up considerably as the game goes on. Besides this the NES original has a fair amount of bugs with spells that do nothing at all or are functionally identical to pre-existing ones making picking them up completely pointless, the intelligence stat which is generally thought to have scaled your spells' damage, buff or healing potential also does nothing at all so level 1 magic drastically falls off in the mid to late game and forces you to use high tiers when the intent was likely to have you saviour those for extreme situations. Many other bugs exist in the game besides this but these are the first that players will probably notice or be made aware of by others, and thankfully all of them have been fixed by hacks and the official remasters that Square has made over the years, so if you do intend to play this game like I think you should, then I highly implore you to use such means as the game is much better balanced this way, though by no means is the original unpatched NES version unplayable, it just requires some foreknowledge of these issues to best deal with them.
The musical score by Nobuo Uematsu deserves particular praise given his status as an entirely self-taught musician, all the tunes in the game are memorable and catchy, with particular favourites of mine including the shop theme and Matoya's Cave. Starting with its Wonderswan remake Uematsu composed several new songs and variations on them to add some extra spice to the game, which are all very good as well and help to remove some of the monotony of hearing the same battle theme for every encounter, the versions in the Pixel Remaster are all fantastic listens and elevate the games sense of adventure and wonderment.
The art in the original is also charming for its day and the battle sprites are all lovingly converted from art by Yoshitaka Amano, which the Pixel Remaster retained albeit with added colour and shading which was not possible on the NES, some people aren't super fond of the art in it but I generally find it to be an acceptable interpretation vs some of the earlier remasters which had entirely new sprite work for enemies and the classes which deviated very heavily from the originals for seemingly no reason.
If I were to sum up the original Final Fantasy in a single word it would be passion, the people behind it all cared a great deal about this game and whilst the stories of it being Square's final game and all that are all a bit exaggerated, it did help the company during a financially difficult period, for that and its part of a series that would soar to much greater heights I will always appreciate it and hold it dear to my heart.
The original Final Fantasy casts a long shadow on the genre and was one of its earlier modest successes in the West, outselling the original Famicom release in North America alone. Still, it's one which often doesn't get much praise today despite its innovations in the nascent genre on home console, as well as its narrative which is a bit more complex than is often given credit.
The story of Final Fantasy at first glance is very simplistic both in content and presentation, the later ports and remakes did spruce it up a bit with some additional bits of dialogue and scenes which do flesh things out a little, but they're relatively small in the grand scheme of things. What gives the story more to chew on is the additional breadcrumbs of lore that the game sprinkles throughout with its art and offhanded comments made by its various NPCs that when pieced together give it more than just a simple heroes journey in a world on the brink of collapse, the twist that the Lufenian people were, in fact, highly technologically advanced recontextualises how far the world fell as a result of the four Fiends ravaging the planet, and this isn't the only example of this as other NPCs mention that dragons and humans once lived together in harmony, the Elves of Elfheim and the Kingdom of Cornelia once had a strong alliance, the mermaids of the sunken shrine have slowly started to abandon their home and sprout legs never returning home. These might seem like fairly inconsequential details or fluff. Still, they do give the world a far greater sense of history and place rather than just being mere pit stops on the quest to defeat the Fiends, to compare it to similar contemporary RPGs like the previous year's Dragon Quest, it certainly gives the player more to think on and ruminate about.
On a mechanical level, the game deserves praise for giving you far greater options and freedom of choice in how a player can shape the experience, the various classes all have distinct roles and utility to them, sans the Thief in the NES original, which gives you a huge number of potential combinations and whilst not all of them will be viable per se, they do make for good challenge runs if you want to test your knowledge of the systems and how best to use them with each class. For myself, I used a fairly standard pick of Fighter, Monk, Red Mage and Black Mage in the NES version and substituted the Red Mage for a White Mage in the Pixel Remaster and Fighter for a Thief, the reason being that the Thief in the original game is sadly extremely undertuned with an attack power comparable to that of the Black Mage and very limited magic ability that does not make up for its shortcomings, the changes in the Pixel Remaster make them a significantly more viable option with greatly buffed attack power that means they can out damage the Fighter and save you some money in the long run with more limited but cheaper equipment needs.
Of course, the raw battle system is only one part of the equation as the game is also rather infamous and hated by some for its D&D-inspired magic system, utilising spell charges instead of the more typical Magic Points systems common of RPGs today, but I maintain that this was necessary to the tension of the game when in combat and dungeons, some of the later ports did replace the spell charges with MP and they became significantly easier as a result, the game just often plays itself in those versions, without the need to carefully consider the usage of magic, do you use room clearing Dia spells on the Undead at the expense of your charges for Cure? Use elemental weaknesses on enemies that the boss of the dungeon might not share? It's all stuff the player has to account for which is completely absent in those versions, the Pixel Remaster did right by going back to spell charges and the game is better for it than not.
The main stumble in the NES version is its lack of auto-targeting when an enemy is killed or flees but the player still has a party member set to do an action to them, resulting in an ineffective message and a wasted turn. Whilst this does mean the player has to remain more invested in the battles and be more observant of the amount of damage you deal and the total HP of each enemy, it can also just extend the amount of time in battles to some tedious lengths, which given the large number of enemies the player can encounter at a given time during a battle does add up considerably as the game goes on. Besides this the NES original has a fair amount of bugs with spells that do nothing at all or are functionally identical to pre-existing ones making picking them up completely pointless, the intelligence stat which is generally thought to have scaled your spells' damage, buff or healing potential also does nothing at all so level 1 magic drastically falls off in the mid to late game and forces you to use high tiers when the intent was likely to have you saviour those for extreme situations. Many other bugs exist in the game besides this but these are the first that players will probably notice or be made aware of by others, and thankfully all of them have been fixed by hacks and the official remasters that Square has made over the years, so if you do intend to play this game like I think you should, then I highly implore you to use such means as the game is much better balanced this way, though by no means is the original unpatched NES version unplayable, it just requires some foreknowledge of these issues to best deal with them.
The musical score by Nobuo Uematsu deserves particular praise given his status as an entirely self-taught musician, all the tunes in the game are memorable and catchy, with particular favourites of mine including the shop theme and Matoya's Cave. Starting with its Wonderswan remake Uematsu composed several new songs and variations on them to add some extra spice to the game, which are all very good as well and help to remove some of the monotony of hearing the same battle theme for every encounter, the versions in the Pixel Remaster are all fantastic listens and elevate the games sense of adventure and wonderment.
The art in the original is also charming for its day and the battle sprites are all lovingly converted from art by Yoshitaka Amano, which the Pixel Remaster retained albeit with added colour and shading which was not possible on the NES, some people aren't super fond of the art in it but I generally find it to be an acceptable interpretation vs some of the earlier remasters which had entirely new sprite work for enemies and the classes which deviated very heavily from the originals for seemingly no reason.
If I were to sum up the original Final Fantasy in a single word it would be passion, the people behind it all cared a great deal about this game and whilst the stories of it being Square's final game and all that are all a bit exaggerated, it did help the company during a financially difficult period, for that and its part of a series that would soar to much greater heights I will always appreciate it and hold it dear to my heart.
beans on toast ass game
They should rename it to "First Fantasy"
why is it called Final Fantasy when this is the first entry and it has 16 entries total what the fuck Sakaguchi
The original Final Fantasy from 1987 is a nice little quaint adventure that served as a revolutionary stepping stone for what would become one of the largest JRPG franchises of all time. Given the history of this franchise and it’s current stature in worldwide culture, it is quite humbling returning to its core roots with the original title. It obviously has quirks that you can associate with older games from this era--an exorbitant amount of random encounters, a story that leaves out detail, a simplistic combat system, and mechanics that literally are so bugged they don’t even work. Even taking all of those things into account, Final Fantasy is still a blast. There is a kind of special magic that really works. Final Fantasy is a quaint, fun, simple adventure that impresses more with how much they accomplished with so little resources than it disappoints. It’s not an adventure I will want to return to anytime soon, but it is one I will remember.
Curioso o sentimento.
Enquanto eu jogava aquela sensação de estar consumindo um clássico sempre me vinha a mente e me fazia questionar quais características eram tão admiráveis sobre ele... acho que agora sei a resposta.
~Zerado pela versão pixel remaster.
Enquanto eu jogava aquela sensação de estar consumindo um clássico sempre me vinha a mente e me fazia questionar quais características eram tão admiráveis sobre ele... acho que agora sei a resposta.
~Zerado pela versão pixel remaster.
An epic game that was very adventurous and ambitious for its time, I'd have given this a much better score if it weren't a buggy mess (so many spells simply don't work) and were less cheap (seriously, you can easily run into an enemy formation that stunlocks you to death before you even have access to any way to prevent stun). I considered giving it a higher score based on its age, but Dragon Quest 3 came out like a month later and was far superior.
In this game Bahamut makes your drip worse
ワンダースワン版でプレイ。非常にシンプルな作り。あろうことかナイトをパーティーに入れなかったのでエクスカリバーがただの記念品になる。しかもモンクは素手の方が強いということに友人から教えてもらうまで気づかなかったのでラストダンジョンで長い間苦労した。素手になったら楽勝だった。
Played on Wonder Swan version. Very simple creation. I didn't have a knight in my party, so Excalibur became just a memento. Moreover, I didn't realize that Monk is stronger with bare hands until my friend told me, so I had a hard time in the last dungeon for a long time. Once I was barehanded, it was a piece of cake.
Played on Wonder Swan version. Very simple creation. I didn't have a knight in my party, so Excalibur became just a memento. Moreover, I didn't realize that Monk is stronger with bare hands until my friend told me, so I had a hard time in the last dungeon for a long time. Once I was barehanded, it was a piece of cake.
Played on the NES Classic
NOTE -- as I did not complete the game, this review should not be taken as a serious critique, but more-so as a set of observations.
Final Fantasy is a revolutionary title, one that would firmly deserve to be inducted into the National Video Game Registry (should such a library ever be made). Playing through it, I was fascinated by the sheer number of elements present in contemporary and retro RPGs alike; RPGs that I and many others have thoroughly enjoyed over the years.
It thus brings me no joy to proclaim that, in comparison to such successors, the game as a whole simply has not aged well- it has all the right ingredients, yet smothers them under frustrating design schemas rendered obsolete post-Chrono Trigger. And while it’s never fair to compare an older game to a later one, subjective parameters for enjoyment are subjective parameters for enjoyment.
What it comes down to is simple: there’s too much grinding, too much fighting, and too much randomicity. Before shelving the game for good, I had put in a little over two hours, and I’m not lying when I tell you guys over 3/4s of that was spent skirmishing to either gain exp for my party or get to a location. You are consistently underleveled here, armor barely providing a stat boost and lower enemies ALWAYS having a chance to critical strike. There’s definitely a mark of progression in the sense that your characters can eventually one-shot foes, but it never feels satisfying in light of the constant battles that inevitably wear down their health before you reach your end goal.
Further compounding the combat are several annoying features, all based around the concept of wasting a turn: “missed” strikes, wherein you’ll fail to hit your victim; ineffective attacks, wherein targeting a foe who ends up dying before the attacking character’s turn results in said character not auto-moving to the next one; and run away, an option that is literally useless, even against enemies you outlevel in totality.
Perhaps there were stats tied to each of these that increased their odds of success (or, in the case of missing, odds of failure), but if so, the game does not give any indication whatsoever, turning attributes like luck into guesswork. Regardless, based on my playthrough, there appeared to be no way of increasing individual skills outside of macro leveling everyone overall.
I know some people will claim that facets like the ineffective strikes were done to encourage strategizing, to which I respond I would accept that were it not for the sheer number of QOL blemishes on-hand: the inability to see enemy HP, the lack of stat descriptions for ANY spells/weapons, the absence of an overworld map, etc….I could go on. If that weren’t enough, every single action and interface you do is blanketed with another one of those shrill NES scores that’s artistically good yet a technical disaster (no disrespect to Nobuo Uematsu, who would go on to compose several masterpieces, but he simply did not have the proper tech to work with here).
However, despite all this, I genuinely admired the game. Square really went out of their way to craft a unique experience that, as noted earlier, went on to influence an entire genre of the industry. The turn-based schematics, the way music alternates between interior/exterior locations, the specialization of spellcaster and warrior archetypes, heck even the random encounters ended up becoming video game staples.
The story is also a lot more intricate than would appear. Yes, it’s your typical good guy versus bad guy routine (most video games indulge in this schematic for a reason); however, the variety astounded me -- in the small time played I ran into a crazy witch in the forest, rescued a princess, and encountered a boatful of pirates, and I’m sure Square only built on that foundation for the remainder of the title. This level of creativity is extended to the monster designs, whose art assets resemble sickly warped beasts from our world.
It’s a shame then that these positives are so dang stifled by the monotonous fight -> retreat & heal -> fight -> retreat & heal routine that makes-up the vast majority of the gameplay. Yes, I know plenty of other titles engage in a similar formula, but FF makes it worse by having the entire overworld be a hostile zone ripe for random attacks.
There’s an interesting mythology here, but unless you’re willing to play with mods/patches, the original Final Fantasy is best left on your shelf.
NOTES
-Unfortunately, a lot of the attacks aren’t particularly memorable from a visual standpoint (their accompanying SFX included); however, I understand the developers only had so much to work with.
-Hated how, if a party member was slain, they would not get ANY experience from a fight they contributed to. On that note, having to go to a separate healer to revive a downed ally instead of just a single one seemed pointlessly extraneous.
-Moving between menus causes a zany rainbow screen shift. I wonder if this was intentional or a coding error, though it either way looks cool.
NOTE -- as I did not complete the game, this review should not be taken as a serious critique, but more-so as a set of observations.
Final Fantasy is a revolutionary title, one that would firmly deserve to be inducted into the National Video Game Registry (should such a library ever be made). Playing through it, I was fascinated by the sheer number of elements present in contemporary and retro RPGs alike; RPGs that I and many others have thoroughly enjoyed over the years.
It thus brings me no joy to proclaim that, in comparison to such successors, the game as a whole simply has not aged well- it has all the right ingredients, yet smothers them under frustrating design schemas rendered obsolete post-Chrono Trigger. And while it’s never fair to compare an older game to a later one, subjective parameters for enjoyment are subjective parameters for enjoyment.
What it comes down to is simple: there’s too much grinding, too much fighting, and too much randomicity. Before shelving the game for good, I had put in a little over two hours, and I’m not lying when I tell you guys over 3/4s of that was spent skirmishing to either gain exp for my party or get to a location. You are consistently underleveled here, armor barely providing a stat boost and lower enemies ALWAYS having a chance to critical strike. There’s definitely a mark of progression in the sense that your characters can eventually one-shot foes, but it never feels satisfying in light of the constant battles that inevitably wear down their health before you reach your end goal.
Further compounding the combat are several annoying features, all based around the concept of wasting a turn: “missed” strikes, wherein you’ll fail to hit your victim; ineffective attacks, wherein targeting a foe who ends up dying before the attacking character’s turn results in said character not auto-moving to the next one; and run away, an option that is literally useless, even against enemies you outlevel in totality.
Perhaps there were stats tied to each of these that increased their odds of success (or, in the case of missing, odds of failure), but if so, the game does not give any indication whatsoever, turning attributes like luck into guesswork. Regardless, based on my playthrough, there appeared to be no way of increasing individual skills outside of macro leveling everyone overall.
I know some people will claim that facets like the ineffective strikes were done to encourage strategizing, to which I respond I would accept that were it not for the sheer number of QOL blemishes on-hand: the inability to see enemy HP, the lack of stat descriptions for ANY spells/weapons, the absence of an overworld map, etc….I could go on. If that weren’t enough, every single action and interface you do is blanketed with another one of those shrill NES scores that’s artistically good yet a technical disaster (no disrespect to Nobuo Uematsu, who would go on to compose several masterpieces, but he simply did not have the proper tech to work with here).
However, despite all this, I genuinely admired the game. Square really went out of their way to craft a unique experience that, as noted earlier, went on to influence an entire genre of the industry. The turn-based schematics, the way music alternates between interior/exterior locations, the specialization of spellcaster and warrior archetypes, heck even the random encounters ended up becoming video game staples.
The story is also a lot more intricate than would appear. Yes, it’s your typical good guy versus bad guy routine (most video games indulge in this schematic for a reason); however, the variety astounded me -- in the small time played I ran into a crazy witch in the forest, rescued a princess, and encountered a boatful of pirates, and I’m sure Square only built on that foundation for the remainder of the title. This level of creativity is extended to the monster designs, whose art assets resemble sickly warped beasts from our world.
It’s a shame then that these positives are so dang stifled by the monotonous fight -> retreat & heal -> fight -> retreat & heal routine that makes-up the vast majority of the gameplay. Yes, I know plenty of other titles engage in a similar formula, but FF makes it worse by having the entire overworld be a hostile zone ripe for random attacks.
There’s an interesting mythology here, but unless you’re willing to play with mods/patches, the original Final Fantasy is best left on your shelf.
NOTES
-Unfortunately, a lot of the attacks aren’t particularly memorable from a visual standpoint (their accompanying SFX included); however, I understand the developers only had so much to work with.
-Hated how, if a party member was slain, they would not get ANY experience from a fight they contributed to. On that note, having to go to a separate healer to revive a downed ally instead of just a single one seemed pointlessly extraneous.
-Moving between menus causes a zany rainbow screen shift. I wonder if this was intentional or a coding error, though it either way looks cool.
Good for its time. I played it much later obviously but it was neat for what it was. It created a ton of tropes and mechanics that lasted for a long time in games.
Game # 59 of my challenge
Dragon warrior was the first JRPG of my list that I tried. It was barebones, but did a great job at what it wanted to do. The second dragon warrior came along and added a bunch a new stuff to the JRPG formula. Now, it's time to try another franchise and it's was a breath of fresh air.
First of all, the plot is about four heroes called the Warriors of light. They each have an elemental crystal of their world that was tainted by the four elemental fiends. OS their goal is to restore their restore to bring back world peace. The story is way more complicated than any other games that I previously played and keep adding more stuff when getting further in the story. The story is well given to the player if the player is interested to talk to a lot of NPCs in the game.
The music is also really good. I would also say that some of the songs are iconic, especially the battle theme. The OST is really well created for the universe that the adventure took place in. The music feels like you're in a fantasy world. So props to the composer of this game.
Visually, the game looks really good as well. One thing that came straight to mind about how much they improved the JRPG genre is the battle. Instead of only seeing the enemies in front of you, you can also see your characters in the battle. When it's their turn, they also have an animation of their attack, which is nice. The world is pretty to explore and have some different type of terrains and villages to explore (especially at the end of the game). The enemies and bosses looks good as well.
The start of the game is also really fresh compared to the other game of that genre that I played previously. You can choose a party of 4 characters to play from. They each have their unique traits and ability. This adds a really big layer of replayability. However, some characters were way stronger than other, or some that simply didn't work. For example, the thief main stats is not even functional in the game.
Speaking of the characters, during the course of the game, your character will gain levels by defeating enemies. Those levels will grant better stats to your characters. Also, it will also grant access to spellcasters to access some stronger spells in their ''spell books''. Each spellcasters can have 3 spells per level of spell that they can hold. Further in the game, all characters can also transform to a better version of what they were previously. Their stats and even their visual is also changed by that transformation.
The combat is really good. The player can fight to up to 9 enemies on the same screen. You can select the type of attack to each of your character and can also target the specific enemy that you want. This is a huge upgrade compared to Dragon Warrior, but it also comes with a downside. If the target your character wants to hit is not present anymore, they lose their turn. This can be frustrating at times, but you need to take it into account when fighting. Also, there's a total of 128 different enemies in the game (including bosses). That is really an impressive feat for the time.
The exploration is also really neat in this game. You can walk across different type of terrains, you can also unlock a boat early on in the game to move from a continent to another, and can unlock a blimp further in the game, which makes you go wherever you want to go. This makes the exploration less redundant and also faster when you're further in the game.
The villages are nice also. There's some inns to heal your characters, shops to buy a whole bunch of stuff and some NPCs that you can talk to. One thing that is really annoying in the game is that you cannot buy a lot of the same item in one purchase. You need to buy every one of them individually one at the time, which can be really tedious when you need to buy 99 of them. In one town, there's a tombstone with the name of Eldrick, which is a really nice nod to the hero of the first game of Dragon Warrior.
I enjoyed my time playing this game, however, there were some tedious things that you come across way to often and some stuff that simply not work (like a character and some spells). I would still recommend this game, but I heard that the remasters of those games are better. That mean that if you're interested to see what the first Final Fantasy have to offer, try a newer version of it.
Dragon warrior was the first JRPG of my list that I tried. It was barebones, but did a great job at what it wanted to do. The second dragon warrior came along and added a bunch a new stuff to the JRPG formula. Now, it's time to try another franchise and it's was a breath of fresh air.
First of all, the plot is about four heroes called the Warriors of light. They each have an elemental crystal of their world that was tainted by the four elemental fiends. OS their goal is to restore their restore to bring back world peace. The story is way more complicated than any other games that I previously played and keep adding more stuff when getting further in the story. The story is well given to the player if the player is interested to talk to a lot of NPCs in the game.
The music is also really good. I would also say that some of the songs are iconic, especially the battle theme. The OST is really well created for the universe that the adventure took place in. The music feels like you're in a fantasy world. So props to the composer of this game.
Visually, the game looks really good as well. One thing that came straight to mind about how much they improved the JRPG genre is the battle. Instead of only seeing the enemies in front of you, you can also see your characters in the battle. When it's their turn, they also have an animation of their attack, which is nice. The world is pretty to explore and have some different type of terrains and villages to explore (especially at the end of the game). The enemies and bosses looks good as well.
The start of the game is also really fresh compared to the other game of that genre that I played previously. You can choose a party of 4 characters to play from. They each have their unique traits and ability. This adds a really big layer of replayability. However, some characters were way stronger than other, or some that simply didn't work. For example, the thief main stats is not even functional in the game.
Speaking of the characters, during the course of the game, your character will gain levels by defeating enemies. Those levels will grant better stats to your characters. Also, it will also grant access to spellcasters to access some stronger spells in their ''spell books''. Each spellcasters can have 3 spells per level of spell that they can hold. Further in the game, all characters can also transform to a better version of what they were previously. Their stats and even their visual is also changed by that transformation.
The combat is really good. The player can fight to up to 9 enemies on the same screen. You can select the type of attack to each of your character and can also target the specific enemy that you want. This is a huge upgrade compared to Dragon Warrior, but it also comes with a downside. If the target your character wants to hit is not present anymore, they lose their turn. This can be frustrating at times, but you need to take it into account when fighting. Also, there's a total of 128 different enemies in the game (including bosses). That is really an impressive feat for the time.
The exploration is also really neat in this game. You can walk across different type of terrains, you can also unlock a boat early on in the game to move from a continent to another, and can unlock a blimp further in the game, which makes you go wherever you want to go. This makes the exploration less redundant and also faster when you're further in the game.
The villages are nice also. There's some inns to heal your characters, shops to buy a whole bunch of stuff and some NPCs that you can talk to. One thing that is really annoying in the game is that you cannot buy a lot of the same item in one purchase. You need to buy every one of them individually one at the time, which can be really tedious when you need to buy 99 of them. In one town, there's a tombstone with the name of Eldrick, which is a really nice nod to the hero of the first game of Dragon Warrior.
I enjoyed my time playing this game, however, there were some tedious things that you come across way to often and some stuff that simply not work (like a character and some spells). I would still recommend this game, but I heard that the remasters of those games are better. That mean that if you're interested to see what the first Final Fantasy have to offer, try a newer version of it.