great game that i'm very glad got made. even as backloaded of a game it is in terms of story i had a lot of fun throughout, and i'm particularly pleased with how they recontextualized not just final fantasy 1 in general but also even its title and aspects of it as an experience. that world is indeed the final fantasy, one way or another. it's cool. i don't think i connected with it as much as some people i know but it was still well worth a play even if binging it can be a bit draining on harder difficulties.

the game's good enough that even after taking a multi-month hiatus and then immediately fighting what's considered a bit of a filter boss, i still powered through just cause the game feels so great to play in general.

while at times it felt as if the controls were a little sluggish or clunky, it was very rare and hardly affected my gameplay. the closest thing to affecting my gameplay was some of the weirdness with menu navigation with shoulder and trigger buttons being reversed from what i'm used to, as well as the game resetting sort order for items to "new" seemingly at random. those, the limited normal battle soundtrack, and the somewhat dull level design are the only blemishes that come to mind in the game, though i'm a bit mixed on how the story is paced and structured as well. still, none of it is enough to deter the game from being a fun run.

i was impressed by the mechanical depth the equipment optimization provided, which kept me engaged even more than i expected for an already skill-intensive action game. micromanaging all my affinities to max out the vast majority of the jobs in the game was fun its own way, and the way the systems all work together to provide such a satisfying play experience makes it very easy to recommend the game to people looking for an action game with more than a light dollop of an rpg feel.