As someone too young to have been able to experience the NES-era of games, playing Final Fantasy felt a bit unreal to me. I got into the series with XV in 2019 and have since played all mainline singleplayer FFs (and a few spin-offs) available on PS4. With the announcement of the Pixel Remasters I was excited to experience that 'classic era' of FF, starting with the original: Final Fantasy.

Although the plot is simple and the characters are more of a player insert, the overall presentation is what makes the journey charming and memorable. The soundtrack, for one, was beautifully rearranged (though you can select the original OST if you prefer). The graphics and especially the character and monster designs are just so pretty to look at. Final Fantasy really achieves that fairytale feeling that makes you marvel at the world.

Your party consists of four characters with six classes to choose from - I chose the inital setup consisting of warrior, thief, white and black mage, with red mage and black belt also being available. Various quality of life changes like being able to save anywhere on the overworld and to quicksave in dungeons, and things like characters automatically hitting the next available enemy if the targeted one died before their turn results in faster gameplay than in the original version. I don't know why I expected the ATB system, but that apparently doesn't appear until FFIV. In this game, you select the actions for all four characters at once, and only then do enemy actions come into play. After your fourth action was performed, you do it again etc. It's not a mechanic that I prefer (I'd say I like the fighting in VIIR, XII & X the most), but it also didn’t prevent me from enjoying the fighting. The magic system is interesting: For each level of magic, you can purchase 3 out of 4 spells for a character. Each level also has a set amount of magic points which determine how often you can cast a spell. At the beginning it is low, like 2 for example, so you can use a spell only two times before you have to sleep in an inn to replenish. It's a nice change to the usual MP mechanic I'm used to and made the battles more tactical.

In general, the battles are fairly easy except for the final boss. In the beginning, you may find yourself debilitated by poison, or some groups of stronger enemies are threatening, but you quickly overcome these early difficulties. Battles are also annoyingly frequent, so the option to disable random encounters was at times really appreciated. The usefulness of loot from treasure chests also varied. In the end, these criticisms didn't matter that much because the game didn't overstay its welcome, as I finished it in around 13-14 hours.

Even if many things seemed familiar because of my knowledge of later FF games, this game was more than just >insert Leo DiCaprio pointing meme here<. It may not be perfect or my favourite in the series, but it's so endearing and sincere. And when the final scrolling text addresses you, the player, directly… sometimes it's the little things that really get you, you know?