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.

In many ways the first Final Fantasy game was a culmination of many different RPG efforts to date. The influence from Dragon Quest is obvious, which itself was influenced by Ultima and Wizardry. Final Fantasy was the next child in this illustrious lineage, and easily my favorite.

Where Final Fantasy excels is that it manages to offer a mostly frustration free experience to newcomers of RPGs as well as veteran dungeon crawlers. It provides you with some customization options by letting you pick your party, and your spells should you choose to add mages to your party, but the rest of the game proceeds through a linear series of fetch quests and regulated upgrades. A reasonable encounter rate and leveling system keeps pretty good pace with the story and gives you a sense of growing more powerful as you work your way through the various dungeons.

I also prefer the battle screen layout here to that of the first person views in games like Dragon Quest. Seeing your characters move to attack the enemy sprites even with simplistic animations always felt more impactful than staring at an enemy sprite as it glows different colors in response to your menu selections. That said, the visuals are very similar to Dragon Quest, though I do prefer the sprite work in Final Fantasy. There are also some well documented bugs and stats issues that could cause frustration, but I personally never found any of them to be detrimental enough to cause significant grievances.

The story is generally straightforward, and while the setting is mostly a mishmosh of medieval themes and characters, it does lay the groundwork for some of the staple elements of the franchise that would span countless games after this one. Speaking of timeless elements, the game's soundtrack is fantastic and relentlessly humable. Easily some of the best music ever produced for a video game at the time of its release.

All in all, Final Fantasy was a wonderful addition to the burgeoning RPG genre and set the stage for sequels that would go on to become some of the best games ever made.

[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!

I've had this game for quite some time on my NES Mini, and it's a game that I've been meaning to play through for quite some time. I played through the Dawn of Souls remake on GBA when I was younger, but I've always been curious as to just how different the original NES game feels to play. A friend of mine was talking about Final Fantasy a fair bit a few days back, and it gave me the push I needed to finally hook up the NES Mini and give this game a play. It took me about 24 hours to play through the English version of the game with relatively copious save state use (with my 2 fighter, 1 white mage, and 1 black mage party).

The original Final Fantasy's story is a pretty neat one and it's remarkably complex given that it's a game from 1987, when JRPGs were still something so so new to the world. You play the four Warriors of Light, four player-created party members who are here to save the world. The four fiends have taken the power of the four elements, and you need to defeat them and save the day. It's a simple premise, of course, and the signposting can be a little rough at times for exactly where to go, but the conspiracy behind it all is neat to watch play out, and is still entertaining all these years later. Most impressive of all for me was the localization. Sure, the game is from 1987 and the localization is from 1990, but it's still remarkable just how well put together the translation for this is.

The gameplay of FF1 is the real showstopper here, and in no small part due to how until very recently every port of this game stripped out all the unique (and admittedly rather bothersome) aspects of its design. Like many early JRPGs, FF1 takes a lot of its base ideas and aesthetic trappings from Western RPGs like Ultima, Wizardry, and most notably, Dungeons & Dragons. Sure, you have a party of four characters, the order of the party they're in dictates how likely they are to draw enemy fire (more likely in front, less likely in back), and you equip armor to get stronger and fight to get experience points to level up. You have six different jobs you can pick from, each having their own strengths and weaknesses (granted some of them have such awful weaknesses they're not worth using at all). Many aspects of FF1 aren't terribly remarkable, even for the time.

But the really unique thing about how FF1 plays compared to so many other RPGs of the time is that it eschews any kind of MP system. Instead, you have D&D-style spell charges, and your mages need to rest at an inn (or consume an expensive overworld-only item) to get those charges back. What this means is that you need to be very careful about when you dish out your spells, and really you never have a good opportunity to sling spells about with how large and maze-like the dungeons you're in are. Monsters hit so hard, your most common way of healing will likely be (like I did) always buying back up to 99 healing potions whenever you go back to town, since healing with white magic is such a quickly tapped-out resource. Running from battles, particularly in the later dungeons, is also a very good strategy to conserve resources for similar reasons.

Overall I'd certainly put FF1 on the easier side of NES RPGs, but it can be absolutely devious with how the rare wandering packs of instant death-toting mages can be in later dungeons. There are of course no continues, and you need to save at an inn if you want a continue point from where you die, so dying is a really mean punishment. This is especially true with how gratuitously long any battle takes to play out. This game makes Persona 1 or Final Fantasy 7 look like they have fast battle systems with how long they can take. Every attack to every target takes so long to play out that an area of effect spell against the enemy maximum of nine targets can take over a minute between all the animations and loading times for the game's number crunching. That sheer time investment more than anything else is probably the biggest thing that makes FF1 quite so difficult to go back to these days, at least in its original form.

The presentation is really pretty, and it still holds up well even now. You have the distinctive profile-view of the party vs. the monsters, with the party's sprites being more simple and the monsters' being more detailed, and the animations that the party do when they attack must've been pretty dang slick looking back in '87. The music is also quite good, although there was a pretty surprisingly small amount of it. There's only one battle theme, for example, with even the final boss not getting his own battle theme.


Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. FF1 was a very important game historically, and for an 8-bit game it holds up pretty darn well, but that's sorta damning with faint praise with just how brutal so many 8-bit JRPGs are. I'd say that, at a glance, FF1 is certainly one of the 8-bit JRPGs that has aged the best, but with just how BORING it can be to sit even one random encounter, this is a game that will likely only appeal to those very interested in their video game history, or only more devout JRPG fans.

This final fantasy hasn't aged gracefully across the franchise, but its core mechanics and visuals still hold up decently. While not a standout, its customizable party and memorable soundtrack offer some replay value and nostalgia.

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!

(Jogado no meu DATA FROG SF2000)

Depois de fechar o fantástico Final Fantasy X em HD num PS3, eu tive a brilhante ideia de jogar o FF original de NES emulado num portátil chinês. Isso aqui é um dinossauro em forma de videogame. Claramente datado e limitado, mas ainda assim, charmoso.

A história mantém o meu padrão de Final Fantasy até hoje, que é eu sempre me perder em algum momento por que vai envolver alguma loucura tipo viagem no tempo ou algum vilão com alguma motivação esquisita, MAS ainda aproveitei bastante. No fim das contas, tudo sempre termina com "mate deus" ou algo assim mermo, então perder algum detalhe no caminho meio que tanto faz. No geral, a narrativa é simples e pouco coesa, mas funcional.

A jogabilidade é o básico do RPG clássico, aposto até que boa parte desses elementos foram inventados aqui (vi algumas reviews dizendo que sim, então provavelmente deve ser). RPG de turno em que você vai ficando mais forte e ganhando poderzinho não tem como falhar. Imagino que a dificuldade original deva ser o inferno, pois o jogo não dá nenhum item de reviver e pra salvar tem que ir na cidade ou usar item certo, mas usando save state fica facinho. Inclusive, a desafio deve ser 100% proveniente desse elemento, por que eu acho que só apanhei de monstro umas duas vezes no jogo inteiro. Nenhum boss é desafio de verdade se você estiver bem equipado eu diria.

Pra um jogo dos anos 80, isso aqui deve ter sido até acima da média. Pra hoje em dia, provável que seja muito simplista e certamente feio numa TV maior. Pra mim, como joguei num portátil e usando save state, foi quase como um Pokémon clássico; um passatempo despretensioso e gostosinho.

Minha party foi um Cavaleiro, um Mestre Porradeiro, um Mago Negro e uma Maga Branca, pra poder ter dois de cada cor na paleta do NES e explorar a maior parte das magias e armas do jogo. Funcionou direitinho.

The Heroes of Light gather as Square begins its maiden voyage into the ever popular Final Fantasy series, and this certainly makes sure it won't be the last fantasy either. Setting the stage for all the games to come this honestly holds up mostly well and I would definitely recommend trying it if you want to experience the series origins, or just want a solid RPG to play.

There is honestly a decent amount of stuff going on the in-game, such as 3 different vehicles you can obtain, weapons that can also have spell effects, different classes that can use different magic or equipment, it's pretty fun to see how much depth there was in just the first game. Of course it does lack something pretty crucial compared to modern ones, and that's the lack of descriptions for items and equipments. This can make building your characters a bit hard if you don't look at a chart explaining stats on stuff, which I'd probably recommend doing. Aside from this, there isn't really any complaints I have. The difficulty felt very fair and aside from one enemy attack having a chance to instakill characters it was easier than I expected from a game of this time.

Now that I've finally played this, I look forward to trying all the other Final Fantasies I've yet to. There's quite a lot, and I would recommend considering trying this one out amongst them.

IGN: More DnD than Dragon's Quest

Game that came at a very desperate time for Square, very influential in every way, almost nothing like any of the other games in this franchise, the world is very generic. It's mostly the gameplay that will keep you hooked, sets up the plotline for almost every FF game though, crystals in danger, evil entity abusing it, elemental shit.

If you want to play it nowadays I recommend a couple romhacks and patches.

If you don't wanna get your hands dirty with patching too much:
- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1631/ - Final Fantasy Restored (If you want the original balance of the game plus some minor consistency stuff use this patch https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4675/ - If you want a better translation use this patch as well https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4624/)

This is optional but recommended, you should have the original game's manual and map you can find scans here at Nintendo's official website.
- https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NABJE.pdf

And for the map you can use games database here
- https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYSTEM/Nintendo_NES/manual/Formated/Final_Fantasy_-1990-_Nintendo.pdf

If you have already played it I recommend some other romhacks.
- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/789/ - "Very comprehensive redesign of Final Fantasy 1."
- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6865/ - "Final Fantasy 35th Anniv w/ Tonberry, Moogles & More!"
- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3067/ - "Final Fantasy Ultra just got better! The philosophy is still to add and change as much as possible for the better, while still staying true to the spirit of the game." (I really like this one)
- https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/652/ - "The purpose of this hack is to take an already great game and greatly improve on it by enhancing it with special features, ironing out wrinkles in the gameplay and to a somewhat lesser extent put the author’s own personal spin on the game." - (Was my favorite way to play before Ultra Champion Edition)
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5221/ - Can't vouch for this one but I've heard good things.

tl;dr play the pixel remaster

I'll be generous and give this a 2 star rating, perhaps against my better judgement, because with an extensive guide this game is fun, but in addition to having to work out the quirks of old NES games (out-of-the-way untelegraphed locations of the canoe, airship, etc), you also have to figure out what doesn't work. I will shoutout extensively the Gamer Corner Guide for making this game bearable. I did quite enjoy the FFI pixel remaster, and a lot of my comments there on game design hold. I do like this game, but if I would've played the NES version first I think my foray into the series would've began and ended with this game.

The amount of things that don't work, or don't work as they're supposed to, is pretty big and notable. The intelligence stat. The spells LOCK, TMPR, LOK2, SABR, and XFER. Elemental swords not having element. Critical hit being based on weapon index number (which is very funny tbh). Your mileage may vary with these things, as some of them don't really matter or even are somewhat balanced (a lot of the higher index number weapons are weapons you get later in the game, who'd've thunk), but on the other hand there's no way to unlearn spells if you take a nonfunctional one.

Speaking of spells, there's no descriptions of them. Not particularly difficult to tell what FIRE and CURE do, but spells like XXXX and RUB are much more esoteric and hard to figure out. There's a range of clarity between these two extremes as to what exactly spells do. And since they are both expensive and permanent, playing without a guide is strongly not recommended to figure it out!

With all that said I still think this is outstanding game design for 1987, but looking at it from 2024 there are warts all over the place, and with this game being remade multiple times with several of the blemishes smoothed over, you really want to play one of the remakes over the OG. If you're interested in video game history, check FFI out on old hardware - but probably not as your first experience with the game.